The goal of most aspiring tennis players is to play in Grand Slam tournaments. Jana Nejedly, despite her claim that she was not the kind of youngster driven to become a professional player, wound up playing in 24 of them.
Nejedly, who announced her retirement last week, was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, but left the then-Communist country in 1979 when she was five.
"We always went to Yugoslavia on vacation," she explained about how she and her one-year-younger sister Martina and their parents, Dimitrij and Jana, escaped their homeland. "So we acted as if we were going on vacation. But then my parents drove to Austria and we spent a night in jail because we didn't have the proper visas. We ended up spending three months in a refugee facility until we could get the paper work done to go to Vancouver."
In her early athletic days -- circa age eight -- tennis did not stand out.
"We [she and Martina who was also on the pro tour for a while]played all sports -- soccer, softball and skiing in the winter," Nejedly recalled. "After two or three years of doing everything, we ventured toward tennis."
Nejedly won the Canadian under-16 indoor singles title in 1989 and 1990, but then moved with her family to the United States, first to Houston and then to Palm Springs, Calif.
Her big breakthrough was winning the 1994 Canadian Nationals (the last year of the event), defeating an injured Helen Kelesi in the semi-finals and her future Fed Cup captain, Rene Simpson, in the final.
During a 10-year career, she reached a best ranking of No. 64 in 2000 and had wins over players such as American Chanda Rubin and Austrian Barbara Schett.
She also had memorable encounters with some great champions. Her baptism, in that regard, occurred in Tokyo against Steffi Graf in 1994.
"It was an awesome experience," she said. "It was my first really big match. She just totally throttled me." The score was 6-1, 6-1.
That was also the result when she lost to Martina Hingis, 15, at the 1996 Australian Open. "I was a nervous wreck because I always found her extremely difficult to play," Nejedly said. "She had an answer for everything and basically just toyed with you."
Nejedly also played Serena and Venus Williams, Jennifer Capriati and Jana Novotna.
Highlights of her career included competing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and playing Fed Cup.
She won a Canadian record 19 Fed Cup singles matches. Unfortunately, most took place in South America in zone qualifying and were not fully appreciated in Canada.
On court, the 5-foot-9 Nejedly had powerful groundstrokes, probably worthy of a top-15 player. But her serving, movement and net play did not match her gift for exceptional ball striking off the ground.
Her demeanour, unusually phlegmatic, was sometimes misinterpreted as ambivalence. "That was the way I was raised," she explained. "I was taught to stay calm. My parents would have been furious if I'd broken my racquet when I was a kid."
As for the perceived ambivalence, she said, "You really can't worry about what other people think. The people who knew me knew I cared.
"That's all I really worried about."
Nejedly, 29, and her English fiancé Stephen Welt now teach at the Weymouth Club in Boston. She also will be coaching Canadian juniors at some Florida events in December.
When asked what advice she has for young Canadian players, she replied, "To realize your dream and just go for it no matter what people tell you. As a junior, a lot of coaches and other people, even Tennis Canada, didn't believe in me. I think if I would have listened, or if my parents would have listened, I would never have had the career I did."
Having ranked in the year-end top-100 five times, won eight entry-level Futures events, earned $612,117 (U.S.) in prize money and played seven Wimbledons among her aforementioned 24 Grand Slams, Nejedly has had a rewarding career.
It ended being an eventful and fulfilling journey for the five-year-old who spent that night in a jail in Graz, Austria, almost a quarter of a century ago.