Ana Ivanovic - the New Wta World Number One

So Paris has a new queen and her name is Ana Ivanovic; her tennis history begins in Belgrade, Serbia where she was born 20-years ago…her early days in the sport were very difficult due to the constant war issues her country was going through but none of this could stop Ana from achieving her dream to become a professional tennis player. By the age of 5 she was already practicing tennis and some years later in 2004 Ana made her debut at the Junior Wimbledon tournament where she caught the attention of many in the tennis world.

As she moved forward Ana began to show her natural talent as she overcame players such Venus Williams, Tatiana Golovin, Amelie Mauresmo and Nadia Petrova; by the end of 2005 Ana had reached the 16th position in the WTA world ranking. But it was in 2007 when Ana really had her breakthrough as she had an excellent performance at the Australian Open followed by her first Tier I clay court title at the Qatar Telecom German Open and she reached her very first Grand Slam final at the French Open where she played the recently retired Justin Henin who defeated Ana by 6–1, 6–2 and such performance catapulted her to the world number four position by the end of 2007.

Then Ana began this year by participating in several events as she approached the Australian Grand Slam where she reached the finals and played Maria Sharapova who defeated Ana in a very close match; both women knew this to be of great importance for their careers as it would have been Ana’s first Grand Slam title and for Sharapova her true come back to the number one position which she was not able to retain for long as the Belgium Justin Henin was number one for more than 140 weeks. 

Nevertheless; Justin’s announces her sudden retirement and Sharapova becomes the world’s number one tennis player but again her days were already counted as Ana fought her way to the finals at the recent Roland Garros where she defeated Dinara Safina in three sets.  This was a match that many will call magical as both players Ana and Dinara produced the best tennis we could have expected. At the same time we see how Ana keeps growing strong and her game unfolds smooth in all surfaces; but it was Paris that delivered Ana’s childhood dream a very well deserved one by the way.

Now that Ana is at the top there is obviously more pressure on her and her game style as she will need to prove she is good on all surfaces…and this is how she approaches Wimbledon as she states "For sure, I want to go to Wimbledon and win the title, because every tournament you play you want to win," Ivanovic said. "Obviously, now a lot of players will play their best tennis against me. But I still think I have a good chance. I've been working hard. So now I will relax a little bit, recover and also prepare on the grass before Eastbourne and Wimbledon”.

Despite the very demanding schedule tennis players such as Ana have to cope with…it is real pleasure to see Ana behaving on and off court as she makes the game look so easy while she tries to live a normal life doing what it is very evident that she adores which is to play good tennis and be the best she can.