Surging Serb

S.L. Price

June 11, 2007

On March 24, 1999, 11-year-old Ana Ivanovic was on a Belgrade tennis court when she heard that NATO planes were on their way to bomb the Serbian capital to stop the Serbs' killing of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. She remembers huddling with her family in a relative's cellar that night. "That was a little bit scary," Ivanovic says. "The next day we moved everything into one room on the ground floor." The bombing lasted 78 nights, but if Ivanovic, now 19, has any scars, they don't show. Ever smiling, she used her crackling forehand to reach the quarters of the French Open with fellow Serbs Jelena Jankovic and Novak Djokovic. Tennis's Serbian Surge has given her nation some of its best news in years. "It's a great feeling," Ivanovic says, "to represent our country."