Live Life Team
Ana Ivanovic was born in Belgrade, Serbia (then Yugoslavia) on 6th November 1987 but now resides in Basel, Switzerland. She was inspired at the age of five to become a tennis player while watching fellow Yugoslav Monica Seles on TV competing in the 1992 French Open.
During the NATO bombings in 1999, she practiced in the early mornings to avoid the attacks and at one point trained in an empty swimming pool through lack of facilities.
In 2004, Ana was runner-up to Keteryna Bondarenko in the final of the Junior Wimbledon tournament. After that, she went on the ITF circuit and won all her matches.
Ana won her first singles title in Canberra, Australia in 2005. She went on to beat several top ten players before reaching the quarter- finals of the French Open, the highest point of her career to that point. In 2006, she defeated Martina Hingis in Montreal and ended the year ranked 14th in the world.
In 2007, Ana reached her first Grand Slam final at the French Open but was defeated by the world Number One, Justine Henan. Her world ranking was four. The following year in Australia she beat Venus Williams for the first time, won the French Open and became the world’s Number 1 ranked female player.
The 2009 season has not been a successful one for the Serbian, having won no titles and having slipped to Number 22 in the world rankings. She says that this is through over-training and not taking a holiday.
