After the Croatian teen-ager Mirjana Lucic accused her father and coach, Marinko, of physically and mentally terrorizing her for the past 10 years while grooming her for tennis stardom, she has fled to the United States with her mother and four siblings. Mirjana Lucic is, on the eve of the United States Open, seeking a restraining order to prevent him from interfering with her when she competes there next week.
Lucic has told her management firm, Advantage International, that she made her decision to leave her father and come to the United States after they had a dispute during Wimbledon in which he struck her and her mother, Anjelka.
Besides physically disciplining her for any perceived setbacks she had on the court, where he had made it clear that she should settle for nothing less than becoming the world's No. 1 player, Lucic also alleged that her father and his nephew, Milan Lucic, stole some of her prize money.
The 16-year-old Lucic, ranked 50th in the world, made her accusations in the Croatian newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija on Monday. ''There have been more beatings than anyone can imagine,'' she said, adding that it was ''too dangerous'' for her to remain in Croatia. She said that she also feared for the safety of her mother and her older sister, Ana. The three other Lucic siblings are younger than Mirjana.
In a letter that appeared yesterday in the Zagreb newspaper Vecenji List, Marinko Lucic, a decathlete who competed in the Olympics for the former Yugoslavia, denied beating or mistreating Lucic as a reaction to poor tennis results. He insisted that she was being manipulated by an unnamed third party with vested interests in her career.
''I never used excessive force,'' Marinko Lucic wrote, ''and if I did give her the occasional slap, it was because of her behavior; I did what I believe was best for my child.'' He added that he wanted her to become a role model like Pete Sampras, Steffi Graf and Monica Seles -- all of whom have held the No. 1 ranking.
Marinko Lucic, who composed his letter with the help of a lawyer, Mate Matic, also denied that he and Milan Lucic had wrongfully extracted money from his daughter. According to Marinko Lucic, Milan Lucic, a wealthy businessman, had sponsored Mirjana and supported the rest of her family, paying their living costs and making repairs to their home in Makarska while she trained and traveled on the junior circuit.
Mirjana Lucic and her family arrived in the United States in early July, and this month she played a tournament in San Diego. She spent the past two weeks training for the United States Open at the Bollettieri Sports Academy in Bradenton, Fla. She implied that she plans to settle in the United States and said that the office of Senator Alphonse M. D'Amato, Republican of New York, had assisted her in obtaining travel visas for her family.
This week Mirjana Lucic asked Ivan Brixby, her agent at Advantage, to help her find legal assistance in New York, presumably to facilitate a restraining order against her father. ''It's a very serious matter,'' Brixby said yesterday, ''and many issues are still outstanding.''
Croatia's top female player, Eva Majoli, who was a Fed Cup teammate of Lucic's, said Lucic appeared to have a troubled relationship with her father. ''She wasn't allowed to do anything during Fed Cup, she always had to be with him,'' Majoli said. ''He never let her be with her teammates, never let her go out to the movies or anything. It seemed like when he was around she was a different person and she was afraid.''
Lucic arrived in New York late Wednesday and practiced yesterday at the Open's site in Queens with Red Ayme, a coach Bollettieri provided.
Her representatives have had discussions with the WTA Tour about banning Marinko Lucic from events his daughter enters. A precedent-setting ban was enacted against Jim Pierce, the father of Mary Pierce, after he was ejected from the 1993 French Open for punching a fan. The sanction against Jim Pierce, whose history of abusive behavior against his daughter, her opponents and others was well-documented, was partially lifted in January to allow him to pursue work as a coach. But he is still not permitted any contact with his daughter at tournament sites.
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