Jelena Dokic - Unbreakable

This is the story of Jelena Dokics survival. How she survived as a refugee, twice. How she survived on the tennis court to become world No. 4. But, most importantly, how she survived the brutality of her father, Damir Dokic, the tennis dad from hell.

Jelena was a prodigious talent, heralded as Australias greatest tennis hope since Evonne Goolagong. She had exceptional skills, a steely nerve and an extraordinary ability to fight on the court. Off it she endured huge challenges: being an outsider in her new country, poverty and racism. Still, aged eighteen she was in the womens top 10 and the world was charmed by her and her story.

But she carried a terrible secret. From the moment shed struck a tennis ball at age six, her father had hit her. And the bigger her tennis star grew, the more he lost his mind privately and very publicly.

Jelena has not told a soul her story in full until now.

From war-torn Yugoslavia to Sydney to Wimbledon, she narrates her hellish ascent to becoming one of the worlds best tennis players, and her heart-breaking fall from the top. Her gutsy honesty will leave you in awe. Her fight back from darkness and on to the tennis tour will uplift you. Most of all Jelenas will to survive will inspire you.

I dont know where my dad is. Im standing in the plush Wimbledon players lounge waiting, looking around for him: were due to go out for a nice dinner with my managers, Ivan and John. I am seventeen years old and I have just played in the semi-finals. Of Wimbledon.

Surely, youd think, he would be okay that I got this far at the All England Club. You would think. At the end of the match, as I shook Lindsays hand, I looked up to the stands and saw my father bolt out of his green seat, nothing but the back of his burly frame rushing from Wimbledons Centre Court. Usually after my matches, he stands around somewhere near the players lounge and I have to find him. But today theres neither sight nor sound of him. I called his mobile after I finished my press duties and he didnt pick up.

This has been my greatest run ever in a grand slam and I want to know what hell say, and to organise how we will get to dinner with Ivan and John. So I call him again, and this time, finally, he picks up. The dull slur in his slow, loud voice tells me he is drunk. I know this tone; its the tone of white wine and probably a few glasses of whisky.

He is angry. Furious that I lost. His voice booms down the phone. You are pathetic, you are a hopeless cow, you are not to come home. You are an embarrassment. You cant stay at our hotel.

But, Dad I say quietly, trying to plead with him.

You need to go and find somewhere else to sleep, he yells at the top of his voice. Stay at Wimbledon and sleep there somewhere Or wherever else. I dont care.

He hangs up.

I have just made the semi-finals of Wimbledon. But in my fathers eyes I am not good enough to come home.

Players around me are getting on with life, chatting, eating dinner, winding down with their coaches. I am alone and shattered. I have no money well, no access to it no credit card. It is Dad who has all that. He controls everything in my life.

Emotion starts to overwhelm me. Failure Im a failure. Minutes tick by, and then hours. I tuck myself away on a small couch in the corner of the players lounge, hoping no one notices me, and eventually the place is empty.

At around 11 pm the cleaner arrives. She sees me in the corner and comes over. You cant stay here, she says softly.

I make the confession: I have nowhere to sleep tonight. As I say it, the reality hits me. The tears prick in the corner of my eyes.

I have to let the tournament authorities know, she says.

Wimbledons referee, Alan Mills, arrives. What happened? he asks gently.

I have nowhere to go, I say. I have nowhere to sleep.

Hot tears are running down my face, but I dont let on that my own father has banished me: as always I must protect him. Alan, however, seems to know whats going on. My management agency, Advantage, has rented a beautiful house in Wimbledon village; Alan calls my managers and they say they will take me in. He arranges for a tournament car to take me to the house.

I arrive sobbing and Ivan and John look concerned when they see me. They explain theyd called my dad earlier in the evening trying to locate us, and my nine-year-old brother, Savo, answered. John says he could hear my fathers voice in the background. Apparently Savo said simply, My dad isnt here.

I am both heartbroken by my fathers rejection and embarrassed by it.

Im shown to the spare room. At least I didnt get a beating from him .

As I wait for sleep, through the shock and hurt I start to realise that I might never make my father happy. That I might never be good enough in his eyes.

I am eight years old when I see my first dead body.

Its a foggy morning in our Croatian city, Osijek, when my father and I push out from the bank in our little wooden boat to go fishing on the River Drava. And suddenly I see a man, his hair matted, bobbing face down in the water. His body looks bloated and his hands are blue.

Papa, I say, pointing.

Dont look, he says, nervous. Our weekly fishing trip is over. He turns the boat back and rows quickly to shore.

War is brewing here; the dead body is a sign not that I understand this till long afterwards. After the Second World War, Croatia was bundled up with Serbia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina to become Yugoslavia, a federation of states. It was inevitable that the nationalism of each country would boil over at some point. Croatia wanted its independence from Serbia, but Serbia didnt want Croatia to have its independence.

In the preceding weeks there have been indications close to home that the Balkans is about to erupt in battle again. Angry Croatian neighbours have threatened my proudly Serbian father straight to his face. Get out or die, they say. There have been phone calls to our family home, men threatening to throw me and my baby brother out the window of our eleventh-floor apartment.

The country is fractured. Dad is worried. Mum is frightened. And now this body tensions are rising.

A few weeks after the incident of the floating corpse on the river, our lives radically change. It is a hot summers night. The twenty-first of June 1991, to be exact. It is night-time when my usually stoic truck-driving father arrives home anxious. Another threat has been made.