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THE
BIOGRAPHY OF ANA IVANOVIC - ONCE A PROMISING STAR... NOW, THE NEW
TENNIS SUPERSTAR!
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Ana Ivanovic (born November 6, 1987, in Belgrade,
Serbia, then Yugoslavia) is a Serbian professional
tennis player. She is the current World No. 1 on the
WTA Tour.
In 2008, she became the first Serbian and third
woman related to Yugoslavia ever to win a Grand Slam
singles title (the others being Mima Jaušovec and
Mónika Szeles) when she won the French Open,
defeating Dinara Safina in the final. She has
reached two other Grand Slam finals in her career:
at the 2007 French Open (losing to Justine Henin)
and the 2008 Australian Open (losing to Maria
Sharapova).
Ivanović was born in an ethnic Serbian family. Her
mother, Dragana, a lawyer, attends all of her
daughter's matches. Ana's father, Miroslav, who is a
self-employed businessman, attends as many events as
he possibly can. Ana has a younger brother, Miloš,
with whom she loves to play basketball. Other
hobbies include shopping, watching movies and
playing Sudoku. Ivanović's uncle is a former
football player. She chooses not to have a permanent
coach. Aside from her tennis career, Ivanović also
studies finance at a university in Belgrade, and
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Spanish in her spare time. One of her uncles lives
in Melbourne, Australia. Her inspiration to begin
playing was Monica Seles, and she also admires Roger
Federer.
On September 8, 2007, Ivanović has become a UNICEF
National Ambassador for Serbia, alongside Aleksandar
Đorđević and Emir Kusturica. She takes a special
interest in the fields of education and child
protection. Ivanović 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."
Ivanović is a fan of all sport clubs competing under
the name of Partizan Belgrade.
Ivanović is friends with former doubles partner
Maria Kirilenko, as well as other professional
tennis players Daniela Hantuchova, Svetlana
Kuznetsova, Sanja Ancic, Rafael Nadal, Tatiana
Golovin and fellow Serbians Novak Djokovic (whom she
has known since the age of 5) and Janko Tipsarević. |
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Ivanović picked up a racket at the age of 5 after watching
Monica Seles, a fellow Yugoslavian, at Roland Garros on
television. She started her promising career at the age of
5, after memorizing the number of a local tennis clinic from
an ad on TV. During her training she encountered the NATO
bombings in 1999, where she would have to train in the
morning to avoid them. Later on she admitted she would train
in an abandoned swimming pool in the winter, as there were
no other facilities. When she was 15, Ivanović spent four
hours in the locker room crying after a defeat - the first
that her new manager had watched - because she thought that
Dan Holzmann was going to drop her because she felt that she
wasn't good enough to become a professional tennis player.
He has stayed as her manager to this day. |
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