She is only 19, and yet in her short career she has escaped the war in Yugoslavia, running from her Croatian home at the age of 6, and from her Serbian home at the age of 11. She adopted Australian nationality and set up home in Sydney with her family only to relinquish her new citizenship in high dudgeon to revert to her Yugoslavian passport. After moving to the United States of America and back to Belgrade she now lives at Monaco.

In the middle of all this media mayhem, Jelena's credentials as a tennis player tend to be overlooked. She was the top-ranked junior in the world at the age of 15 and then, a year later, she announced herself to the public by beating world no 1 Martina Hingis at Wimbledon in the opening round. Jelena had come through the qualifying competition, and was ranked 129 at that time. By the end of her run - she was stopped at the quarterfinals - she had climbed to 37, and she never looked back.

Jelena's final breakthrough took place at Rome in 2001. There she won her first title at one of the big-money, top-tier events, and, having developed the winning habit, she has been doing it on a regualar basis ever since. After that, she won the Toyota Princess Cup at Japan, the Kremlin Cup at Moscow, the Sarasota Open at Florida and after she had won Birmingham she finally won a tournament on every possible surface!
On october, 8, 2001 she entered the Top 10 for the first time in her career, and settled down there, and if she announces the Top 10 as her home, it's meant more literally than with any other player! She has gradually tought herself to try to enjoy life away from the courts, and she likes the same pastimes as any 19-year-old. She loves to shop, she loves movies, music and most of all she loves her boyfriend: Brazilian Formular 1 star Enrique Bernoldi.