Jelena Dokic will return to Melbourne next week to prepare for the Australian circuit, training with the Richmond Football Club's elite performance manager Matt Hornsby.

The 25-year-old Dokic is expected to perform much better than was the case 11 months ago when she had played just one satellite-level match. From being an unranked player, Dokic returned to the top 180 in the world and Australia’s best four during the 2008 season, and will not have to rely on a discretionary invitation into the Australian Open wildcard play-off at Melbourne Park from December 15-21.

"It's more just consulting and helping her with her overall program in the lead-in to the summer, and then doing maybe two or three individual sessions a week, as well," Hornsby said. "Jelena wasn't someone that I had to push to train, it was always easy to train her, and so I'm happy to help her out — she was very professional the way she went about it."

I can’t wait to see how Dokic will perform next season. The 2008 one was a successful warm-up, with the former world No.4 winning three ITF tournaments: Florence, Caserta and Darmstadt. (source: The Age, photo: Ralf Reinecke)

Jelena Dokic was once ranked fourth in the world, reached the semifinals of Wimbledon in 2000, and was a two-time Grand Slam quarterfinalist. The traumatic experience of having to leave her family led to Dokic’s career collapse, but the 25-year-old is now steadily working on her return to the top.

"I was on my own, and I was learning for two or three years what to do, where to go and who I could rely on," Dokic told Reuters in an interview.

"Once you feel that you've lost your family you've pretty much lost everything. You can lose a match, you can lose a friend, but your family always stays with you. It took a long time to deal with and to realise exactly what I have, which was just myself." Read more »

Former world number four Jelena Dokic has been given a wildcard to enter the Generali Ladies Linz tournament in Austria.

The organizers of the Generali Ladies Linz decided to hand Dokic a wildcard because they wanted to give their share in returning the Serbian-born Australian player to the major tennis scene.

The 25-year-old Dokic played in the final of the Tier II tournament in Linz in 2001 when she lost to American Lindsay Davenport.

Dokic played only one match in 2007, but managed to climb to No.181 in the rankings. This season Dokic won three ITF titles: Florence, Caserta and Darmstadt.

The $600,000 Generali Ladies Linz starts October 20th. (source in Serbian: Mondo)

Former world No.4 Jelena Dokic, currently ranked 318th, which is by the way good, won two back-to-back titles at challengers – Florence and Caserta – but today her run has ended. Dokic, who received a wildcard for the Tier III tournament in Strasbourg, lost in the first round. World No.71 Timea Bacsinszky of Switzerland defeated her 6-4 6-2. (image via Great Tennis Photos)

Jelena Dokic is slowly but surely reviving her career. The former world No.4 has won her second title in two weeks.

The 25-year-old Dokic, who is now ranked 431st, won the $25,000 Caserta in Italy, and last weekend she won a challenger in Florence. In the Caserta final, Dokic defeated Austria’s Patricia Mayr 6-3 6-1.

After this victory, the Australian born in Belgrade, Serbia, heads to a $175,000 claycourt event in Strasbourg, France, for which she received a wild card. (photo via ITF Caserta)