Article by Gerhard Grundhammer

Elena Tatarkova is the name of Jelenas first opponent at Wimbledon, and I am sorry that I cant give you much details about her.

 The no 173 of the world has probably a really interesting life-time story, like Anna Smashnova or Jelena herself, but I can only guess, what happened in her life. She is born on 22 August 1976 in the former USSR, in a town named Dushanbe, which is now in the small country Tadijkistan, but these days she lives in Kiev, and she also plays for the Ukrainian Tennis Federation.

 The right-handed player was pretty successful until 1999. Her best position
she reached at the world-ranking system was 45 and in doubles she used to be
even better. No 9 of the world!!! But then something must have been happening to her, because since then she hardly played any matches, and Jelena never played her before.

Her grand slam appearences are not very impressive, in fact, beside Wimbledon she hardly reached a second round since 1993, as she turned pro. In 5 out of her last 6 grand slams she lost at round 1, and only at Wimbledon 1999 she managed to win a match.

 In 2001 she did not qualify for any slam, and in 2002 she also failed to qualify for Rome, Madrid and the French Open. She has played some tournament in a town named Dothan this year and lost to a player named Roesch in straight sets. Thats all interesting results I found about her, until last
month.

 At Birmingham things turned around for the 1.70 meters tall girl (5`7``). First she qualified for the main event, and next she won a match!!!!! Alicia Molik was the girl who lost to her 7-6 and 7-6. In round two the 8th seed
Lisa Raymond defeated the Ukrainian 6-3 and 6-1, but that tourny could have well been a great motivation for her, because now she qualified for the main draw at South-West London.

 She had to go through 3 qualification rounds, beating the 23th seed slovakian Lubomira Kurhajcova in 2 sets, 16 year old russian Svetlana Kuznetsova in 3 sets and the american Ansley Cargill in three, too. All
three players are ranked between 140 and 160 in the world.

The odds for that match are 1.03 for Jelena to win, and 7.0 if someone would be crazy enough to put money on the Ukrainian no3 at the austrian bookmarkers betandwin.com and gamebookers offers 1.05 for Jelena and 6.35 for Tatarkova.