After falling from No. 1, Ana Ivanovic returns

The left fist that Ana Ivanovic kept clenching at the French Open as she collected winners and victories got much less use the rest of the season.
 
Ivanovic's first Grand Slam singles title, which came in Paris in June, may yet prove to be a springboard to more major trophies, but it was no ticket to the stratosphere in 2008.
 
She lost in the third round at Wimbledon and would have lost a round earlier if not for an improbable net-cord winner that left her opponent, Nathalie Dechy, dumbfounded on match point.
 
But the fates have been much more evenhanded since then. Ivanovic went on to develop cysts in her wrist and lost six of her next 11 matches, missed the Olympics and surrendered the top ranking to Jelena Jankovic, her fellow Serb, before pulling herself back together in Linz, Austria, last month by winning another tournament.
 
"I really enjoyed playing as No.1; I was feeling only good pressure, but I was really unlucky, and it was very tough for a few months of my career, not being able to practice for about a month," she said in a telephone interview from Linz. "When I came back and started playing, I wanted to play at the level I was at the French Open but obviously it wasn't possible."
 
"So a lot of frustration came in and obviously a few disappointments," she added, "and I realized to come back takes time, and you need to stay strong and keep working the way you've been working and just be patient with yourself. I'm starting to feel my game back and am enjoying again to be competing and to be actually 100 percent healthy."
 
It has been a hot-and-cold year for Ivanovic, who will be 21 on Thursday, but what has not flickered is her ability to treat her interlocutors with respect. That fist clench is hardly to all her opponents' tastes, but there is no menace in her elsewhere, not even when asked to confirm reports that she is dating the Spanish player Fernando Verdasco.
 
"Um, well, that's kind of my private life," she replied politely. "We have very good relations."
 
Sven Groeneveld, her main coach, said that her good manners come from her education.
 
'It's upbringing, the family background, and I think it's the values that are instilled from a very young age," he said. "That's the way they are."
 
The roots of Ivanovic's career extend back to the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, when Serbia became an international pariah. The conflict and the privations it brought in Belgrade were why Ivanovic was forced to practice in an abandoned swimming pool whose narrow walls gave her little incentive to run too wide for a shot. The war and its aftermath were also the reason she needed a benefactor, the Swiss businessman Dan Holzmann, who came to the financial rescue when she was 15 and her parents were running out of resources to fund her promising career.
 
"She was a sweet girl, a little different than the others," Holzmann said earlier this season. "You saw she had this natural beauty, and I thought at that time, as every businessman would think: 'Okay, she's a nice girl. She's sympathetic. She looks good. She plays good tennis, so it could be something.' I just counted one and one, didn't make a long research."
 
He said he asked a friend, the former German player Carl-Uwe Steeb, to scout Ivanovic before deciding to start sending money.
 
"Charlie said she had talent," he said, "and that was the last piece of the puzzle that was missing, because I'm not too good in tennis to decide if somebody is good."
 
Holzmann, who funded Ivanovic's career on a month-to-month basis at first, remains her business manager, and there has been much business to do since her French Open breakthrough.
 
The consensus is that Ivanovic, despite reaching No.1 behind her bolt of a forehand and improved fitness, is still a work in progress.
 
"I think the serve can get better," said Harold Solomon, the veteran coach and former top player. "Ana's footwork can still get better, too. She's not the most gifted speed-wise and footwork-wise."
 
"She needs to be in control of points," he added, "she can't afford to have someone else dictating."
 
But Ivanovic clearly has no work to do on her image in Serbia, where her success and that of Jankovic and the men's star Novak Djokovic have set off a tennis boom.
 
"It's an amazing change to see," Ivanovic said. "When I go for a walk to visit my relatives or grandparents, all I see are the kids carrying tennis rackets around. It's like a new fashion."
 
She said the empty pool still exists and "kids are still practicing in it."
 
"I think we still don't have enough facilities for these young kids or enough coaches," she said. "And I think that's unfortunate because there are many, many talented kids. Myself, I would love to help them and get involved somehow, because these kids are very motivated and now they see it is actually possible."