|
|
|
|
One of the most unknown players inside the top 100 of the WTA is probably Eleni Daniilidou. She was born at the beautiful Greek Island Crete on 19th of September 1982 and reached position 54 last week, which is her carreer-high. Though the righthanded player hasn`t won a WTA-title so far she had some good results in her young career. First of all there were the French Open just a few weeks ago where she beat Celine Beigbeder 6-3 and 6-1 to advance to round two where she had to deal with Kim Clijsters. She forced Kim twice into a tiebreak and lost the second one only 9-7! Of course Kim was not very healthy these days, and lost the next round but Capriati was in top-form at the Australian Open where she met Eleni in round three, and lost a set to her. Further the tall girl from Greece (she is 1.81 meters / 6`0``) reached round 2 of Strassbourg, the Semis at Budapest, the Quarters of Porto, and round two of Indian Wells, Doha and Canberra. Last but not least she is one on the growing amount of players who beat Anna Kournikova this year. That win took place at Key Biscane. Another Tourny which might be worth mentioning is Bratislava in 2001. There she beat Elena Bovina in round one and won at least a set vs Serra Zanetti. Whenever Jelena played vs Eleni she did not only beat her, she also won the Tournament later! Ok, that happened only once till now, at the Victorian Junior Championships at Melbourne in 1998, where Jelena won 6-3 and 6-0 in round 3, and later won the title, but it could well become a tradition :-)
Like Jelena the Greek Girl seems
to like grass courts. Her record on grass was 7-2 (!!!) in
2001 including qualification matches for wimbledon, and is
3-0 this year. Obviously all of those matches were played at
the DFS-Classics. She beat Mashona Washington in round one,
Tatiana Panova in round two and Ai Sugiyama |
Article
by Gerhard Grundhummer