Ivanovic picked up a racket at the age of five after watching Monica Seles, a fellow Yugoslavian, on television during the 1992 French Open. She started her career after memorizing the number of a local tennis clinic from an advertisement. During her training she survived the NATO bombings in 1999. At the time, she was forced to train during the morning to avoid bombardments. Later, she admitted that she trained in an abandoned swimming pool in the winter, as there were no other facilities. When she was 15, Ivanovic spent four hours in the locker room crying after a defeat —the first that her new manager had watched. She thought that Dan Holzmann, the manager in question, was going to drop her because she felt that she was not good enough to become a professional tennis player. He has stayed her manager to this day.

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