Mirjana Lučić-Baroni

Mirjana Lučić-Baroni

Lučić-Baroni at the 2013 Australian Open
Full name	Mirjana Lučić-Baroni
Country	Croatia
Residence	Tampa, Florida, United States[1]
Born	(1982-03-09) March 9, 1982 Dortmund, West Germany
Height	1.81 m (5 ft 11 in)
Turned pro	April 26, 1997[1]
Plays	Right-handed (two-handed backhand)
Prize money	$1,684,611
Singles
Career record	308–237
Career titles	2 WTA, 3 ITF
Highest ranking	32 (May 11, 1998)
Current ranking	106 (February 3, 2014)
Grand Slam Singles results
Australian Open	2R (1998)
French Open	3R (2001)
Wimbledon	SF (1999)
US Open	3R (1997, 1998)
Doubles
Career record	62–57
Career titles	2 WTA, 3 ITF
Highest ranking	19 (October 26, 1998)
Current ranking	38 (February 3, 2014)
Grand Slam Doubles results
Australian Open	W (1998)
French Open	3R (2013)
Wimbledon	QF (2013)
US Open	3R (2013)
Team competitions
Fed Cup	14–3
Last updated on: February 3, 2014.

Mirjana Lučić-Baroni (née Lučić; born March 9, 1982 in Dortmund, West Germany^[1]) is a professional Croatian tennis player. She enjoyed a promising career on the WTA Tour in the late 1990s, during which she set several "youngest-ever" records, won the Grand Slam women's doubles title at the Australian Open in 1998 when she was only 15 years old, partnering with Martina Hingis, and reached the semifinals of Wimbledon in 1999. Following a series of personal problems from 2000 onwards, she faded from the scene. After toiling through the ITF circuit through much of the next decade, Lučić re-emerged as a top-100 player following the 2010 season. She married Daniele Baroni on November 15, 2011.^[2]

Biography

Early life and junior success

Lučić began playing tennis at age four by hiding in the car when her older sister went to tennis classes and then sneaking into the lessons herself. As a junior player, she won the girls' singles title at the US Open in 1996, and the girls' singles and doubles crowns at the Australian Open in 1997, becoming only the third player in the Open Era to win two junior Grand Slam singles titles by the age of 14 (the others being Martina Hingis and Jennifer Capriati).

1997–1998: Grand Slam title

Lučić turned professional in April 1997 at the age of 15. One week after turning pro, she won the very first WTA Tour event she played in at Bol. She then reached the final of her second career event in Strasbourg, where she lost to Steffi Graf.

In 1998, playing in her very first tour doubles event, Lučić became the youngest player in history to win a title at the Australian Open at the age of 15 years, 10 months and 21 days, when she and Hingis won the women's doubles title. The win made Lučić the first player to win both the very first singles and doubles events they had ever played in on the WTA Tour. And she went on to win the second doubles event of her career when she partnered Hingis to win the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo. Later that year, Lučić defended her singles title at Bol, becoming the youngest player ever to defend a tour title at age 16 years, 1 month and 24 days. She also finished runner-up in the 1998 mixed doubles event at Wimbledon, partnering Mahesh Bhupathi.

1999: Personal problems

In 1999, Lučić achieved her career-best Grand Slam singles performance when she reached the semifinals at Wimbledon, before losing in three sets to Graf. In the third round, she stunned world number 4 and nine-time Grand Slam champion Monica Seles. She also beat 1998 Wimbledon finalist Nathalie Tauziat in the quarterfinals after Tauziat served for the match twice in the third set.

After 1999, Lučić suffered a series of personal and financial problems and failed to make any further significant impact on the tour (Lučić confessed that she was abused by her father, Marinko, from an early childhood).^[3][4][5][6] She continued to compete until the 2003 US Open, then proceeded to take an extended hiatus from competition; her career-high world rankings were world number 32 in singles and world number 19 in doubles (both achieved in 1998). She played only two tournaments in the 2004, 2005, and 2006 seasons combined.

2007–2008: Return to tour

Mirjana Lučić gave an interview in the New York Daily News in April 2006 explaining why she stopped playing and describing her life with an abusive father, vowing that would not stop her and she will continue to fight to the end. She had been training with a new coach, Ivan Beros, and said she was fit and ready to continue tennis.

As a wildcard in the qualifying draw of the Cellular South Cup in Memphis in February, Lučić won one match (defeating Melanie Oudin) before losing in the second round to Natalie Grandin. She was also awarded a wild card to the 2007 Pacific Life Open at Indian Wells in March, where she again won her first match before losing in the second round.^[7]

She also received a wild card to the Tiro A Volo tournament in Rome, where she lost in the first round to Karin Knapp. That was her third tournament within the previous 12 months, and she received her first WTA ranking (number 524) since her return to the professional tour.

Even though she lost the first round to Knapp in the $100,000 Rome Challenger, she received a qualifying wildcard for the 1.3 million dollar tournament in May at the same city and beat the 65th-ranked player in the world, Elena Vesnina. She then went on to lose to Catalina Castaño in the second round. Her ranking jumped to 444 with the result.

Lučić played a mixture of ITF and WTA qualifiers in 2008, her best result reaching the quarterfinals in Florence in May. In September 2008 Mirjana started working with her new coach Alberto Gutierrez, planning to play a full schedule the following year.

2009–2011

In the 2009 season, she was given a wildcard into the ASB Classic in Auckland, New Zealand. In her first WTA main draw match since Indian Wells 2007, she lost to Anne Keothavong in the first round.

Lučić then continued to toil on the ITF challenger circuit for several years prior to mounting somewhat of a comeback in the 2010 season. During that year, Lučić won her first title in 12 years at a $25,000 ITF event in Jackson, Florida April 11. Shortly after, Lučić qualified for the WTA event in Birmingham, going on to win her first main draw match since Indian Wells 2007, this time over Colombian Mariana Duque. She continued her good form as she defeated fellow Croatian player Karolina Šprem in the second round. She was beaten by top 20 player Aravane Rezaï of France in the third round. Lučić then competed in the Wimbledon Qualifying tournament in Roehampton. She won her first two rounds and beat Michaëlla Krajicek in the third round to qualify for the main draw of Wimbledon, her first Grand Slam since the 2002 US Open. After a good showing, Lučić fell to 14th seed Victoria Azarenka in the first round on Centre Court.

After Wimbledon, Lučić moved onto the European summer clay court events. She failed to qualify for Bastad but the following week came through three rounds of qualifying at the 2010 Palermo event, and won her first round match, defeating Pauline Parmentier 7–5, 0–6, 7–6 recovering from a 0–4 third set deficit and saving 3 match points. She then fell to third seed Sara Errani in the second round recovering a 2–4 deficit to force a tie-break before falling 0–6, 6–7. Her ranking rose to 151, the highest of her comeback so far.

Following Palermo, Lučić returned to the United States for the summer hard court season. Her first event is the $700,000 Premier event in Stanford, the Bank of the West Classic. Seeded fifth in the qualifying draw, Lučić defeated both Heidi El Tabakh and Tamaryn Hendler in straight sets before repeating her Wimbledon victory over Michaëlla Krajicek with a straight-sets win to qualify for the main draw where she faced Russian Maria Kirilenko.

In the 2010 US Open, after winning three qualifying matches to enter the main draw, she beat Alicia Molik to set up a second round clash with number four seed Jelena Janković. Lučić lost in three sets. Even with this defeat, this was her best performance in a Grand Slam for nearly a decade.

Lučić started out the 2011 season poorly with a string of early losses on both the WTA and ITF circuits early in the year. Her fortunes began to change during the clay court season where Lucic reached her first WTA Tour quarterfinal in over 10 years at the Strasbourg event, losing to Anabel Medina Garrigues.

2012

Lučić-Baroni began the 2012 season losing in the qualifying at Brisbane and Sydney in January. She also failed to qualify for the 2012 Australian Open. She struggled to find her form, losing early at the tournaments in Midland and Memphis, as well as the Premier line-up events of Indian Wells, Miami and Charleston. She also lost in the first round at Roland Garros to Svetlana Kuznetsova.

Lučić-Baroni had a breakthrough run at Wimbledon, reaching the third round as a qualifier. She stunned ninth seed Marion Bartoli en route to the second round. However, her run was ended by Roberta Vinci in a tight match.

Grand Slam finals

Women's Doubles

Outcome	Year	Tournament	Surface	Partner	Opponents	Score
Winner	1998	Australian Open	Hard	Martina Hingis	Lindsay Davenport Natasha Zvereva	6–4, 2–6, 6–3

Mixed Doubles

Outcome	Year	Tournament	Surface	Partner	Opponents	Score
Runner-up	1998	Wimbledon	Grass	Mahesh Bhupathi	Serena Williams Max Mirnyi	4–6, 4–6

WTA finals

Singles (2–1)

Outcome	No.	Date	Tournament	Surface	Opponent	Score
Winner	1.	May 4, 1997	Croatian Bol Ladies Open, Bol, Croatia	Clay	Corina Morariu	7–5, 6–7(4–7), 7–6(7–5)
Runner-up	1.	May 24, 1997	Internationaux de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France	Clay	Steffi Graf	6–2, 7–5
Winner	2.	May 3, 1998	Croatian Bol Ladies Open, Bol, Croatia	Clay	Corina Morariu	6–4, 6–2

Doubles (2–1)

Outcome	No.	Date	Tournament	Surface	Partner	Opponents	Score
Winner	1.	February 1, 1998	Australian Open, Melbourne, Australia	Hard	Martina Hingis	Lindsay Davenport Natasha Zvereva	6–4, 2–6, 6–3
Winner	2.	February 8, 1998	Toray Pan Pacific Open, Tokyo, Japan	Carpet (i)	Martina Hingis	Lindsay Davenport Natasha Zvereva	7–5, 6–4
Runner-up	1.	May 2, 1998	Croatian Bol Ladies Open, Bol, Croatia	Clay	Joannette Kruger	Laura Montalvo Paola Suárez	w/o

Singles performance timeline

Doubles performance timeline

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mirjana Lučić.

• Mirjana Lučić-Baroni at the Women's Tennis Association
• Mirjana Lučić-Baroni at the International Tennis Federation
• Mirjana Lučić-Baroni at the Fed Cup
• Mirjana Lučić-Baroni on Facebook

v t e Women's Tennis Association: Top Croatian female singles tennis players as of 3 February 2014 1. Ajla Tomljanović (68 ) 2. Petra Martić (104 2) 3. Mirjana Lučić-Baroni (106 1) 4. Donna Vekić (107 2) 5. Ana Konjuh (202 4) 6. Tereza Mrdeža (214 17) 7. Ana Vrljić (223 21) 8. Jelena Pandžić (318 3) 9. Ana Savić (386 2) 10. Ivana Lisjak (398 3)