Back to Basics for Mirjana Lucic in 2011.

2011 Player to Watch - Mirjana Lucic

Half a lifetime ago – at the age of 14 – Mirjana Lucic won seven consecutive matches in her first-ever professional tennis tournament in December of 1996, losing to 12^th-ranked Chanda Rubin in the final.

The tournament was an off-the-beaten-path ITF stop in Austria, and Lucic came through the qualifying as a wild card. It would be a peek at what was come for Lucic over the next few years of her career.

She would log in a 33-6 record on tour in 1997, and record wins over top 10 stars Mary Pierce and Amanda Coetzer. In 1999, Lucic made an inspiring run to the semifinals of Wimbledon by knocking out Monica Seles along the way and reaching a career-high ranking of No. 41 in the world.

And that was all before her 18^th birthday.

Lucic is perhaps the oldest member of the Players to Watch series, but she whole-heartedly deserves to be on the list. After eight years of struggling with family controversy, the Croatian 28-year-old is knocking on the door of the top 100 for the first time in nearly a decade.

Over the course of eight years – between 2000 and 2007 – Lucic won just 34 tournament matches (one more than her total as a 15-year-old in 1997) and was marred by family difficulties, including an estrangement from her father that oftentimes came under public scrutiny.

Earlier this year, I spoke to Lucic for the The New York Times and she told me, “Once you’ve played in the big stadiums and then you go to court No. 39 or whatever and have no umpires, it sucks. It sucks big time. But I have the chance to be here again.”

Lucic was speaking at the U.S. Open, where she qualified for play after a heroic first-round qualifying win in which she saved five match points and went on to the second round of the main draw where she fell to Jelena Jankovic in three hard-fought sets.

That imagined “court No. 39” is where most of Lucic’s comeback has been assembled. She’s carved her way through backwater places like Cuneo, Italy, Jackson, Miss., and Albuquerque, N.M., the latter is where she won a title in late September.

“I feel great,” Lucic said in the same Times interview. “I’ve been working so hard. The last couple of years I’ve been playing small tournaments and playing qualifying matches and losing and struggling. It’s nothing more than confidence. I’ve always worked hard, but nothing can give you confidence more than wins.”

This time around, there are few tournament promoters handing a burgeoning teenager wild cards into qualifying or the main draw. Lucic will turn 30 in less than a year and a half, and the Croat who resides in Florida seems happy to put in the leg work to make it back to the top.

“I’m still 28. I have enough time to do what I want to do,” Lucic said at the Open.

And if her latest results are any indication, what she wants to do, it seems, is just play some tennis, and win some matches.

Nick McCarvel is a freelance writer based in New York City. He co-edits the tennis fashion blog Tennis Served Fresh.