Tennis junkies desperate for results in these quiet days of the off-season got some this weekend as 16-women and 16-men playoffs were held for Australians vying for one wild-card spot in the main draws of next month’s Australian Open.
Two big names, former top-tenners Jelena Dokic and Mark Philippoussis, are in the playoffs, which consist of four groups of fours players with the top two players in each advancing to the quarter-finals.
Philippoussis, who did not play a single match in 2007 after tearing cartilage in his right knee during the Hopman Cup exhibition in Perth the first week of January, is hoping to resuscitate his career.
Earlier in the year, he did a TV reality show called The Age of Love. Choosing between Cougars (40-and-overs) and Kittens (in their 20s) on The Age of Love, Philippoussis, 31, ended up selecting kitten Amanda Salinas, 25, a financial planning assistant from Nashville.
Their relationship appears not to have lasted and now Philippoussis is re-dedicating himself to tennis, hoping to come back after a fourth knee operation – but the first on his right knee.
He won his first match Saturday – on the new two-tone blue, plexi-cushion surface at Melbourne Park – over reigning Australian Open junior champion Brydan Klein 6-3, 7-5 but lost 6-4, 6-3 on Sunday to 20-year-old Samuel Groth, ranked No. 341.
Philippoussis, who is playing with a wrap below his right knee, may reach the quarter-finals no mater what the result of his third match on Monday because already one player in his group has withdrawn with a shoulder injury and Klein has a knee problem that may not allow him to continue.
Australian Open officials have made it clear, if Philippoussis fails to win the playoff, they may not give him any of the other wild cards, preferring to keep them for promising, younger players.
Dokic, who has been away from tennis longer than Philippoussis due to injury and ongoing family discord centred around her controversial father, Damir, is in a better position having won both her round-robin matches.
Serbian-born Dokic, 24, has had a tetchy relationship with her adopted homeland, Australia, partly as a result of her father’s controlling and erratic behaviour.
Now re-committed to Australia, Dokic has played just one match in 2007 – losing at a minor event in Italy in March – and last won a match in a Grand Slam event at the 2003 US Open. In 2000, at 17, she reached the Wimbledon semi-finals.
With her two wins so far at Melbourne Park, she is guaranteed a spot in the playoff quarter-finals.
Stat-of the week: 0. No points earned over the past 52 weeks mean that both Dokic and Philippoussis have no ranking at the moment.
Dokic had a career-high No. 4 in August, 2002, while Philippoussis, runner-up at the 1998 US Open and at Wimbledon in 2003, reached No. 8 in April, 1999. He does, however, have an injury-protected ranking of No. 119, which he can use for entry to eight tournaments over a six month period.
