Article by Gerhard Grundhammer

TINA PISNIK PREVIEW

Worlds no 45, Tina Pisnik, seems to be not only a very good tennis player who beat Shuai Peng from China yesterday 2-6, 6-2 and 7-5 to advance to round 2 of Los Angeles and a really charming girl, who cares a lot about her fans. She also seems to be very fit on computers because she runs a website about herself. And so I have to give most of the credit for this article to the girl from Slovenia, especially for that brilliant biografy which I choose to start with.

Her life, as she says, started with her birth! She was born on 19.february 1981 in Maribor. She is the first, and still only, daughter of Sasa and Boris Pisnik. The most popular local tennis star in the 80s was Mima Jausovec, her later tennis guide and friend.

Already as a child, she loved sport. She was training gymnastics and tennis. As she was choosen for something like a scholarship she quit gymastics, to concentrate on tennis. She still wonders sometimes these days what she would have achieved in gymastics.....

At the age of eight she participated at a local tennis tourny where she ended up being third and claims that, as one of the happiest moments of her life. "As my first really big success I count my triumph in Genova 1995. In year 1995 I also got my world champoin title. That was in Japan.... " she says.Top spot of her youth career was definately the conquering of the Orange Bowl in 1997. 1998 was full of happenings for her, good and bad. First she injured her ankle in Wimbledon which forced her to pause almost 9 months! But she also accepted an invitation from Rick Macci to train at his training-camps in Florida. After nearly one year of absence from WTA-tournys she played again and rushed from 428th position to no 84. 1999 she played two very good tournaments: Warzaw and Tashkent. She reached the semis in both of them. 2000 she won her first tournament (BOL - and she won the final vs. Mauresmo, like Jelena did, at her first WTA-win) and she met Jelena for the first timea as a professional. That was at the French Open and Jelena won after a tough fight 3-6, 7-6 and 6-4 to proceed to round two. In 2001 she reached the semis of Luxembourgh and the quarters of Scottsdale, where she lost to Capriati.

2002 seems to become a solid year for the 21 year old. She`s beaten players outside the top 50 quite regularyly, and lost to the most seeded players. So she reached the semis of Gold Coast (lost to Bedanova), lost round 1 of Sydney to Testut, and round 2 of the Australian Open to Sugiyama. Further she lost that year to Mauresmo, Schett, Sanchez, Dechy, Dementieva and Majoli but a player outside of the top 40 shouldnt bother to much about that.  She met top10 players twice that year. First was JELENA DOKIC, Jelena won 6-4 and 6-1 at Strassbourg and Tina learned a lot at that match, because just about 4 weeks later she faced Kim Clijsters in Hertogenbosch and showed her, that she is able to beat the big ones of that game! She won 7-6 and 6-2! By far the biggest win in her career!

Jelena knows Tina very well, they even played some doubles together when they were younger. Tina plays Voelkl-Rackets from Austria and wears NES-Sportswear from..... (actually, I dont know....)

For more Information about Tina Pisnik go to http://www.tinapisnik.com/ a very nice site, and as i said: Made by herself!!!!!