Article by Todd Spiker

A "STATE OF JELENA'S GAME" MID-SEASON SPECIAL:

"SHE'S NOT A GREAT PLAYER.  NOT YET."

by Todd Spiker


So, Jelena Dokic advanced to the 4r of Wimbledon.  It was a performance that matched her 2001 result at SW19, and marked her fourth consecutive Round of 16-or-better result at a grand slam.

As the North American hardcourt season beckons, so does the Top 5.  On July 8, her #6 WTA singles ranking matched her career-best position, leaving her just 92 points behind #5 Kim Clijsters and making a breakthrough into the Top 5 a likely reality between now and the U.S. Open.

So, where's the problem, right?  Well, it might just be hiding in plain sight.  Not so much because Jelena's singles ranking has partially been maintained by a heavy schedule and injuries to other Top 10 players (remember, Jelena's been dogged by her own injuries in 2002 and would have quite a few more ranking points in her column if her season had been a healthy one) as for the simple fact that her game seems to be imitating a fairly new automobile long overdue for a trip to a mechanic -- it runs perfectly smoothly downhill, but begins to labor once it meets a more challenging terrain.  With a good head of steam, it might occasionally make it up that large hill (oh, let's call it Williams Peak, just for the hell of it) up ahead... but once the engine begins to slow, it's time to remove the keys from the ignition and get out and walk.

But unlike an old jalopy, the progression of Jelena's game is hardly a lost cause.  It need not be sold for scrap or completely overhauled to have a shot at challenging the big hill and the smaller ones leading up to it, but simply re-purposed a little.  It's time for that tuneup, and the trip to the garage needs to be marked with a big red "X" on the nearest day planner.  After an oil change, tire rotation, new spark plugs and the rest, the Dokic model will be fit for any showroom... not to mention most racing ovals around the world.

Let me use Martina Navratilova's comments while broadcasting Dokic's matches on American television the past two weeks to shine a light on what I'm talking about.


 

For most of the 2002 Wimbledon, Martina seemed to make a point of not giving Jelena a great deal of credit.  I was a little upset at her at the time, although I've always respected her opinions and admired her game during her playing days.  I questioned her motives for critiquing Jelena's game is such oft-blunt terms, especially considering what felt like bias in favor of Daniela Hantuchova (Martina is her WTA mentor) and any lingering bad feelings about Dokic's seeming disrespect during the Eastbourne flap a few weeks ago.

But the more Martina said, the more I listened... and the more I began to agree.  Her points are more than valid, and taking steps to find ways to counter them would serve Jelena's game well now and into the future.  She's not doing all she can to be the best player she can be, and that's something that someone as goal-oriented and competitive as Navratilova finds difficult to understand... and for someone who's always seemed as hungry for success as she has, a surprising turnabout for Jelena, as well.


 

This is maybe the most arguable of Martina's comments, but it's not without its own merit.  On the whole, Hantuchova HAS had a better, more consistent year, despite the fact that Jelena's season numbers in singles record (33-14 to 31-15), titles (2-1), finals (4 to 1) and semifinals (6 to 2) all outdistance those of Hantuchova.  Also, Jelena's done this while fighting leg injuries and more off-court issues (a lawsuit, another family move), while the healthy Hantuchova was adored by the press even while suffering through an extended slump following her first career title in March, not reaching another SF until June.  But Hantuchova is 2-0 (both in straight sets) against Jelena head-to-head this season; and while Jelena's titles came in Tiers III & IV tournaments and she is a very un-Top 10 like 4-6 in Tier I's (though she's 7-2 in slams), Hantuchova won the Tier I Indian Wells, is 10-4 in Tier I's (and 9-3 in slams).  Hantuchova may be #12, but she's simply on the waiting list to enter the Top 10.  She will soon and, with Jelena facing the defense of five post-U.S. Open finals from 2001, might just finish this year ranked ahead of Dokic.


 

These comments can easily be listed under the question of Jelena's coaching.  She often bristles at the suggestion that she needs to bring someone new inside the circle of trust, but the fact is that the consistency and variety she needs to attain must begin in practice.  And that's where a coach would have the most impact on her game.

Remember the news conference last November, the one where Radmilo Armenulic was introduced as one of Jelena's new influences?  He was a "tennis friend," if not a de facto "coach."  Where did he go?  Better yet, what happened to the goals he noted would be the cornerstones of Jelena's on-court maturation?  A better, more consistent serve and improved shot variety were the stated objectives.  It's now July, and the drive toward those particular goals would have to be considered abject failures at this point.  Jelena's serve is worse that at this time last year, as is her shot variety.  She's managed to better fight through spells of inconsistency, but she's done nothing to give her opponents a different looks or something additional to think (or worry) about.  Her game shouldn't be this one-dimensional, not a year after it was so apparent that these aspects were the things holding her back from greater achievements.

After looking as if her pre-season preparation was going to pay off when her year began in Tokyo with a stronger serve contributing to her first career win over Monica Seles, the regression of things between then and now was painfully obvious at The All England Club.

Jelena was still falling off on many of her serves, had just a 57% 1st serve percentage, won just 35% of the points on her 2nd serve, and averaged 7+ DFs a match.  On returns against Hantuchova, she would line up inside the baseline but quickly retreat during the Slovak's toss and end up hitting the ball while standing several feet behind the baseline.


 

It was a somewhat shocking lack of aggressiveness from Jelena, and may have been a major reason she had such a hard time carving out break opportunities in the match.  Once she did finally manage to wrestle away an advantage, though, the rains came and she returned to the court in the same passive mode she'd been in earlier... while Hantuchova came out of the delay with fire in her eyes, as well as a decided purpose (after being tied at 8-8 in total games before the rain, Hantuchova won out 5-1 afterward).  She'd obviously been talking to someone and gameplanning during the delay.  It's hard to believe that Jelena can say the same, continuing a slow-starting pattern that's been a problem all season.

Is this something that better (or more) coaching would prevent?  Well, Jelena herself noted after the Kveta Hrdlickova 2r match (8-6 in the 3rd) that she was playing too defensively.  Yet, two rounds later, her pattern was similarly passive.  Would constant reminders in practice and signposts planted in her psyche -- all hallmarks of good coaching -- have made things come out differently?  Probably so.

Last year, Jelena's overall game showed some improvement after her decision to team up in doubles with the likes of veterans such as Conchita Martinez.  Her volleys were noticably better.  She was hardly a net maven, but she wasn't as afraid to move into the service box as she was at this year's Wimbledon, where a willingness to move forward with aggression would make her natural affinity for the grasscourts all the more lethal.  The past two weeks, Jelena seemed incapable of holding her position on the court under such circumstances, consistently beating a hasty retreat to the baseline or dumping a very unathletic-looking volley into the net.


 

Some of the problems might find their orgins in the string of injuries Jelena has suffered in 2002.  It's certainly made this season to date a continual uphill battle, and now may be having a more destructive after-effect.  The injuries have led Jelena to stop playing doubles, and that could be making her game even more one-dimensional than ever.  She'll still throw in an occasional dropshot, and once in a while convert a winning volley.  But she was less effective at both at Wimbledon, and the lack of repetition with the shots on the doubles courts might be a contributing factor.  Of course, that lack of action could be made up for during practice but, from what Navratilova said, Jelena basically just hits from the baseline during those sessions and doesn't attempt to try to become more adept at new things without the gameday pressure bearing down on her.  That kind of regimen hardly makes up for the good net work under game conditions that she gets in doubles.  In fact, it only further detrimentally cements her natural inclination to simply pound groundstrokes from the baseline... making her a far more predictable opponent to face (or, in Martina's words, "user-friendly") than she should be.

If Jelena's training isn't going to change, then she needs to return to doubles on at least a part-time basis.  The desire to not burn herself out by overplaying is a valid one, but that would be far better accomplished by cutting back on her heavy tournament schedule, fine-tuning her game between events, and then making her average tour results more consistently good.  Jelena plays more tournaments than the other top players, but her numerous early-round losses means she's played nearly the same number of matches.  She's been in the Top 9 all season, and thus should strive for QF-or-better in at least 60-70% of her tournaments.  Despite being seeded to reach the QF 100% of the time this season, she's advanced that far in just 44% (in 2001, she did so 48% of the time while being seeded to get that far in just 46% of her events).  With this tact, there would be less risk of injury from playing too often and she'd be allowed to rejoin the doubles, where she can work on her volleys and practice experimenting with a more "forward" style of play.

It's not as if these problems are unknown.  That's the point.  They're farly easy to see... but Jelena seems to be hesitant when it comes to effectively dealing with them.


 

As Navratilova further noted, while many good players eventually develop into what could be termed great ones, some never do.  As of this moment, it's anyone's guess which category Jelena will ultimately fall into.

Jelena is surely capable of taking that next step, but one can't quite escape the feeling that a slight spinning of the wheels is taking place.  She's winning titles, but is she gaining ground on bigger goals such as becoming a grand slam champion?  To be honest, it's difficult to see her truly contending for a slam with her game in it's current state.  While there was a faint belief that she had the goods (especially after Birmingham) to pull a surprise and win Wimbledon this year, it seems like an impossible dream to think of her making her way through the crowd at Flushing Meadows in less than two months.

Her game's certainly not going to improve dramatically operating under her current situation.  It can be tightened up (fewer unforced errors and DFs), but is that enough to consistently contend for one of the very top spots in the women's game, or at least for the title of "the best non-Williams?"  When she's on her game and confident, she's a tough opponent to conquer... but the very best players usually find a way to do it.  If Jelena is to be a true champion, that can't continue to occur.  Her game is too predictable.  She parks herself at the baseline, and has to be dragged kicking and screaming to the net far too often.  Her serve is a liability and she gives away far too many free points.  It's a killer combination, and it's managed to construct a (temporary?) glass ceiling for Jelena in grand slam competition.  She just can't get past multiple top level players (or even one, for that matter) playing like this ALL THE TIME... and now here comes a healthy Lindsay Davenport and Martina Hingis, joining the just-added Hantuchova, to stack the U.S. Open deck even more.

Jelena will never be physically imposing, but she's not waifish either.  Justine Henin is shorter, thinner and has less power behind her shots... yet it's easier to see her slipping through and winning a slam than Jelena doing the same at this moment in time.  She's unpredictable, will get to net and thereby put pressure on the games of other top players (even if her lack of physical statute ultimately hurts her chances of winning, such as in this Wimbledon's SF loss to Venus, she gives herself a better shot at doing so than Jelena).  Jelena's 5-9 (Henin's 5-5), and is capable of having a much bigger and smoother serve than she's got.  It will never be a Williams/Davenport-like bludgeoning implement, but it CAN be a servicable tool that complements her own return of serve abilities.  Instead, it often provides the hopping-off point for the rest of her game, which will sometimes come crashing down in a barrage of UEs... making Jelena face two opponents on some days, the woman on the other side of the net AND herself.

Her athleticism isn't a problem, either.  Jelena can move well around the court and chase down balls, but that becomes less of a fact when she's forced to leave her comfort zone on the baseline.  Hence, Martina's "fish out of water" comment.  She has a capable volley, but is often painfully out of practice when it comes to using it.  Ironically, a player who's had her best results when she's thrived on her natural aggressiveness is strangley passive in this area of her game.  She'll have to learn how to venture forward if she's ever going to become a true threat at a major.  The more she does it, the more confident in her ability to do so she'll become... and that'll give her opponents another thing to worry about.  If the straight-set loss to Hantuchova on Jelena's best surface, at the slam where she's had the most success, serves the larger purpose of waking up Jelena from her stubborn refusal to change then thank goodness it played out last week the way it did.

Maybe it will renew her focus for the final four-plus months of the season.  Lord knows she's had enough distractions the past year and a half to fill a career more than twice as long... Damir and the move from Australia... the Paris injury... another move, this time from Florida... dumb decisions to avoid rest, leading to more injuries... a lawsuit against her former managers... yadda, yadda yadda.  She's a magnet for needless drama and controversy, and maybe should be given a medal for thriving amidst the madness as she has over the span.  Sometimes, it's still easy to forget that she's just a teenager.

At 19, there's still time for her life to settle, and for her game to mature.  The short break that preceeds the beginning of the U.S. hardcourt season in California will hopefully provide a chance for the latter to at least begin to inch forward.  But how much difference can really be made this late in the game for anything major to occur in 2002?  The service problems that have hounded her for months can be improved upon, but nothing drastic is going to change.  She'll have her good spots, and probably win a tournament or two, but they'll be followed by bad patches where she blows matches because she threw in 10 DFs or stacked up 50+ UEs.  The same can be said for any variety being added to her game.  The seed can be planted in her mind that she needs to mix it up and try new things on the court, but for any fruit to be harvested the process has to be initiated on the practice court months in advance.  Only then can the flower be nurtured into full bloom once the slam season rolls around every Spring (hey, how about that extended metaphor, huh?).  It's far too late now for that to happen in 2002.

With Jelena seemingly consigned to continue her self-imposed Australian exile next January (and beyond), the U.S. Open is the ONLY slam she'll compete in over the next ten months.  That's a lot of time to wait for her to be able to be considered a legitimate threat to take a similar title... but just long enough for her to recast herself as a player capable of doing so.  Navratilova did speak of how hard a worker Dokic is, and spoke admiringly of how she's a player who refuses to ever give up.  She only needs to make the full commitment.  We all want to see Jelena put herself into the best possible position to be able to claim a slam title.  To get to that point, she has to decide to do so starting now... after pondering what it was like to be taken out by Hantuchova despite having a "homecourt advantage."  Jelena admitted after the defeat that she was a little surprised that she lost.  She shouldn't have been.

Note that I'm not taking this opportunity to shoot a flare into the sky to signal a dire emergency situation.  Dokic, barring injury, should end the year with her second straight Top 10 ranking.  She could even get on one of the confident rolls she's often prone to and run off a string of great results.  She's talented enough to maintain a Top 10-15 rank for a number of years even with her current game holding steady, but that's all it would be.  A respectable computer ranking.  Jelena will never be a dominating force like the current in-form Williams sisters, but she can make the decision whether she wants to have a career on par (or slightly better) than someone like Mary Pierce -- 2 slam titles, a regular Top 10er and a consistent slam threat on hardcourt and clay when she's been healthy, or one like Conchita Martinez, a very good Top 10er who had one spectacular slam result (Wimbledon '94) and a few other slam finals, but never really seemed to have an overpowering desire to work quite hard enough to truly maximize the considerable talent (remember those stunning passing shots against Navratilova in that Wimbledon final?) she was blessed to possess.

Navratilova has a point.  Jelena ISN'T as good a player right now as she can be, and maybe not even as good as she SHOULD be at the moment.  That can be fixed, but it's not going to magically happen.  Some tough decisions will have to be made.  Jelena would do well to, if not blindly follow, than at least heed Martina's words... by opening her mind to the potential directions her training (and yes, coaching) can -- and needs to -- take for her to make the next step up the ladder.  She needs a new voice, new eyes, a new approach.  She's had coaches in the past, and made considerable strides immediately after her time with Tony Roche.  Acknowledging the need for a little extra help far from constitutes the selling of a tennis player's soul.  In fact, it's a necessary step.  It's normal.  Baseliners such as Amanda Coetzer achieved career-best results and rankings after making a coaching switch that fostered a more aggressive on-court output.  Amelie Mauresmo, too, not coincidentally, put together her best Wimbledon this year (even sneaking into the net at times, leaving her regular home at the baseline) after making a decision to go with a new coach who's drawing forth the abilities that have been oft-dormant since her 1999 Oz final run.

Jelena needs to follow suit, at least on a part-time, try-out basis.  But it's easy to fear that the "bunker mentality" that's developed in the Dokic tribe, given birth to by real or imagined beliefs that the family is consistently persecuted by outside forces, will prevent it from happening anytime soon.  I get the feeling that the stubbornness to NOT do what so many people say she should will continue for quite some time simply because if another coach is brought in (or is it simply A coach considering it's pretty difficult for someone to truly hold the position if the role is mostly performed in absentia, through telepone connections?) it might seem as if Damir is being blamed for any of Jelena's deficiencies.  The truth would be far from that, of course.  He should be commended for nearly all he's done for his daughter, in both her tennis and personal life. But, at some point, she needs to move forward, focus on her long-range career goals, trust that her lifelong loyalty will make the situation immune to hurt feelings or give rise to public misconceptions, and realize that a new set of courtside eyes won't necessarily mean a saboteur has made their way through the front gate.  In the end, those new eyes and approaches would ultimately encourage far more rewarding experiences than they would contribute to any awkward, but brutally honest, ones at the start.

If Jelena is satisfied with simply maintaining her current position, then so be it.  Obviously, it's her decision (if it's not, then that's another discussion altogether, now isn't it?).  But would she be fully satisfied with that fate?  Her drive has always seemed to signal a desire to be the best player she can be, but it'll take a little foresight on her part in that area for that situation to play itself out over the next few years.  Unlike a player such as Pierce (who never really fully adapted to the unsure bounces of the grasscourts), Jelena isn't confounded by any surface.  She's won titles on all four surface types in the past 14 months (Serena Williams, for example, didn't accomplish that feat until winning this past weekend's Wimbledon title), so she has an advantage in that area.  Unlike Martinez, her tennis profile is that of a driven, aggressive woman who wants to climb the highest mountain simply because standing atop it would provide her with the best view of the world.  She's a fighter with a natural killer instinct, giving her still another leg up on many of the women on tour.  We've all seen her when she's confident and in stride.  On those days, she's capable of brilliance.  She owes it to herself to do whatever she can (within reason, of course... something that has to be noted since tennis is no longer immune in these rumor-mongering sports times) to make those days more common than anomalous.

So, is there a problem here?

Not yet, but there could be soon.  Unless something changes, a discernable wall lies ahead on this road.  Jelena has to avoid splattering into it.  As of today, just acknowledging that it's there would be a fine first step when it comes to finding a way around it.

Hopefully, the stubbornness that likely played a large part in getting her to this point in her career won't eventually prove to be a stumbling block that prevents her from taking the next necessary step in her development.  In a game that is threatening to become a virtual Williams Family Invitational for the foreseeable future, the WTA needs all the Jelenas it can find.