Article by Gerhard Grundhammer

DOUBLES FINAL PREVIEW

Jelena Dokic and Kim Clijsters reached the final of the Doubles-Tournament of Los Angeles which will be played tonight. It should start at about 1pm local time. That is 4pm in New York, 9pm in London and 10pm in Belgrade.

Kim and Jelena already played doubles in the juniors tour and won the French Open together as juniors in 1998. In the same year they captured their second title together. That tournament is called: Torneo Int`l Giovahlic Citta Di Prato, which sounds italian to me, but i have never heard about that, before.

As professionals they played together two times: 2001 at the Sparkassen Cup, somewhere in East-Europe, where they reached the semifinal and just a week ago at San Diego where they lost to Arento-Kabachi and Jelenas former partner Panova in straight sets.

This week in L.A. the two "Fila-Girls" have a brilliant run. They eliminated Grande/Tarabini, a combination which has already won 5 titles, in round one 6-1 and 6-2. Next were the top seeds Black/Likhovtseva, the no1 double of the world. The result of that match was 6-3 and 6-2. At the semis the european teen stars defeated Morariu/Po Messerli 7-6, 0-6 and 6-1 and so their over all record at doubles improved to fantastic 15 wins and only 4 losses!

Kim Clijsters is like Jelena 19 years. She stopped playing doubles after the Australian Open this year because of an arm injury. But nevertheless she is no70 of the world at doubles-rankings, having only 7 tournament played. She has got 550 points which makes an average of 78.5 % for each tournament.

Jelena is no 27, with 1120 points out of 14 tournaments which makes an average percentage of 80% per tournament.

Both players have won two WTA doubles titles. Jelena at Sarasota 2002 with Likhovtseva and in 2001 at Linz with Panova. Kim at Bratislava in 1999 with Courtois and Antwerp 2000 with Appelmans. Further she reached the Wimbledon Final in 2001 with Sugiyama.

Comparing the girls to eachother Jelena is one cm taller than Kim, one position ahead at the world-ranking and a few days older than the girl from the Belgian town Bilzen.

"I like playing doubles a lot. I take them very serious, and I dont like to loose any doubles match!" - Kim Clijsters

Last but not least I want to add, that its really hard to find out something about the doubles statistics, even of top-players like Kim and Jelena, and so I want to thank Axel Criquielion, a very big fan of Kim and member of www.Kim-Clijsters.com, for his help :-)