Jelena Dokic’s brutally honest revelations on everything from out-of-control eating to online trolls and her abusive father, Damir

Jelena Dokic, once a junior tennis prodigy, has come a long way in the intervening years as she reflected on father abuse, online abuse and a time when she ate 10 meals a day in a revealing new interview.

Dokic, the former women’s world number 4, opened up about how her life has changed in recent years following her tumultuous years on the professional tennis circuit in a conversation with The age.

As one top player recalled Dokic, she became imbued with fear while dealing with an overbearing father and the terrifying memories of escaping from her home country of Yugoslavia, now Croatia, to Serbia as a child.

She blames her later relationship with food for both causes of the anxiety.

Now a regular commentator on the women’s circuit, Dokic has also inadvertently become an advocate for everything from body positivity and fragility, to mental health and cybersecurity, since she decided to open up about her life.

‘If you saw me ten years ago you would say, ‘This is not the same person.’ Not really.

‘I was someone who couldn’t look people in the eye. I couldn’t string two sentences together. Now obviously I can’t keep quiet,” she said.

At the height of her career, she routinely reached the semi-finals and quarter-finals of major tournaments, all the while keeping her abusive father and eating habits a secret from her fans.

Dokic’s father, Damir, was her coach throughout her career and had ‘silenced’ her from the start, accepting nothing less than perfection from his daughter.

‘I was silenced all my life. From the very first day I started playing tennis, rule number 1 was: “Never tell anyone anything or there will be huge, huge consequences,” she said of his dominant personality.

She recalled how she almost pulled off a victory in Dokic’s second appearance at Wimbledon in 2000, reaching the semifinals before losing to world No. 1 Lindsay Davenport.

Damir did not want to enter their hotel room after the match because of the loss.

Instead, the 17-year-old was left in the players’ lounge at the All England Club, where she slept in the corner until cleaners found her at 2am.

“Even if I won, I would still be beaten and abused sometimes. “I had some really rough moments where I was punched, kicked and punched so much that I fell unconscious,” she said.

This abuse has been a constant since she fled to Serbia with her mother and father at the age of eight, where she saw her first dead body.

The trio left ‘literally overnight’ with just two plastic bags and two tennis rackets and moved into a new home, a shed, which was infested with rats.

Her mother made regular trips to the Red Cross to gather supplies at four in the morning, but was lucky enough to even secure bread as a refugee in the country.

At Wimbledon in 2000, Dokic reached the semifinals, but after losing to world No. 1 Lindsay Davenport, her father, Damir, would no longer let her in the hotel room.

As a child, Dokic was a competitive player who embraced fierce one-on-one matches that demanded her everything, both physically and mentally.

After turning pro, she said her diet sometimes consisted of ten meals a day: two breakfasts, two lunches and two dinners.

Some of her favorite foods included burgers, cake, fries and chocolate.

But when this happened, Dokic revealed that she would starve herself for the next few days, once going six days without eating anything, while still training daily for her next competition.

Recently, Dokic has come to terms with her eating disorder, which she linked to her days as a refugee under food shortages and her relationship with Damir.

Her father would use food against his daughter, which only reinforced her belief that food was her “safety” and the one thing that would never let her down.

Recently, Dokic has come to terms with a long-term eating disorder that she attributes to the food shortages she endured as a child refugee and her relationship with Damir.

When Dokic started covering tennis for Nine in 2019, the spotlight brought with it an army of cyberbullies who made fun of her weight gain.

The comment sections of every social media post were filled with harassment and some trolls even went as far as to DM her with disgusting comments.

In 2023, Dokic decided enough was enough and directly called out “fat-shamers,” which she said “changed her life.”

Now she considers herself a role model and someone others can look up to to find their own voice when faced with adversity.

Imposter Syndrome, Dokic said, is a universal problem that transcends borders and must be addressed so that people can live happier, healthier lives.

Unattainable myths about the “perfect size” or the “perfect tennis player” no longer concern her because they cannot be answered, “unless you are Novak Djokovic, because he is an alien.”

Dokic plans to continue her new path of positivity and has her sights set on climbing Kilimanjaro and Everest, and soon running her first marathon.

She hopes her story helps others find their way and describes herself as an ‘open book’, because for her ‘being vulnerable is such an enormous power’.

Docik now plays tennis for the Nine Network and despite facing vicious online bullying, she sees herself as a role model for others who are yet to find their own voice