Ivanovic first picked up a racket at the age of five after watching Monica Seles, a fellow Yugoslav, on television. She started her career after memorizing the telephone number of a local tennis clinic from an advertisement. During the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, 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 no tennis facilities were available. At 13 she moved to train in Basel, Switzerland, because of the better training facilities and coaching. Manager Dan Holzmann was living in Basel, and Ana and her mother moved to Switzerland when she signed an agreement with the Swiss entrepreneur.
