Former world No 4 opens up on cruel weight gain trolls, dealing with anxiety and her abusive father
When your troubles are played out in the full glare of the media, it makes your challenges all the more uncomfortable to deal with.
That has been the story for former world No 4 Jelena Dokic, who reached the Wimbledon semi-finals in 2000 and also made it through to the last eight at the Australian Open and French Open.
The last two decades have been a long and often painful journey for the star who was born in the former Yugoslavia and found a home in Australia, where she remains to this day.
She is a big presence at the Australian Open as she conducts on-courts interviews with players and those high-profile appearances have resulted in some familiar online abuse for Dokic.
“I have always been honest with you all about my struggles and my weight battles. I have talked about my weight and not a lot of people have done that publicly,” Dokic wrote on Instagram back in 2020
“Now I am also going to be honest but I also feel like I need to address the negative attention around what people think I should look like. And here is my message to you, get over it. Leave me and my physical appearance alone.
“I really don’t know why people have the need to comment on someone’s physical appearance, especially when it comes to women.
“You would never talk like that about a man, it’s always about women and their appearance. While I am nowhere near my heaviest, I am also completely honest about the fact that I have put some weight back on in the Melbourne lockdown.
“It was very hard mentally for me in the world’s toughest lockdown for six months and not being able to see my loved ones for 15 months.
“If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all,’ Dokic said.
“How about a bit of kindness? How about a message asking me how I am doing? Instead of talking about my weight, why don’t you talk about all my accomplishments? Does my weight determine my worth?
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“It’s so easy to judge others but why can’t people just be kind? We should be talking about inner beauty and not the shallow outside looks.’
“I could be pregnant or going through something. Put yourself in the person you’re insulting shoes and what they might be going through,’ she said.
“Imagine if it was your mother, sister or daughter being insulted. In saying that, I will continue to work hard on my fitness and my health because I want to feel better and fitter. Love you all.”
Now Dokic has opened up on her story in an interview with The Age, as she spoke about her early life being dominated by the fearsome presence of her notorious father Damir, who was her coach throughout her tennis career.
“Even if I won, I would still at times be beaten and abused. I had some very difficult moments where I was beaten and kicked and punched to the point of being unconscious,” she reflected, after confirming she is no longer in contact with her father.
“I was silenced for my whole life. From the very first day that I started playing tennis, the No.1 rule was ‘Never tell anyone anything, or there will be massive, massive consequences’.
“Even if I won, I would still at times be beaten and abused. I had some very difficult moments where I was beaten and kicked and punched to the point of being unconscious.”
Now she feels free to life to her own rules and suggests she is much happier as she added: “‘If you saw me 10 years ago, you would say, ‘This is not the same person’. No way.
“I was someone that couldn’t look people in the eye. I couldn’t string two sentences together. Now I clearly can’t shut up.”
She has been on a journey that has taken her to breaking point and back, but Dokic appears to be happier now than at any point in her life and she still has a big role to play in tennis in her second career in the sport that has given and taken so much from her.