Article by Gerhard Grundhammer

23 year old Natalie Dechy is Jelenas third opponent at Wimbledon 2002.

 The right-handed player was born at the french island Guadeloupe in the Caribian Sea, but lives now at Villeneuv d Ascq near Roland Garros. Her mother Francoise and her father Michel were her first teachers at the tennis-court as she started to play the game at the age of six.

 The no28 of the world claims hard-court as her favourite surface, and over-head-volleys, as her favourite shots. Hearing that, its no surprise that the 1.75 meters tall player (5`9``) is none of the baseline-fraction at the womens-tennis-circuit. Its rather a surprise that she still plays her
backhand double-handed. But not only on hard-court, also on grass she feels quite comfortable. She has got a total record on grass of 18/16 (Jelena 28/8) and 2/1 in 2002 (Jelena 7/1).

 Though the no4 of france is one of the most consistant players outside the top ten, she only managed to reach the top 20 once (Feb. 2000), and never won a wta-tournament. Thats mainly because she shows the same consistance at loosing to top players as she shows by beating unseeded ones. At her
pre-match interviews she often claims that she has got big problems if her opponent changes the speed or the taktic of the game, which of course is more likely to happen to a top player as to the no235 of the world.....

 The last four tournys she played were Berlin (lost at the quarters to Henin), Rome (lost the 2nd round to Mauresmo), Roland Garros (lost the 3rd round to Paola-Suarez) and Eastbourne where she got sent home at round 1 by Anne Kremer.

 At Wimbledon she is 25th seed and beat Diaz-Olivia 6-2 and 6-3 at her opening match and Tatiana Poutschek at round two 6-3 and 6-2. At that match she scored fantastic 100% at her net-approaches (12 out of 12 - Jelena in her match vs. Hrdlickova scored 5 out of 10), had 25 winners and 26 unforced errors (Jelena had 27/61) and made 13 out of 17 possible points at her opponents second serve (Jelena 19 out of 35).

 Both players met only once before. That was on 15th of May, 2000 at Rome and Jelena won 6-1, 4-6 and 6-3

 At her website they showed her draw for Wimbledon, guessing her possible opponents, as we do here at Jelena-Dokic.com. Like us, they were right until the third round. Its just quite funny that their prediction stops after that match..... lets hope Nick Vain (her webmaster) is right :-)