Karolina Sprem Biography
Karolina Šprem (born October 25, 1984 in Varaždin) is a Croatian tennis player.
She has won eight titles (seven singles, one doubles) all at the ITF level. She has not won any titles on the WTA Tour. Career highlight is a quarterfinal appearance at Wimbledon in 2004 where she defeated two-time champion, four-time finalist and then-world No. 8 Venus Williams in the second round before losing to Lindsay Davenport in the quarterfinal. The umpire of her match against Venus Williams awarded her an extra point in the second set tie break.[1] He was relieved of his duties after the end of the match.[citation needed]
In her first two WTA-tournaments she reached the finals, however in late 2004 her form declined. She began training with Borna Bikic, who at that time was brother of the boyfriend of Jelena Dokić.
In late 2007 Šprem announced a permanent split from Bikic, and returned to her old coach. Still, she had to cope with a serious elbow injury. In April 2008 she successfully returned to the pro-tour winning in Amelia Island over Ai Sugiyama and top 10 player Daniela Hantuchová, before falling to Lindsay Davenport in the third round.
In July 2008, Šprem made the semi-finals of a Tier III event in Budapest, eventually losing to Andreja Klepač.
In 2009, Karolina came back in the top 100, with a main draw entry in the Australian Open, Winning Qualifier rounds at Paris and the Sony Ericsson open. Karolina has won 2 ITF single tournamnets, Beating Kirsten Flipkens of Belgium in Biberach, Germany and defeating Viktoriya Kutuzova in Torhout, Belgium
At the start of 2009, Šprem changed from a Wilson K-factor Blade 98 to a Tecnifibre racquet.
In 2010, she scored one of her biggest wins in years when she defeated 25th seed Anabel Medina Garrigues at the 2010 Australian Open. She followed this up with a tight loss to Australian wildcard Casey Dellacqua
At the 2010 Open GDF Suez in Paris Šprem won through three rounds of qualifying to reach the main draw of the Premier event. In the first round she defeated Swiss no. 2 Timea Bacsinszky before losing to 6th seed Shahar Pe'er in the second round.
In 2011, Sprem started her campaign with a first round qualifying win at the Brisbane International defeating Doi of Japan in 3 sets. In the second round, she lost to Anna Tatishvili in 3 sets. Her next tournament was the Medibank International where she defeated American Christina McHale again in the qualis in a rain interrupted match. She the lost to Ekaterina Makarova 7-6 6-3. She now faces Chanelle Scheepers of South Africa in the first round at the Australian Open
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Karolina Sprem on serve
Jelena Dokic 1
