" Mirjana says her father, who declined to answer questions about the alleged abuse, would typically beat her with a heavy Timberland shoe, around her head and back so that there would be visible marks. "Sometimes my head would hurt so much I couldn't brush my hair for a week," Mirjana says. He would throw trophies and racquets, but the most chilling moment, Lucic says, came when she was 14, after a junior clay-court tournament in Milan. Mirjana had fallen during a training session and suffered nasty scrapes on her knees and head. She was so banged up doctors suggested she skip the tournament, but she played and made it to the semis before losing. She drove home with her father to the family's apartment in Zagreb, a few hours from the family's house in the seaside town of Makarska. When they arrived, she says her father - a former Olympic decathlete - hauled her into the bathroom, put her in the bathtub and beat her for 40 minutes with his shoe. When he was done, he gave her money. "He told me to go out and buy an ice cream," Lucic says. She did. Mirjana and her sister, Ana, say the police never came to the family's aid because their father is a powerful man in Croatia - both wealthy and well-connected. They say neighbors and friends never intervened, probably because they didn't know the extent of the abuse. By the early summer of 1998, Lucic had finally had enough. Days before the start of Wimbledon, a heated argument took place. Mirjana says her father threatened to kill her mother, and lunged at her, at which point Mirjana says she snapped, screaming, "Never again," cursing her father with every word she could think of. Mirjana and her mother bolted from the apartment where they were staying, and wound up running into Ivanisevic. She told him about the situation and he insisted they stay with him - three days of much-needed respite. "Goran saved my life," Mirjana says. Lucic made it to the third round at Wimbledon, and to the mixed doubles final, but the most momentous event of the summer happened on July 4, 1998, when Andelka Lucic and her five children snuck out of a hotel room in Zagreb at 2:30 in the morning. Into a waiting car they jumped, taking off for a hideout in the country, where they stayed for 19 days while they waited to get political asylum, a process facilitated by the office of former Sen. Alphonse D'Amato. Lucic was a no-show for an important Fed Cup match, and her whereabouts was front-page news. On July 23, they went to Zagreb Airport, flanked by a half-dozen men with guns, and flew to New York. "It was like something out of James Bond movie, except that it was our lives," Mirjana says. She says her father took all but $23,000 of the money she had earned in her burgeoning pro career. She says he has repeatedly told her since that he would ruin her career and force her to come crawling back to him. Upon arriving in the States, Lucic went to see a physician. She says she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Lucic's ordeal with IMG, according to her attorney, Kevin Ambler of Tampa, has almost been as harrowing, albeit in a different way. The relationship began amid great promise late in 1998, and has long since dissolved into harsh accusations, and his-and-her lawsuits - IMG suing for repayment of $83,000 it advanced Lucic and initiating foreclosure on her condominium in the tony, gated confines of the IMG Sports Academy here; Lucic counter-suing on the grounds that the agency not only breached its fiduciary responsibility, but "has been the instrument of Mirjana's systematic financial destruction since 1998.