Ana Ivanovic started to play tennis when she was only 5, after being inspired by Monica Seles (by watching TV), also a Serbian player. It was a hard task for Ana who had to practice in the early morning in 1999 in order to avoid the NATO bombing and during the winter time she used to use a abandoned swimming pool, due to the lack of tennis facilities.
She was first noticed by the
tennis world when she reached the final of the 2004 Junior Wimbledon tournament, losing to Kateryna Bondarenko.
The next tear, Ivanovic won her first career singles title, as a qualifier, in Canberra, Australia, (by defeating Melinda Czink in straight sets, 7-5, 6-1). That was a beginning of a string of successes; she defeated Svetlana Kuznetsova, Nadia Petrova, Vera Zvonareva the same year,all of them being WTA top 10 players by that time.
She finished off 2006 as the 14th best ranked woman in the world. In 2007 her career continued to climb. She entered in the selected group of the top 5 world tennis players (she finished 4th just 14 points shy of Jeleba Jankovic). And as the winter of 2008, after losing the Australian Open final to Sharapova, she claimed the second WTA spot. To note that she eliminated in the “quarters” Venus Williams. She was only 21 years old.
In 2008, she became the first Serbian and third Yugoslav woman ever to win a Grand Slam singles title (the others being Mima Jausovec and Seles) when she won the French Open, defeating Dinara Safina in the final.
On September 8, 2007, Ivanovic became a UNICEF National Ambassador for Serbia, alongside Aleksandar Ðordevic and Emir Kusturica. She takes a special interest in the fields of education and child protection. Ivanovic visited a primary school in Serbia during her inauguration and said: “I’m also looking forward to going into the classroom and meeting many kids. Likes watching movies (especially thrillers) either at the cinema or on DVD at home; also likes to read (especially about history and Greek mythology)
Ivanovic confirmed in November 2008 that she was in a relationship with the Spanish tennis player Fernando Verdasco
Mother, Dragana, is a lawyer; father, Miroslav, is a businessman; brother, Milos, is four years Ana’s junior, and likes playing basketball; all the family likes sports, but none played tennis before Ana
0 comments:
Post a Comment