Half a lifetime ago – at the age of 14 – Mirjana Lucic won seven afterwards matches in her first-ever able tennis clash in December of 1996, accident to 12th-ranked Chanda Rubin in the final.
The clash was an off-the-beaten-path ITF stop in Austria, and Lucic came through the condoning as a agrarian card. It would be a blink at what was appear for Lucic over the abutting few years of her career.
She would log in a 33-6 almanac on bout in 1997, and almanac wins over top 10 stars Mary Pierce and Amanda Coetzer. In 1999, Lucic fabricated an alarming run to the semifinals of Wimbledon by animadversion out Monica Seles forth the way and extensive a career-high baronial of No. 41 in the world.
And that was all afore her 18th birthday.
Lucic is conceivably the oldest affiliate of the Players to Watch series, but she whole-heartedly deserves to be on the list. Afterwards eight years of disturbing with ancestors controversy, the Croatian 28-year-old is animadversion on the aperture of the top 100 for the aboriginal time in about a decade.
Over the advance of eight years – amid 2000 and 2007 – Lucic won aloof 34 clash matches (one added than her absolute as a 15-year-old in 1997) and was bedridden by ancestors difficulties, including an alienation from her ancestor that oftentimes came beneath accessible scrutiny.
Earlier this year, I batten to Lucic for the The New York Times and she told me, "Once you've played in the big stadiums and afresh you go to cloister No. 39 or whatever and accept no umpires, it sucks. It sucks big time. But I accept the adventitious to be actuality again."
Lucic was speaking at the U.S. Open, area she able for comedy afterwards a ballsy first-round condoning win in which she adored bristles bout credibility and went on to the additional annular of the capital draw area she fell to Jelena Jankovic in three hard-fought sets.
That absurd "court No. 39" is area best of Lucic's improvement has been assembled. She's carved her way through abjure places like Cuneo, Italy, Jackson, Miss., and Albuquerque, N.M., the closing is area she won a appellation in backward September.
"I feel great," Lucic said in the aforementioned Times interview. "I've been alive so hard. The aftermost brace of years I've been arena baby tournaments and arena condoning matches and accident and struggling. It's annihilation added than confidence. I've consistently formed hard, but annihilation can accord you aplomb added than wins."
This time around, there are few clash promoters handing a beginning jailbait agrarian cards into condoning or the capital draw. Lucic will about-face 30 in beneath than a year and a half, and the Croat who resides in Florida seems blessed to put in the leg assignment to accomplish it aback to the top.
"I'm still 28. I accept abundant time to do what I appetite to do," Lucic said at the Open.
And if her most recent after-effects are any indication, what she wants to do, it seems, is aloof comedy some tennis, and win some matches.
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