Ana IVANOVIC

Ana Ivanovic took up tennis at 5 years old, watching Monica Seles on television.

Back then, the young girl from Belgrade, who trained against the bombings of the Bosnian War, never imagined she would one day become the number one player in the world. In 2008, the lovely Serbian finally achieved her dream at age 20. At Roland-Garros, to be precise. Her powerful serve – she is 6 feet tall after all – and her unusually effective forehand helped her outplay the best in the game. At the conclusion of the fortnight, Ivanovic had dropped just one set ‒ to Jelena Jankovic, the world's number three player. In the final, she won a battle of nerves against Dinara Safina, who would never recover from it. The icing on the cake: the day after her Roland-Garros triumph, she found herself atop the world rankings.At just 20 years old, she did not yet know that it would be her most accomplished season. Ana Ivanovic would never know such heights again, eking out a few more less prestigious titles (15 in all), punctuated by bad patches attributable to her physical travails. Recognising that she would never return to top form, Ana Ivanovic threw in the towel in 2016, at 28, to start a new life with her footballer husband and their children. Ajde Ana!