Weary Dokic Says She Could Use Peace and Quiet

When Jelena Dokic speaks, she looks down. At her fingers, at the table where she is sitting, at her feet. She looks across the room, at the wall, at the door. She looks longingly at the door. She is eager for the escape it provides, for the way out it signifies.

Dokic has played 28 tennis tournaments this year and has come to Los Angeles to play in No. 29. To compare, top-ranked Serena Williams has played 12 events. Second-ranked Venus Williams has played in 15. It is no wonder Dokic is pale. She seems thin and she is tired.

“Mentally and physically, it has been a hard year,” Dokic says.

She is 19 and has been a citizen of Yugoslavia, the place of her birth. She has been taken to Australia, where her father and coach, Damir, hoped for a country’s tennis association to take his daughter and family, welcome them and hand them the means to make Jelena a star.

But things didn’t work out. They seldom seem to when Damir is involved, and now the family has relocated to Belgrade after being rumored to be seeking refuge in Britain, in a country without much female tennis talent, where Jelena’s talent might be better appreciated by the country’s federation.

His daughter is sweet, soft-spoken and fluent in Serbo-Croatian and English. But Damir is a caricature of the bad tennis father. He has been banned from tournaments for sixth months. He has been photographed passed out on sidewalks outside tournaments and was tossed out of the U.S. Open two years ago for throwing a profane tantrum about the price of salmon in the players’ lounge while his embarrassed daughter stood by, both supporting the man who gave her a racket and having her cheeks turn red and her eyes fill with tears at the public humiliation.

Last month it was reported that Dokic had requested Damir and her mother, Liliana, be banned from her matches, though Dokic says that isn’t true.

She looks up and smiles only when Enrique Bernoldi is mentioned. Bernoldi, a Brazilian Formula One race car driver, has been Dokic’s constant companion the last couple of months, after his team suffered financial problems and couldn’t field cars in end-of-season races.

“I’ve driven with Enrique and gone 265 kilometers an hour,” Dokic says proudly. The speed -- about 165 mph -- the freedom, Dokic says she loves it, and who can blame her?

Dokic has no coach, other than her father, and no agent to protect her from demands on her time, from questions she might not want to answer.

Here comes yet another young, female tennis player who must wrestle in a public way with the issues of a father who is the sole promoter, facilitator, king-maker, mastermind of the career, and who also stumbles and bumbles across the stage he has created for his daughter with behavior the daughter privately despises from a man she very much loves.

It has happened so often, with Steffi Graf and Mary Pierce and Venus and Serena Williams, teenage girls left alone on a podium to explain some outrageous act or statement from the father.

Dokic has been ranked as high as No. 4 in the world this year, though since a second-round loss at the U.S. Open, she has trundled, exhausted, across Europe trying to defend computer points earned from a year ago but only losing ground in a series of early-round losses.

“I am going to do things differently next year,” says Dokic, who plays her opening match at the Home Depot WTA Championships today at Staples Center against Anastasia Myskina of Russia. “I am going to play much less, maybe 20 or 22 tournaments, and I am going to prepare better for the Grand Slams.”

There is nothing Dokic will say against her father, who is suspected of putting his daughter’s name to an unusual, public declaration of support for a Serbian nationalist political candidate during the summer.

While refusing to deny she made the statement, Dokic says, “I am not interested in politics. I am not political. I am only a tennis player.”

Bernoldi, through a WTA spokesman, says he is not giving interviews. Dokic calls him “a kindred spirit” and says he is the one person she has found who understands her determination and athletic focus. She met Bernoldi, 24, at a tournament in London six months ago and, Dokic says, the connection was immediate.

“We found a way to talk to each other right away,” she says. “He has been very good for my mind.”

Dokic has been a pro for nearly four years and her considerable talent -- she has an elegantly lethal forehand and smooth movement -- has been apparent since she knocked Martina Hingis out of Wimbledon in the first round in 1999.

Yet there has been concern about Dokic and the distractions from her father for nearly that long. Some tour officials worry that Damir orchestrated Jelena’s brutal playing schedule this year and that her unwillingness to replace Damir with a full-time coach who might help her add depth to her power game is hurting her progress.

None of this is true, Dokic says. “My father is the person who has always understood me and wanted the best for me,” she says as she twists her fingers into a pattern that resembles prison bars. “When I was 11, he took us to Australia because it would be best, and when he thought Australia was not the best, he took us back to Yugoslavia.”

Damir isn’t here. His tired, sad-eyed daughter is. She talks more eagerly of the approaching holiday she anticipates than this last tournament. Around her the Williams sisters are heading off to announce a new sponsorship deal. Lindsay Davenport is happily recounting the occasion of her recent engagement. Monica Seles speaks eloquently of the joy she gets from competing at tennis.

Dokic walks out of the noisy room, aimed at the door, heading for her release.

Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.