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Preview of Dokic versus Bondarenko

2nd Round match, Pattaya

The start of the new season looks good for Jelena Dokic as she won her first match of the year with a comfortable 7-6(3) 6-3 win over her higher-ranked opponent, Anne Kremer, who she had previously lost to on a number of occasions back in 2002. So a good win and one that will probably give her a lot of confidence, despite the Volvo Women’s Classic being one of the lower tier events on the tour.

According to the seeds, Jelena was supposed to play the number fourth seed Mashona Washington in the second round. However, Mashona suffered a straight sets loss to the Ukrainian girl, Alyona Bondarenko, who is sitting just outside the top 100 in the ranks and again is a higher-ranked opponent for Jelena. Bondarenko has had some good wins on the challenger circuit, where she has consistently made the semifinals and finals of the 25K, 50K, and 75K tournaments. The transition from these tournaments to the WTA tournaments has proved somewhat difficult for her, though, after only winning one match on the circuit in Bogota after a good qualifying run. Since then, she has attempted to qualify for numerous other events, including the grand slams, but has lost early in all of them.

2005 looked good for Alyona nonetheless where she began the year as the number 1 seed in the qualifying of Hobart. She won her first match but then lost in a close three-setter to Maureen Drake. On moving to the Australian Open, she was giving a terrible draw where she lost to Dementieva in straight sets, although knowing Dementieva’s record in Australia, it was a match a lot of players could have won but inexperience seemed to play an important part in the overall result.

So altogether, Alyona has had some tough matches already this year in which her confidence was probably affected by some of the results she has already had this year. However, a win over the number 4th seed in Pattaya probably increased her confidence significantly so Jelena will have to weary of this when heading into the match. Neither of these players has played each other before but Jelena’s experience should be able to put her through into the quarterfinals over her younger opponent.

Comparison:

Best result in a grand slam:

  1. Dokic: Semifinals of Wimbledon 2000
  2. Bondarenko: 1st round Australian Open 2005

Best result in a tournament:

  1. Dokic: has won 5 titles, including the tier 1 events of Rome and Moscow
  2. Bondarenko: 2nd round Pattaya (still playing)

Win/Loss record on the tour in 2004:

  1. Dokic: 8-17 (all in the tour events, including fed cup, excluding walkover wins)
  2. Bondarenko: 42-30 (most of which were on the challenger circuit)

Win/Loss record on the tour in 2005:

  1. Dokic: 1-0
  2. Bondarenko: 2-2 (including qualifying results)

Hence, Jelena has considerable more experience than Alyona and should win, but must be weary that Alyona has had a few more matches than her already this season and is coming off a good win in this tournament. Then again, Jelena was able to handle such a situation last year when she started her 2004 campaign in Tokyo where she defeated the likes of Panova, Husarova and Black in succession without having any match practice, unlike her opponents.

Prediction:

Dokic d. Bondarenko in 3 sets
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