The 21st century
Australia and FR Yugoslavia · born Osijek, 1983 · right-handed · Birmingham champion 2002 and Wimbledon semi-finalist 2000
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6-2, 6-0
Her first-round win as a qualifier over the No. 1 seed Martina Hingis, Wimbledon 1999
SF
Best Wimbledon result, 2000, unseeded
1
Grass title: Birmingham 2002, as top seed
4
Career-high ranking, 19 August 2002
6
WTA singles titles
Jelena Dokic was born in Osijek in 1983. Her family left Croatia in 1991 and emigrated to Sydney in 1994. She won the US Open girls' title in 1998, and at 16, in 1999, she won the Hopman Cup for Australia with Mark Philippoussis and reached the Wimbledon quarter-finals as a qualifier.
She reached the Wimbledon semi-finals in 2000 and played for FR Yugoslavia from 2001 to 2005. In that time she won the Rome title in 2001 and Birmingham in 2002, and reached No. 4 in August 2002. She won six WTA singles titles in all. She returned to play for Australia, reached the Australian Open quarter-finals in 2009 and played her last final on grass at 's-Hertogenbosch in 2011. In her 2017 autobiography, Unbreakable, written with Jessica Halloran, she described abuse she suffered as a young player; she now works as a broadcaster and speaker.
| Wimbledon 1999 | Ranked 129th and a qualifier, she beat the No. 1 seed Martina Hingis 6-2, 6-0 in the first round and went on to the quarter-finals |
|---|---|
| Wimbledon 2000 | Unseeded semi-finalist; lost to Lindsay Davenport |
| Birmingham 2002 | Top seed at the DFS Classic, 10 to 16 June; beat the sixth seed Anastasia Myskina 6-2, 6-3 in the final |
| 's-Hertogenbosch 2011 | Runner-up to Roberta Vinci, 6-7(7), 6-3, 7-5 |
| Birmingham | ||
|---|---|---|
| 2002 | Women's singles | |
Leading grass titles only: the grass majors, tour-level grass events since 1968 and the leading grass championships before 1968. †single source; ‡ sources disagree. Roll of champions
"the best player in the world doesn't mind my company"
The person behind the player.
Zurich, spring 1999
Before the clay season Martina Hingis invited the teenage Dokic to train at her home in Zurich. A few months later Dokic beat her 6-2, 6-0 at Wimbledon, helped by what she had learned of Hingis's game.
Source: WTARoland Garros 1999
After losing in the first round in Paris, 11-9 in the third set, she told her mother in the locker room that she did not want to play any more. Monica Seles, her childhood idol, was having a massage in a cubicle nearby and told her: "It will get better." A month later came the Hingis match.
Source: WTAMelbourne, 2001
Playing for Yugoslavia for the first time, she was booed at the Australian Open in a first-round defeat by Lindsay Davenport. Afterwards Davenport came to find her in the locker room: "Lindsay comes and finds me. She hugs me."
Source: WTA2017
Her autobiography, written with Jessica Halloran, told the story of her childhood as a refugee, her rise to the top of the game and her decline. It was shortlisted for the 2018 Prime Minister's Literary Awards and later made into a documentary.
Source: Penguin Random House AustraliaFree membership: player news, the grass court Atlas, the rankings and the grass season calendar.
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