Tennis: Soulmate has Hingis soul-searching

Australian tennis player Jelena Dokic felt part of Martina Hingis' family, and hoped they would be friends forever.

But Hingis, the world No 1, may now regret taking the teenager under her wing and spending a week practising with her at the Hingis home in Switzerland.

Dokic, aged 16, responded by handing Hingis one of her worst defeats in the opening round at Wimbledon when thrashing the top seed 6-2 6-0 yesterday.

It was one of the tournament's biggest upsets. No top seed has ever been beaten before in the opening round of a Grand Slam tournament by a player as lowly ranked as Dokic, No 129 in the world.

Hingis, aged 18, immediately pulled out of Wimbledon altogether and announced she would take a month-long break from tennis.

Dokic won 11 successive games to win the match, employing her double-handed backhand and crafty drop-shots to push the four-times Grand Slam tournament winner out of the contest.

"I still can't believe I've beaten her," said Dokic as the scale of her victory started to sink in. "Even when I won that first set I didn't think it was going to be easy."

Even Dokic's volatile father was left speechless.

"He was out of words," she said of Damir Dokic, who was kicked out of her last tournament for abusing officials.

Now Dokic is an overnight star, and from being forced through three qualifying rounds to get into Wimbledon has now been catapulted into the world top 50.

"It's hard to believe but I have to keep my feet on the ground," she said. "Just because I've beaten Martina doesn't mean I'll win the tournament and I have to be careful what I do and how I play."

Everything went right for Dokic, who, just two months past her 16th birthday has already claimed the scalps of three top-20 players in her first year on the women's tour.

The world's top junior last year, she has long been regarded as one of Australia's brightest young tennis hopes.

"There was no pressure on me to win. I didn't feel nervous. I just went for it," said Dokic, who lost to Hingis in straight sets at the Australian Open.

"It's tough to beat her, whether you practise with her or not. I tried to play my own game."

It was the most ironic of victories as Hingis had taken Dokic as a training partner and described the feisty Australian as her "soulmate."

They had practised together before the French Open when Dokic spent a working holiday with Hingis' family.

"Martina and her mum made us feel part of the family for a whole week. We never stopped talking and it was such good fun," Dokic said at the time. "I hope we are friends forever."

In other women's play, Wimbledon's centrecourt, for once, greeted Jana Novotna as its tennis champion and not its pitied fallgirl, and the fifth seed responded accordingly.

At the scene of a triumph last year which atoned for two previous final defeats - most infamously her heartbreaking loss to Steffi Graf in 1993 - Novotna began smartly with a 6-2 6-1 romp over Taipei's Shi-Ting Wang.

Watched by the Duchess of Kent, who consoled a weeping Novotna after that loss to Graf, the Czech also laid to rest any lingering fears over her ankle injury with her 47-minute match.

"It was very nice. It was very special again," said Novotna, aged 30.

It was Novotna's first singles match since being injured in a collision with doubles partner Natasha Zvereva at the French Open last month. - NZPA