Friday, May 20, 2011

Dokic misses Strasbourg quarters

Posted May 19, 2011 06:40:00

Croatia's Mirjana Lucic won the battle of the former prodigies beating Australia's Jelena Dokic in straight sets to reach her first quarter-final in 12 years at the WTA Strasbourg Open overnight.

The 29-year-old US-based player, who had to come through the qualifiers here this week, eased past Dokic 6-2, 6-2 in their second round match.

It was a remarkable turnaround of fortunes for Lucic who disappeared from the circuit for five years because of personal and family-related problems after a promising junior career during which she won grand slam titles.

Lucic was just 15 when she won the first WTA event she played at Bol in 1997, and the following year won a grand slam doubles title at the Australian Open, rising to her career-high ranking of number 32.

She was a semi-finalist at Wimbledon in 1999, but thereafter failed to reach the quarter-finals of a tournament, and did not play in a WTA event from 2004 to 2006.

The breakthrough came last year when she finished the year ranked number 105, her highest season-ending ranking since 1999.

She had few problems with 28-year-old Dokic, a former world number four, who also had family problems in the past.

Dokic, the 2000 Wimbledon semi-finalist, won her first title in almost nine years at Kuala Lumpur in April.

But she could find no way past Lucic who next meets Spanish seventh seed Anabel Medina Garrigues who dispatched Serb Bojana Jovanovski 6-2, 6-0.

Top seed Marion Bartoli of France advanced when Britain's Elena Baltacha retired with a back problem and next plays Czech eight seed Lucie Hradecka for a semi-final place.

Also through are Russians Nadia Petrova and Maria Kirilenko, the fourth and fifth seeds respectively, and Slovak Daniela Hantuchova, the sixth seed.

- AFP

Tags: sport, tennis, france


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