The Hindu : Sport : Dokic — a shadow of her old self

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 09, 2005

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Sport

Dokic — a shadow of her old self

By Vijay Parthasarathy

UNSUCCESSFUL COMEBACK: Jelena Dokic, once considered a contender for the top spot in women's tennis, lost the script midway and was counting on the WTA meet in Hyderabad to make a return. But here too things didn't go her way. — Photo: P.V. Sivakumar

HYDERABAD, FEB. 8. It's a bit of a risky proposition to request a one-on-one interview session with Jelena Dokic, at this stage of her career. The 21-year-old has always been moody and unpredictable; and, just now, when she's going through one of the roughest patches of her career she's understandably prone to snap.

Besides, you don't mess with someone who has a black belt in taekwondo.

Dokic lost yet another first-round match on Tuesday — this time at the Hyderabad Open — and the future is looking increasingly bleak for one of the most talented tennis players on the Women's Tour. The woman you saw on court here seemed very different from the motivated adolescent that had taken out Martina Hingis some five years ago.

Breakthrough year

In 1999, as a precocious 16-year-old qualifier, Dokic beat top-seed Hingis in the first round at Wimbledon — well, more like thrashed, actually; Dokic hammered Hingis 6-2, 6-0 to give the Swiss prodigy a taste of her own bitter medicine. That was her breakthrough year, as she jumped nearly 300 places to finish at number 43. She reached the quarterfinal at Wimbledon that year and in the next edition, went one step further.

Today Dokic (whose ranking has plummeted to 124) played fairly well in the first set. She served all right and managed to put pressure on her opponent's serve by returning aggressively. She's always had a good baseline game and, in the first few games, drew her opponent, Mara Santangelo, forward and passed her on several occasions. Her forehand is measured and she doesn't follow-through completely on the shot, but it's still powerful enough to generate winners from the deep.

She also has a solid enough double-fisted backhand, which she invariably aims towards the lines on either flank. Her groundstrokes are a little less aggressive maybe, from two years ago; but you have to put that down to a lack of confidence. After losing the first set tie-break today, Dokic's body language suggested she had already given up. She looked resigned, which, in some ways, is worse than earning a code violation warning for nearly lopping some poor linesman's head off.

Dokic, at 14, was undeniably gifted. Now, she seems merely world-weary.

Terms like `burnout' might sound harsh but the fact is as the days pass, Dokic reminds us more and more of Jennifer Capriati, at 21. She's not exactly had a normal childhood and she's not made a particularly smooth transition to an adult; she remains stuck in this awkward stage of metamorphosis. And, we have no way of knowing if Dokic will manage to turn things around as successfully as the American was able to.

Troubled relationship

A lot has been written about the troubled relationship that Jelena shares with her father, Damir, who is, for the moment at least, her coach. The family has moved from Serbia to Australia and back; Damir has been accused of being too hard on his daughter and at one point she even had him banned from the players' arena at tournaments.

"It has an influence on my tennis," she admitted last year during a press conference at Wimbledon. "I know why I'm losing. I have some personal issues to solve."

While Dokic's case is perhaps an extreme example of the influence parents exert over their racquet-wielding wards, it is hardly the only one of its kind. The careers of Andre Agassi, Hingis, Monica Seles, Steffi Graf and, more recently, Maria Sharapova have always been closely monitored by their parents.

Thousands of lesser-known players have had to deal with pushy parents, who simply cannot accept the fact that their son or daughter is not going to be the next Borg or Evert.

Tennis legend Martina Navratilova believes that daughters, more often than sons, are bullied by ambitious fathers.

"It's mad, the way some fathers beat their daughters if they lose a game of tennis," she says. "They have completely lost a sense of perspective; they are absolutely crazy."

Pertinent questions remain unanswered: should the WTA restrict the number of tournaments minors can play in, even further?

A little over two years ago, Dokic was ranked as high as No. 4 in the world; she knew where she was going, she was focused. Just now she looks like she's searching for her glasses.

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