By her own admission, Jelena Dokic had nothing left to give. This was just in one match, a brutal hiding from rising German star Andrea Petkovic, but what about the rest of the summer? At 26 and with all signs pointing to her best days being anchored in the past, Dokic is still trying to maintain the rage on a professional circuit she has graced on and off since she was just 16.
A decade later, she is desperately trying to fossick for positives ahead of next week’s tournament in Sydney but after being unceremoniously hammered by Petkovic, who celebrated her 6-0 6-1 blitzkrieg victory with a signature on-court shimmy, the shards look too plentiful to put back in place.
It took just 46 minutes for Dokic to depart in the second round of the Brisbane International. Petkovic fired all her guns and rather than return with some artillery of her own, a sluggish Dokic took cover until the barrage ceased.
There were mitigating circumstances, she said, citing a stomach illness that has slowed her for the past few days and sapped her of speed, stamina and power.
Even so, anyone expecting to see Dokic recreate her inspiring Australian Open quarter final run of 2009 over the coming weeks would have left disillusioned. Two years ago, she would have us believe there was something left in the tank. Today, it looked bone dry.
“I think it’s very simple. I was flat. I had nothing to give from the beginning. That’s basically it. I wasn’t in the match at all. I’ve been sick for a couple of days. It’s taken its toll,” Dokic said.
“I went to a doctor and he thinks it’s a stomach virus I’ve had for a few days. I already had it in the first match. I struggled but I don’t like to make excuses. But if you’re playing a top 30, top 35 player, you’ve got to have everything to give.
“I think it was obvious from the first point I couldn’t hit the ball so well or move well and my power was down.”
It’s difficult to find any trinket of optimism in the rubble of such a one-sided demolition. The first set took 18 minutes to complete, barely enough time for the fans to file in the doors.
As professional athletes are obliged to do, Dokic was frantically trying to convince herself there had been some good in her visit to Brisbane and more was to come in Sydney and Melbourne.
To do that, she had to banish all thoughts of Cyclone Petkovic and rewind to her first match, a straight sets win over qualifier Anastasia Pivovarova. The only other scrap of good news was that her wrist, injured in the opening round, held up, even if her form didn’t.
“It’s the beginning of the year. I got a lot of confidence from that first match. I’m really happy about that. But there is a lot of work to do,” Dokic said.
“It’s tough. I really wanted to play well here. The crowd is always behind us and a lot of people come out to watch. I’ve got to just forget about the tennis and try to take positives out of this week. I think there’s quite a few of them.
“It’s not a big deal. I’ve got to move on from this and take all the best things I did well this week, work on the things that are my weaknesses and try to have a good week next week.
“Even though the score was the way it was, on certain points I hung in there. I still got to see some things, what level I’m up against. I take a lot of positives from the first match.”
Dokic has already made impressive inroads in returning from the tennis badlands, which saw her ranking blow out past 600 at the end of 2006 through a combination of injury, poor form, personal turmoil and disinterest.
Citing new motivation and a body free from serious ailments, Dokic was hoping to gain some momentum in Brisbane and try and ambush some of the fancies at the year’s first Grand Slam.
With illness undercutting her preparations, that would now appear to be a bridge too far.
The longest stage of the Tour Down Under has seen victory to Sky rider Ben Swift, ahead of Australians Robbie McEwen and Graeme Brown. 
