JELENA-DOKIC.com
June 22, 2004
JELENA CORNER:
COMMEMORATIVE EDITION
by Todd Spiker
It's hard to believe it's been five years since that
sunny Tuesday afternoon in June. Then again, maybe it
isn't. So much has happened since those enchanted
fifty-four minutes of action on Court One at the
All-England Club. Some of it good. Some great. And
some disheartening, as well.
But no matter what highs and lows the future holds
for Jelena Dokic, June 22, 1999 will forever retain its
magical glow. Thus, the first-ever commemorative
edition of the Corner now seeks to recapture those
memories of the first monumental moment in the career of
the then would-be Fair One.
It was five years ago today. You can almost catch a
whiff of the faint smell of disbelief that still lingers
in the air...
-JUNE 22
HEADLINES-
"Hingis
Humiliated" (BBC)
"Hingis
Humbled" (AP)
"Young
Dokic Quickly
Making a Name For
Herself" (AP)
As that June Tuesday beckoned, the air was heavy with
the distinctive scent of eras coming to an end. It had
been a full year since Jana Novotna's seemingly forever
star-crossed quest for a Wimbledon title had concluded
triumphantly with a tearful victory in the Ladies
Final. On the 22nd, she returned to the All-England
Club with her inner demons finally silenced, ready to
defend that title. Her run would end in the
quarterfinals in what would turn out to be her final
Wimbledon. On the men's side of the draw was Boris
Becker. He'd semi-retired two years before, only to
come back to compete one final time at his favorite
tournament, the same one that had introduced the
eventual three-time champion to and secured his image in
the mind of the tennis world -- much as Novotna's
struggles there had defined her's -- as a red-headed,
body-flopping force of nature with a serve that echoed
up to and through the Royal Box above Centre Court. In
his first match of the tournament that Tuesday, Becker
fought back from a two-set deficit to defeat unknown
Brit Miles MacLagan in what would be the last of his
many scintillating victories on the grass. His farewell
SW19 appearance extended into the 4th Round, and then he
walked away for good.
It was in this atmosphere that a new Wimbledon
"legend" was to be born. In a sense, the events that
were transpiring around the grounds that day almost
seemed to destine such an occurrence. But no one
amongst the masses on queue could have guessed that the
legend would arrive in the unlikely form of a skinny
girl with a fierce stare, preternatural calm and a
captivating Australian accent... the same girl who also
just so happened to have been the world's top junior the
year before.
The match on Court One was supposed to be an
afterthought that afternoon, a secondary attraction that
pitted the world's top-ranked woman, Martina Hingis,
against a slight (barely) 16-year old Aussie qualifier
named Jelena Dokic. The same Dokic that Hingis had
handled easily in their previous matchup at the
Australian Open five months prior, and the same Dokic
whose father had made headlines two weeks earlier during
an inebriated street scene at the grasscourt tuneup in
Birmingham. Oh, sure, the 18-year old Hingis was fresh
off her childishly emotional tantrum during the Roland
Garros final against Steffi Graf almost three weeks
earlier, and (as was later discovered) found herself
playing a tournament without her mother by her side for
the first time in her life. But that wasn't supposed to
matter, and (though some questioned it at the time)
anyone who saw what occurred that day knew that it
didn't... at least not completely. For it wasn't Hingis
who controlled the tenor of the 1st Round match.
Indeed, it was the younger of the Dokic clan who was
going to make the headlines this time around.
With a look of determination in her eyes and an inner
drive that was positively inspiring, Jelena fell out of
the sky like a solid gold raindrop... with a ponytail.
Unintimidated by Hingis (possibly because of the
practice sessions between the two in Switzerland, where
Dokic said Hingis treated her like family -- saying
later, "I hope we'll be friends forever"), she stunned
the so-called "smiling assassin," eventually drying up
whatever oasis of fight Hingis brought with her to the
court that day.
Down 1-2 in the 1st set, Dokic would not lose another
game. When she broke the Hingis serve for 3-2, the #1's
wavering will was ready to collapse. The Aussie
provided the hammer that brought down the final wall,
seizing command in what turned out to be a 6-2/6-0 rout
that christened her the breakout star of the fortnight.
In doing so, Jelena became the lowest-ranked (#129)
player to defeat a #1 seed in a slam in the Open era.
Watching
Jelena's (literally) gasp-inducing thrashing of Hingis
as it happened, I can remember thinking "this kid is
good"... then, mouth agape, "who is this kid?,"... then,
"I really like this kid"... and, tentatively, "this
might be the start of something very, very big."
Number 1 seeds occasionally get bounced in the early
rounds of grand slams, and it's almost always a shocking
on-court deliverance that serves to simultaneously
invigorate the rest of the field, and the tournament as
a whole, while stunningly humbling the tour's best
player in front of the scrutinizing eyes of the entire
tennis establishment. Somehow, though, the Dokic upset
of Hingis was a heightened experience on all those
fronts. Remember, fellow neophytes Mirjana Lucic and
Alexandra Stevenson advanced to the semifinals that same
Wimbledon, and the hanging-by-an-emotional-thread Hingis
was never really quite the same after her tortured
European summer of '99. From the failed Hingis
crosscourt dropshot that awarded Jelena her first game
to the errant backhand service return that converted a
match point... you could sense something unique was
happening before your eyes. Something that you'd never
forget. A Court One coup, with the reigning queen being
tossed out onto the street by a precocious upstart who
kept a composure that belied her youth as she slowly
percolated from the inside out as the childhood dreams
born on tennis courts in the former Yugoslavia (and
later in the land down under), overseen by the watchful
eye of her former wrestler father, were suddenly coming
true.
Eyes darting to her family in the stands, a confident
fist silently clenching as the impossible quicky became
probable, legs constantly moving to and fro from the
baseline to the net as she rode the wave she'd
miraculously created to the shore and landed in perfect
balance on the sands of would-be greatness on her
sport's grandest, greenest stage. A bit much? Maybe...
but that's what it felt like at the time. And in light
of what's happened to Jelena since that day, all the ups
as well as all the downs, five years later, June 22
remains a moment that beguiles and vexes... and still
manages to define a career.
THE BEAUTY WAS IN
...THE DETAILS
Post-Match Transcript
&
Match Stats
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WHAT
HAPPENED NEXT...& WHAT'S NEXT?
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In
preparation for this edition of the Corner, I re-watched
the Dokic-Hingis match in its entirety, and I'm happy to
say that Jelena's performance hasn't lost its
heart-palpitating sparkle. The raw talent and
relentless drive that I remembered being so evident that
afternoon outside London were still there. It was that
potent combination that made qualifier Jelena's
Wimbledon debut the stuff of dreams and Hollywood
screenplays. Feeding off her own momentum, she proved
to be no one-match wonder, even garnering the favor of
Graf, who practiced with Dokic and offered her advice
(Jelena stated that Graf was the nicest player she'd met
on tour). She proceeded to knock off #9-seed Mary
Pierce in the 4th Round to advance to the quarterfinals,
becoming the third qualifier in the Open era to go so
far and the first Aussie woman to do it in twelve
years. Jelena stated after the Pierce win that,
considering the stunning quality of her upset of Hingis,
the win over a second top player finally proved to even
HER that her play was not the result of pure
happenstance.
Alas, it was in the quarterfinals that she lost a
rain-delayed three-setter to fellow surprise Stevenson,
a match that was stretched over two days by a capricious
Mother Nature that never allowed the Dokic magic to flow
from her racket for very long without interruption. A
year later, though, she managed to right that wrong by
advancing to the Wimbledon semifinals.
Five years after sitting -- well, actually there
might have been more anxious edging closer to a TV
screen than actual SITTING -- and witnessing the Swiss
Miss's house of cards demolished by a spindly-looking
kid ("The Slight One?"), I still found myself shaking my
head and asking the question, "Who IS this girl?" in
2004. After learning so much about that girl, now a
young woman, over the course of the last 1826 days, it's
difficult to avoid inquiring, "WHERE is that girl?"
Thing is, Jelena must be wondering, too.
Oh, she didn't disappear after June 22, 1999. Three
years later, Jelena had risen to #4 in the world and
claimed two Tier I titles. In 2002, she finally won her
first grasscourt title, her fifth WTA singles crown.
The victory completed a career "surface slam," a scant
thirteen months after she'd won her first trophy on the
clay of Rome (it took nearly two and a half years for
Serena Williams to win titles on all four -- hard, clay,
carpet & grass -- court surfaces). After her July '02
career-first victory over Jennifer Capriati in San Diego
(Capriati said Dokic was a "great player" that night),
she went to Montreal and defeated Hingis for the first
time since that day in 1999 (after having gone 0-2
against her in the interim). But sandwiched between
those two victories came the fabled tearful "semi-tank"
in a semifinal match against Chanda Rubin in Los
Angeles. It was a warning sign of trouble ahead, the
first observable crack in the Dokic exterior. Still,
she entered the U.S. Open as one of the hottest players
on tour that fall.
The story gets more precarious from there. A poor
showing at Flushing Meadow was followed by a
discouraging end to the 2002 campaign, soon to be joined
by more all-too-public (and familiar) familial discord,
coaching changes and questionable-at-best efforts that
only served to raise eyebrows and further dull the once
razor-sharp confidence that was on display on June 22.
A victory over then-world #1 Kim Clijsters last October
seemed to brighten Jelena's prospects and spirits, but
another semi-controversial absence from the Australian
circuit this past January was but the prelude to a
continuation of her up and (mostly) down movement within
the WTA singles rankings. The former #4 is now flirting
with falling from the Top 30, or worse. Since that
second win over Hingis in August 2002, the Fair One has
compiled an unabashedly less-than-mediocre 42-54
record. After losing in the first
round of this year's Wimbledon, she
is riding a seven-match,
thirteen-set losing streak.
For Hingis, June 22 was one of the most telling fault
lines in a career that flashed like lightning in the
evening sky. Her loss to Jelena turned out to be a
knockout punch to an emotionally reeling Hingis'
champion's aura. Having won five slam singles titles
before the '99 Wimbledon, she never won a sixth. In
2001, she was a 1st Round loser at Wimbledon to #83
Virginia Ruano-Pascual. After not having to
"experience" losing during her exceptional junior days
and early professional career, Hingis never perfected
the skill of learning from her defeats and moving on...
then she was shoved off her throne by the power players
who made her brand of clever shotmaking obsolete (at
least until Justine Henin-Hardenne came along in '03).
After missing time in 2002 after undergoing surgery
on her left ankle, Hingis returned to action in the
fall, only to call it quits soon afterward. Her final
match came that October in Filderstadt. Citing foot
problems that prevented her from training properly, she
retired at the age of 21. Today, she's a frequent
visitor to WTA events and a familiar voice as a
television commentator. Could there still be a sixth
Dokic-Hingis matchup in the future? You never know.
Hingis is still just 23... but the signs seem to point
to the notion that her chapter in tennis history will
not have an on-court epilogue.
Meanwhile, Jelena, now a woman of 21 herself, is
faced with her own predicament -- one in which she
searches, so far in vain, for a victorious moment with
the magnitude to catapult her confidently into the
future once again... just as the Hingis win did five
years ago when she was but a naturally gifted child of
the sport.
Oddly enough, re-viewing the '99 match sparked the
realization that Jelena has almost transformed into a
version of the June 22 Hingis. Lately, she's been
learning first-hand just what her opponent went through
against her five years ago. Just as the Swiss Miss did,
when Jelena finds herself down in a match these days
she's likely to roll over, and seemingly can't get off
the court quickly enough for her taste... but the Perrys
and Camerins who have vanquished her aren't destined for
the eventual high status that Jelena herself was back
when she upset Hingis.
Hingis never made it all the way back after she lost
to Jelena. She won seventeen more singles titles, and
advanced to four more grand slam finals. But her "heart
of a champion," the confidence that often made her
on-court actions seem imperious, never again beat as
strongly as it once had... and then she was gone. Now,
Jelena's task is to avoid a similar fate.
June 22,
1999. The purity of that moment will never diminish.
It's captured in time (as well as photos and memories)
for all eternity as an audacious display of perfection
in the spotlight. Hindsight also tells us it was a
brilliantly naive brand of fearlessness that Jelena
showed on that day. Time may have eroded the naivete
from the visage and mind's eye of the still young Dokic,
but the daring deeds need not be lost to the aging
process, as well. The spirit of 1999 CAN be recaptured,
but it'll take more than just hard work. It'll take
patience, conviction and an unfailing faith in herself
and her decisions. Innocently climbing the mountain,
not understanding the pitfalls that await on the other
side, is easy... but only when it's compared to the
temerity -- the gall -- required to conquer the peak
again, and maybe climb still higher the second time
around.
If she's up to that monumental task, then one day
Jelena's "rebirth" will come, maybe when the tennis
world -- the Fair One included -- least expects it. Who
knows, maybe it'll be such a grand moment that it'll
trump that day five years ago, relegating it to a
footnote in the history of all that is Jelena.
Whoa!! Let's not lose our heads. Just being able to
again debate the merits of which of Jelena's "moments"
is the greatest would be a welcome return to the days
when anything seemed possible and rightfully was just
that.
You know... back in 1999. June 22, to be exact.
That's all for now, but there's so much more of the
Fair One still to come.
