mighty aphrodite; Ana Ivanovicc's grace and power are getting her noticed on center court.

Byline: Robert Sullivan

You'd think Ana Ivanovicc came out of tennis from nowhere, born on a shell, like Venus, though not that Venus. But it's been a long time, at least by her estimate. "It's been fifteen years of hard work and practice, and now it is finally paying off," says Ivanovicc, the nineteen-year-old who made it to the finals at the French Open and the semifinals at Wimbledon this past summer. The road to center court started with a TV advertisement and the telephone number for a local tennis clinic, which she managed to memorize at the age of four and a half. In a few years she had coaches telling her parents that they had a winner on their hands, even if there were very few other Serbs to compare her with. "Growing up, I followed Monica Seles, but she moved to the States, so there really was no one to follow in Serbia," Ivanovicc says. "No one knew the way to the top." (Not even her tennis compatriot Novak Djokovicc, whom she's known since school days. "It's been great having someone to grow up with in ...