Jelena was born april 12th, 1983 at 9:32AM in Osijek, Croatia at the M Rukovansk Hospital. They moved to Belgrade, Serbia when the agression against Serbs started. She is the first of two children, she does have a younger brother named Savo. Jelena's parents are Damir and Lilijana. Damir has coached Jelena since she started playing at 7 years old although she was greatly helped by coaches from the Osijek Tennis Club. In 1994, she moved to Australia with her family. She now resides in Fairfield, Australia and has her Australian citizenship. She enjoys, roller-blading, going to the beach and listening to the Spice Girls. She also enjoys shopping very much (how surprising!). Jelena currently attends the Fairfield High School... Jelena had a lot of success in the junior tournaments winning the 98 US Open and having many other notable performances. Last year, she got a lot of attention at the Hopman Cup where besides winnig the cup with teamate Mark Philipoussis, she won against #4 player in the world, Aranxta Sanchez-Vicario. She also made it to the 3rd round at the Australian Open losing to #2 seed, Martina Hingis ! Jelena's high point so far has without a doubt been her quarterfinal at Wimbledon last year where she defeated Martina Hingis and Mary Pierce to get world wide coverage... In 2000, Jelena had some various ups and downs..losing against Rita Kuti Kiss in the Australian Open in front of her own fans.. and a few months later, winning 7 straight matches (including victories against Venus Williams, Anna Kournikova, Sandrine Testud, Kim Clijsters...)! This kind of season is quite normal for a young player who's just starting on the tour. Try remembering Hingis losing to Pierce 6-0, 6-0 and you'll understand what I'm saying when I say that young players biggest enemy is not the player on the other side of the net, it's consistency! Working with Tony Roche certainly helped Jelena improve her overall game in prevision to make it to the top of the game...The highlight of her 2000 year was certainly her semifinal at Wimbledon as she showed the 1999 performance was not chance, it was earned. In 2001, Jelena started off the year with a very tough draw at the Australian Open as she faced Lindsay Davenport in the first round there. But the year then only got better as Jelena turned 18 and could now play as many tournaments as she wanted. She has been gradually improving and her win in a tier 1 in Rome certainly is the highlight of her career so far. The year 2001 has also seen Jelena get a steady top 20 ranking in both singles and doubles.

- Pierre Cantin