Article by Gerhard Grundhammer

The first match in Jelenas career as no5 of the world will take part today, and her opponent is Gala Leon-Garcia.

The 29 year old girl from the spanish capital Madrid is currently the no 138 of the world, which makes her the spanish no12.

Her career started in 1996, and she reached the 4th round of the French Open in the same year. In 1999 she reached the same result, at Roland Garros again, but the other 24 (!) Grand Slam appearences never reached her that far. She must be quite dissappointed about that, because her parents own a snack bar named "Grand Slam" and a good result at any Slam would be the perfect way to advertise her parents business :-)

Gala has won one WTA-title in her career, which was back in 2000, and took place at the clay-courts of her hometown Madrid. Clay courts are probably her favourite surfaces anyway, because she was able to beat Jelena on Clay, too. That match was played last year in Sopot, and the left-handed player won 6-2 and 6-4. Before that the players meet at Wimbledon 2000, and Jelena won there 7-6 and 6-1, so the series is 1-1. Even more impressive as her record on clay is her record on Carpet and Indoor matches: She has never won a single match on these surfaces in her entire career!

Writing about her recent tennis is not that easy. 2002 seems to be not the year for Gala, but she had a few good results. So she has beaten Smashnova in February, Iva Majoli in April and Asa Svensson in May, but thats all she did show. Amongst her losses are as famous names as Marrero, Sucha, Castano and Mandula.....

As I tried to figure out what kind of player she is, i was lost completely. I found two statistics of two different matches, but after studying them I was as clever as before. Vs. Kremer at Wimbledon she won 7 out of 9 net approaches which is excellent, and quite unusual for a clay court player. She scored 4 of 8 break points, which shows she is not mentally weak, but she lost all her 6 tie-breaks this year which shows rather the opposite. She made incredible 62% of the points at Kremers second serve, which shows she is a good returner. She hit twice as much winners as her opponent, but lost the match 6-4 and 6-4! And the stats at her match vs. Srebotnik at Roland Garros aren`t much differently. The only weak point I could figure out is her serve. Vs. Srebotnik she only scored 29 points out of 49 first services she had in the field, which is only 55%, and the stats are even worse vs. Kremer (50%). Her average service speed is 78 mph at her first serve. Thats 7 miles less than Jelenas second! But just a weak serve and all that good stats should get you rather to her career best ranking of no 27 than to 138 where she is now.

Both Kremer and Srebotnik are players who rather bounce the balls back into the field and wait for mistakes of her opponents, than they force her opponents to mistakes, and thats what Gala seems to hate. Vs. the rather agressive playing Sandrine Testut she had a very close match at the 2001 US-Open (7-5, 4-6 and 4-6) and remember the win vs. Jelena I mentioned earlier, but I guess I know what tactic Jelena will choose if she has the choice between waiting for mistakes which makes you win for 100% or attacking her opponent at every possible moment, sweat and fight for more than an hour, and finally be the winner to 90%............

Last I have to add the fourth win this season for the 1.63 meters small girl (thats 5`4"). She beat Alicia Molik 6-3 and 6-2 yesterday, to proceed to round two and gain the allowence to play JELENA DOKIC.