KEY POINTS:
When New Zealand's top-ranked tennis player, Marina Erakovic, won her first round match against world No 90 Meilen Tu in January's ASB Classic, she seemed on the cusp of a breakthrough year.
Her second-round performance, although a defeat to No 36 Eleni Daniilidou, underlined her promise. The match went three sets, with Erakovic taking the second 6-2 before losing out in a gruelling battle.
Those two matches in January suggested she was at home playing against top-100 players. A few more good results would have lifted her ranking from an already career-high 147 into the top 100.
That would have opened the door to bigger tournaments, bigger opportunities to knock off elite players and gain precious ranking points, and bigger paydays.
It didn't happen. After losing in the second round of qualifying in the Australian Open a fortnight after the Classic, she embarked on a frustrating trip to the United States where she won just four of 15 matches.
After starting the trip attempting to qualify for Tier I WTA events such as Indian Wells, she quickly found herself enduring a string of first round exits at lower level ITF events.
Professional tennis truly rewards performance. Win and your star rises. Lose consistently and you'll fall out of the sky altogether. Erakovic was losing enough for it to be a worry.
"Sometimes you can get pretty down," she said at a brief promotional appearance at Auckland's Viaduct Harbour.
"I think I was at one stage. After you lose some close matches that maybe you should have won, your confidence gets a bit down. I'm sure a lot of players go through those patches. But I kept at it and worked hard.
"I always knew, there was that voice in the back of my head saying, 'this is going to pass'. That's what happened and I'm glad it did."
Her lean streak finally ended in July when she made consecutive finals in US$25,000 ($33,000) ITF tournaments in Spain. The results halted the slide. Her star was back on the rise.
The key to the turnaround, she says, was rediscovering the fun of the game.
"I think I just started to be a bit happier on the court. I wasn't happy at one stage. I didn't feel like being on the court. After losses you get to feeling like that. But I just started to open my mind a bit, feel happier and just enjoy it. That really helped."
Her biggest pay cheque of the year - US$7864 for winning two rounds of qualifying in the US in September - was followed by a swing through China where she twice won through three rounds of qualifying before losing in the first round of big money WTA events.
Once again, Erakovic had got close to that elusive breakthrough but fallen just short of the level that would make her a WTA regular.
This time she consolidated her form on the second tier tour. Her first title of the year came at a US$25,000 ITF event in Rockhampton, Australia. A week later she picked up another title in Gympie.
Her doubles form has also picked up, with the former US Open junior champion claiming three titles in 2007 to end the season with a career-high ranking of 198.
Last week she ended her roller-coaster year by making a semifinal in a US$75,000 event in Dubai, where she defeated world No 97 Akgul Amanmuradova 6-2 6-1 in the quarter-finals before losing in three sets to No 30 Russian Maria Kirilenko.
The parallels with Auckland in January were uncanny. Erakovic began and ended her year with a shot at a player ranked in the top 30. After a tumultuous 12 months, she's right back where she started - on the cusp of bigger and better things, with a ranking of 152.
"Once you are around that sort of area you have got to make some sort of big break, win a couple of rounds in a WTA tournament. That's what I'm aiming to do but it's not something I really focus on. Maybe at the start of this year I was thinking 'I've really got to break into that top 100'.
"Now, I'm really happy with the way I am playing and that is what I focus on. It was an up and down year and as it went along I think I started to play much better and have better results. So I'm very happy with the way things went in the end.
"This is what I want to do, I want to be a tennis player. You've just got to ride the highs and the lows and get through it. I am just so close. I know it is coming soon."
Her next shot at the big time will come in just under two weeks, when she has a wildcard entry into the main draw of the Classic.
The tournament begins on December 31.
