From the Sydney Morning Herald: Angry Stubbs depicts Dokic as abused and abusing
JELENA Dokic's return to Australia last month after a five-year estrangement was not greeted with unqualified joy. Certainly not by Rennae Stubbs, a former Fed Cup teammate who had been through more with her than most.
Stubbs says she supported Dokic to help counter her father's brutal ways, advising her to seek help to protect her money from Damir's grasping hands, and changing her schedule to partner the troubled teenager at the Canadian Open before the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
Stubbs, then the world No.1 in doubles, recalls arriving in Montreal only to be told by Damir - as a reluctant Jelena interpreted - that his daughter had been injured in her first-round singles loss and would be returning home to Florida.
"I confronted them at the hotel, because I was afraid for Jelena, and she was in tears, so I said to her dad, 'Why are you pulling her out of the doubles? Why are you leaving?'
"I said, 'I've come here to play doubles with you, Jelena, and you and I are going to play doubles tomorrow'. She was looking at me like she wanted to play and trying not to show him her face, and I understood fully that it was nothing to do with her, and I know that Jelena had to deal with something that very few of us have had to deal with, and that's an abusive father.
"She turned up the next day 10 minutes late for practice and I didn't think she was going to come, but she did come and I could see physical bruising on her, and I felt sorry for her like you can't believe.
"So I went through a lot of stuff with her. At the Olympics, I pleaded with her to stay at the village but her dad wouldn't let her. I said, 'Stay here, he can't get in here, he can't get to the courts', but she was afraid for her family as well. So I understand what she went through."
Hence Stubbs's anger when, she claims, Dokic refused to acknowledge being hit on the body by a ball that subsequently sailed out in a 2001 French Open doubles semi - an act she regards as so treacherously unsporting that she could barely control her own fury. Stubbs still seethes that Dokic has never shown any remorse.
"From that moment I really lost a huge amount of respect for her, and it was the following year that she did all the stuff [renouncing her citizenship, claiming a rigged draw] at the Australian Open, and I just thought, 'I still understand 100 per cent why she did it, and that she was not in a winning position with her father, and I understand that she's young'.
"But I do think that she really needs to be on her best behaviour. I support her coming back and trying to get her tennis career back on track, but all those people who put so much time and effort into her, she'd better not let them down again.
"If Jelena doesn't want anybody to think, 'you've just come back here for the money', then she'd better show it, and she'd better not go running off when things don't go so good. She has to grow up a lot and put her best foot forward, and I don't think that's going to be easy for her."
Meanwhile, Stubbs is very concerned about her great friend Alicia Molik and the prospect of her returning from the illness that has sidelined her indefinitely. Stubbs was on hand in 2004 for Molik's defeat of Maria Sharapova in the finals of a tournament in Zurich, a major milestone in the Australian's surge into the top 10, and back there again last year when Molik left the court in tears, unable to complete what might have been her final match on the WTA Tour.
In the locker room, it was Stubbs sobbing for what her friend had lost, and Molik saying she could cry no more. "My heart just breaks for her," Stubbs said. "It shouldn't happen to somebody who's such a good person and who's worked so, so hard, and I don't know if she's ever going to come back. It's definitely wait and see, but every now and then I think, 'God, I hope she can come back'.
"This is as big a loss to Australian tennis as what Monica Seles was to women's tennis in the '90s. It can't be filled because I don't think there are many women that are going to come along [who will] be that good. Alicia was destined to win a grand slam in the next couple of years."
Renee is much more fun than Roger Federer.
Posted by: Sidney Gendin | June 03, 2010 at 05:45 AM