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Dokic is new target of British press

With the ''Kournikova count'' decreasing to a mere four pictures in yesterday morning British newspapers, the search is on for more juicy stories to dig up around the edge of the lawns at the All England Club.

Britain's tabloid press has found its newest target at the Wimbledon Championships - Australian teenager Jelena Dokic.

The 16-year-old became the story of week 1 of the fortnight with her second-day dispatch of world No 1 Martina Hingis in straight sets.

Since the win, the Belgrade-born player has become fair game for the scandal press. There is plenty of material to work with:

- her father, former boxer and truckie, Damir, was arrested for lying down in traffic this month in Birmingham after being tossed out of a tournament for cheering too loudly and reportedly harassing English fans over the Nato bombing campaign in Serbia.

- the Dokic family is living in 96-dollar-per-night budget hotel in mid-market Putney, eating cut-price bread-and-cheese dinners while sitting on a bed watching television during Wimbledon.

- Damir Dokic was accused by a commentator on the BBC of coaching his daughter from the stands during her second-round win, a follow-up to the success over Hingis.

Dokic admitted that life in the locker has changed. ''It's a bit different, definitely. More people...talk to you and everybody knows you know after winning a match like that - and probably a bit more respect.''

Until the weekend editions of Britain's scandal-hungry tabs appear tomorrow, the Dokic rags-to-rishes story will just have to do.

Though world number 129 Dokic was not totally unknown - she and Mark Philippoussis won the Hopman Cup for Australia in January - for Brits who see tennis only in terms of the two-week Wimbledon fortnight, every tidbit is new and fresh.

While the shock exit of Hingis was good while it lasted - the reported split with her mother may have also involved Dokic with Melanie Molitor wanting to add the Aussie to a new training scheme she was hoping to begin - the fresh material provided by Dokic and her family is just too good to pass up.

The tabloids made a meal out of the bread and cheese dinners purchased from a nearly supermarket in Putney, the suburb nearest to to Wimbledon.

One BBC commantator, perhaps getting caught up in the spirit of downmarket, referred to the family's business hotel accomodations as a ''bordello.''

Prompt and profuse apologies on the air still may not be enough to head off the inevitable lawsuits from the chain, which has more than 200 British properites on the low end of the price scale in perhaps Europe's most expensive country.

The saga of the Dokic Hotel Hovel was in contrast to the 4,500 sterling per week house in Wimbledon rented for the fortnight by the beaten Hingis.

After her loss, the Swiss decamped - but still had to pay the full two-week rental of nearly 20,000 dollars. By Thursday, the gleeful homeowners were back in their property counting their windfall.

The home is near those being rented by Anna Kournikova and Boris Becker. But Becker is a braces-and-belt man. In addition to the home, he also rents a hotel suite in London's Kensington area.

The arrival in town of opera superstar Luciano Pavarotti forced the Becker camp to move from the penthouse floor, according to news reports.

British breakfast television is also into tennis for the moment. The big breakfast on Channel 4 is using it's own ''grunt-o-meter'' to measure the volume of the on-court exertions of some of the louder women players.

The show also played musical umpire chairs on Monday, with one lucky contestant from the famed Wimbledon ticket queue winning the chance to go to the front and buy a decent ticket.

DPA