Jelena-Dokic.com
JELENA CORNER
February 8, 2005
Page Three Girl
by Todd Spiker
Here we are in February 2005... and Jelena is suddenly
a "page three girl."
Now, don't go thinking that means something it
doesn't. A topless Jelena isn't gracing the
pages of any newsstand
tabloids unless some elaborate
cut-and-paste jobs are going on behind closed doors
(the picture above is about as close as you're
gonna get). No, in this case,
Jelena's new "standing" refers
to needing to go all the way to the third page
of the WTA website's rankings (see for yourself
--
http://www.wtatour.com/rankings/singles_numeric.asp?page=3)
to find a certain Dokic's name these days. She's
currently residing on the #201-300 page, nestled
right at #209, one spot behind
Stanislava Hrozenska and one
ahead of Tatiana Poutchek. Jelena hasn't visited this
bad neighborhood in quite some time.
**THE AGASSI ROAD?**
Luckily for the Formerly Fair One, she still has a
name stuck in many people's memory banks. That's
enough to earn her a wild card entry and
exemptions all over the tour.
She can likely get into most any
tournament she wants no matter her ranking. But
it could be that Jelena hasn't
stooped sufficiently enough to
gain the leverage she needs to lift herself
up from the depths her tennis hasn't seen since
before her career-breaking
upset of Martina Hingis nearly six
years ago. One could probably piece together a
pretty good argument that it
might be a good experience to go
though the rigors of qualifying, or get a dose of
how the "other half" lives by
traversing the game's true
"backwoods" region -- the challenger circuit -- for
her hoped-for resurrection to have any real "teeth."
It could help sharpen a mind and game that can't
help but have become dull
after so many losses. If she
takes a deep breath and follows a path such as that,
ala Andre Agassi in '97 following a drop to #141,
she'd surely learn a great deal about herself and
how much she's willing to do
to reclaim her lost place in
the game she's been playing for most of her life.
Jelena's never won an ITF event, having made one
final (in Saga, Japan in '98,
losing to Alicia Molik) in
limited action. Participating in a few events now
would at least provide a reasonably attainable
goal to strive for. It's not
likely to come to pass, but if
these 1st/2nd Round exits continue unabated for
another month or two it'll need to be considered,
simply to provide her with match play. As Jelena
said last year, "The trouble
is you can't play many matches
when you lose them."
Jelena's followed through on the plan to play
lower-tiered events early in '05, choosing a Tier
IV in India this week over a
II in Paris with a field that
includes three of the top four-ranked players in
the world, but still went down in straight sets
today in a 1st Round match
against world #177 Mara
Santangelo in Hyderabad. She's 1-2 so far in her
late-starting 2005 season, opening each match
with a tie-break in something
of an immediate litmus test for
how her day will eventually turn out. The only
match she's won so far (over
Anne Kremer) was after she
opened with a tie-break victory... while she's failed
to win a single set in any match where she's
fallen a set behind. At least
she's not being routed 1-and-2
these days (yet), and the more time on the court
Jelena gets is probably for the better no matter
how things turn out at this
point in the season. But,
right now, it's hard to gauge whether this slow start
means anything for the rest of the year. Throw
in the
elbow injury that hindered her late last year, her
offseason nose surgery and the leg injury that
forced her retirement from the
Alyona Bondarenko match last
week and Jelena is a walking question mark, not the
exclamation point she was up until the middle of
'02, nor the lonely period at
the end of every sentence she
was at the conclusion of '04.
**DANIELA'S BLUEPRINT**
One CAN at least look at Daniela Hantuchova these days
for encouragement. She never dropped as low in
the rankings as Jelena is
right now, but for the last two
years she's suffered through a series of mostly
down moments. Thus far in
'05, she's starting to show
positive progress toward inching back to her one-time
Top 5 status. Her two tie-break loss to Svetlana
Kuznetsova at least allowed her to employ the
same mindset that Ivo Karlovic
displayed last year after his
good Wimbledon run was ended by Roger Federer.
Karlovic said, "I'm happy with my result here. I
just wish I played someone
less good."
Jelena's no where near that sort of moment yet, but
Hantuchova finally is. It's a long road back.
**BOTTOMED OUT?**
Jelena opened 2005 with only 281 points to defend from
'04 (she's already lost the 149 from Tokyo's SF),
so any decent results at all
will allow her some form of
movement up the WTA rankings. Of course, based on
what we've seen so far, even that isn't a fait
accompli. The good news, though, is that her
ranking has pretty much
bottomed-out.
Her largest point-drop remaining is the 55 from Miami
(after that, it's 35 in Doha and 27 in
Charleston). After April, she
has just a vast collection of 1st/2nd
Round exits on her 12-month ledger. In the
second half of the season,
she'll defend just 3 measly
points. So, any win now is a building block for the
possibility of making some real progress from the
grasscourt season to the end of the year.
**THE WEATHERMAN SAYS...**
A week ago, the optimistic forecast on the Corner was
one of mostly fair skies, but with a threat of
clouds. After a retirement,
two lost tie-breaks, three lost
sets and the beginning of another losing streak
(at two, making Jelena 1-11 in
her last twelve WTA matches)
it's already looking quite overcast around
these parts.
It's no time for a vacation. It's time for hard work.
Last week, Jelena stated that she wanted to play until
she was into her late twenties. At just 21,
that's a lot of years still
ahead of her. She has to become a
"Page Two Girl" before she can ever be a "Page
One Girl" again. And before
she can be the Fair One again,
she has to be the Patient One. Patience has
never been one of Jelena's strongest qualities,
either.
Hopefully, with age and lack of success, she'll learn
how to play that role by the end of this season.
The Patient One can become
the Determined One before the
end of 2005, and then she might finally be able to see
that "fair" destination up ahead of her again.
Right now, though, it seems a
long trek to get there. Let's
hope she's up to it.
All for now.
=====================================
=====================================
==JD.com 2005 GRADES==
Pattaya (2r-A.Bondarenko) 1-1 (C)
Hyderabad (1r-Santangelo) 0-1 (D)
==2005 TIE-BREAK RECORD==
Pattaya 1r (Kremer 1st set) W/7-3
Pattaya 2r (A.Bondarenko 1st set) L/1-7
Hyderabad 1r (Santangelo 1st set) L/2-7
==LOSSES TO LOWEST-RANKED PLAYERS==
[2000-05]
#194 Jelena Kostanic (Vienna '01 2r)
#177 Mara Santangelo (Hydera.'05 1r)
#163 Karolina Sprem (Stras. '03 2r)
#132 Maria Vento-Kabchi (Stan. '03 QF)
#131 Petra Mandula (R.Garros '01 3r)
