Damir Dokic might be the tennis dad from hell but daughter Jelena won’t hear a word against him
Chris Bowers
Jelena Dokic is a far more happy-go-lucky young woman than she appears on the tennis court. Despite her mild air of suspicion, once she starts talking about tennis, she relaxes. She’s not a source of profound wisdom, but when she says, “I’m not that serious as a person” and admits to laughing at silly things she conveys a sense of someone at ease with herself. Only twice does the ease disappear.
We are sitting just outside the players’ restaurant at the German Open and Dokic is in mid-sentence when her father Damir, her mother Liliana and nine-year-old brother, Savo, walk past. Dokic’s head goes down a little, the voice drops, and the sentence tails off. The family wanders past into the restaurant, and normal service is resumed.
Two minutes later the trio leave (perhaps unimpressed by the food) and the same thing happens. It’s easy to read too much into a fleeting moment or two, but it’s almost as if she doesn’t trust herself to be herself when her father is around. Dokic is by no means the only player to have come to prominence faster than results would otherwise have warranted because of a high-profile parent.
Mary Pierce had to break from her violent father, Jim, before she won two Grand Slam titles; Steffi Graf had problems with her father, Peter, long before his handling of her tax affairs exacerbated things; and the interventions of Mark Philippoussis’s father, Nick, show that familial turbulence isn’t confined to women’s tennis. But while Pierce, Graf and Philippoussis broke through to the stage where they could claim their fame had more to do with results than parentage, Dokic isn’t there yet. She probably will be soon.
She has just turned 18 and last month collected her first title on the WTA Tour, beating two of the best claycourters, Conchita Martinez and Amlie Mauresmo, to win in Rome. That achievement has taken her into the top 20 for the first time she is the 15th seed at the French Open with a quarterfinal place within her grasp and it will be a surprise if she’s not in the top 10 within two years. But, perhaps more important, the Italian Open title takes her a step closer to making her name bigger for tennis reasons than for her notorious father and coach.
The volatile Damir is now allowed back on site at tournaments after a six-month ban following incidents last year at Wimbledon (when he assaulted a journalist) and the US Open (kicked up a fuss over food in the players’ restaurant). But the controversy won’t go away. This year Dokic is playing as a Yugoslav rather than an Australian, having turned her back on the country to which she moved, for the better tennis facilities, as a 10-year-old. “I’ve left it behind,” she says of her decision to leave Australia.
“There was a lot of unfairness, I wasn’t treated right. The public were fine, but it was the media first, and then I expected certain people to back me up, people like Geoff Pollard [president of Tennis Australia] and Lesley Bowrey [head of Australian women’s tennis], but they never even spoke to me.”
“We believe we have been fully supportive of Jelena throughout her career,” counters Pollard, “and will continue to offer assistance if requested.”
The trouble can be traced back to last year’s Australian Open, when Dokic described Rita Kuti-Kis, who had just beaten her in the first round, as being “not really a player”. Many saw that comment as the father talking through the daughter, and it was forgotten. But the controversy returned at the end of last year when, writing in the Australian magazine Tennis, the veteran correspondent Alan Trengove suggested Dokic should make the break from her father. Damir was incensed, and the family upped and left Australia.
In practical terms, nothing has changed. In the six months since Trengove’s article, Dokic hasn’t been to her native Belgrade once, and the family have settled in Tampa, close to most of the tennis professionals based in the United States. But there was great resentment in Australia. Callers to radio phone-ins offered to drive her to the airport. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Dokic is how little off-court events seem to faze her. “I’m mentally strong,” she says, adding that she was always able to keep her mind on subjects at school even if there was a lot going on around her.
And there is a fierce loyalty. She clearly doesn’t like talking too much about her father’s antics and she is very defensive about him. Does Dokic envisage breaking from her father? “Not in the next few years,” she says emphatically. “You always look to your parents for guidance, and for me that’s the same in both tennis and life. I certainly look to my dad for guidance on tennis.”
Loyalty to her parents does not mean admiring those who shout and rant. The player Dokic admires most is Graf, “for the way she presented herself, the way she took it all and never got big-headed”. Dokic may not be big-headed, but she is confident. “I had that breakthrough at Wimbledon two years ago [when she beat Martina Hingis 6-2 6-0], and I haven’t moved back. I think it’ll be easier to break into the top 10 than the top 20.”
She admires Wimbledon. “It’s a great experience, the place, the people there.” But wasn’t that spoiled last year, despite reaching the semifinals, by her dad’s off-court rumpus? “No, it makes the achievement that much greater, that I could put it behind me and concentrate on my tennis.”
People will speculate on what goes on inside the Dokic family, and perhaps there are aspects that would not classify as model parenting. But Dokic seems happy in their company, and, even if her utterances are aimed at avoiding her father’s wrath, she is clearly leaving the door open to all eventualities. The nationality question isn’t a major issue and won’t be for a while. She can’t play representative tennis for Yugoslavia until October 2003, by which time a lot of water will have flowed under a lot of bridges.
Asked whether there might be a rapprochement with Australia, she says: “I don’t know. Right now I doubt it.” Just the answer to keep everyone from her dad to the presidents of the Australian and Yugoslav tennis associations happy. A diplomatic Dokic. Now there’s something.