12 months ago, Ana Ivanovic had reached the end of her very patient tether. She was in Melbourne for Australian Open 2010, her favourite tournament of the year, and everything was going wrong. Still going wrong. Dumped out in the second round by the narrowest of margins against Gisela Dulko, the then 22-year-old Serb was once again left examining how she had come so close and yet so far from winning more than a match or two at a Grand Slam.
“Things were just not happening and I could not move from ground zero, and I just felt I was in a vicious circle I couldn’t break it,” Ivanovic revealed.
It had, of course, all been going so right. It took Ivanovic just three years to rise seamlessly to the top of the game, leaping from the top 100 in 2004 to the top 20 in 2005, and the top 5 in 2007. Runner-up at the French Open 2007 and Australian Open 2008, the next logical step was a first Grand Slam title. That plopped into her lap at Roland Garros that year, the world No.1 ranking accompanying her maiden Grand Slam triumph. Ivanovic was on top of the world.
But in the months following her triumph in Paris, the young Serb seemed to fall more and more apart with every single day, literally and figuratively. Dogged by minor injuries of varying degrees of severity, she survived two rounds at Wimbledon 2008 thanks only to a stroke of the net, then missed the Olympics, withdrawing in tears. Plummeting out of the top 50, and approaching the wrong end of the top 100 as fast as any of the world’s bullet trains, she seemed not to know where to turn for help.
“I always felt I was close, but then at the important moments, like 30-all, or deuce, or break point, I could never win those points,” she explained.
But tennis, like any sport, can turn on its head in the blink of an eye. 2010 may have started terribly, but it ended well, so well, that Ivanovic didn’t want it to stop.
“Once we started the summer in the States I just felt a lot different. I felt more confident, I got a lot fitter, and that was when the change started to happen. Sometimes you need time, and that’s what I learnt. To manage to break through in Cincinnati and win that tough match with Azarenka in the first round, that was the kind of breakthrough match for me.”
And now, here she is, in Melbourne, looking leaner, fitter, and most importantly, happier. “I love the Australian Open, I feel really comfortable playing here,” she said at the Hopman Cup last week. “I’m really just trying to enjoy. I spoke to lots of people who stop after their career and they just regret that they didn’t enjoy it and they were so stressed about it, so in a way it’s good that I went through the bad times and realised the difference and how important it is to enjoy the process.”
Despite giving herself a minor injury scare at the Hopman Cup, where she was forced to withdraw from the final having torn a muscle in her stomach, one of Ivanovic’s major boons coming into the year’s first Slam is her improved fitness.
“I’m in really good shape comparing to previous years and that’s something that inspires and motivates me,” she said. Losing approximately five kilograms as a result of sheer hard work, Ivanovic looked considerably faster during her Hopman Cup matches, something she attributes to an improved fitness programme. “I did a lot of footwork drills and a lot of jumps, that’s something my fitness coach felt I could improve a lot on and get that explosiveness. I did not like that part but that’s always the case. I better not talk too much about what I don’t like or I get more of it,” she laughed, indicating the proximity of her fitness coach.
The Belgrade native is also enjoying a new coaching partnership, this time with the experienced Antonio Van Grichen, who has worked with Vera Zvonareva and Victoria Azarenka, to name but a few. “He’s a very nice guy and he’s been around the women’s tour for a while so he does know the women’s game. He makes me work hard,” she explained.
Add to that a relaxed and happy approach to the game, fuelled in particular by the presence of childhood friend and fellow Barbie and Ken fan Novak Djokovic in Perth, and you have yourselves an older and wiser Ivanovic, but not one who has lost her youthful passion for the game.
The fairytale end to her resurgence would, of course, be a second Grand Slam title here in Melbourne, and she is keen to consider herself a “black horse” for this year’s Daphne Ackhurst trophy.
“I’ve set myself some goals, and I’m really positive I can achieve them. I really believe that I can actually win a Grand Slam this year, that would be my biggest goal, and obviously then to get back into the top 10. It’s going to be a lot of hard work and might not happen in a week or a month, but it might.”
