More Aussie Love For Baby K

A LOOOONG article on our little mascot.

This made me LOL:

How extraordinary. The idea of media as friend. Then again, Ivanovic is not so much glass half-full as jug overflowing. She thinks the rain is a quaint part of Wimbledon. She helped the ballboy struggling with her huge bouquet of flowers at Roland Garros, and - as much as she would like to - is too embarrassed to approach the great Roger Federer to chat about the difficulties of staying at the top of the game.

Baby K waxing poetic again:

"The best compliment I can get is when someone says you're a nice person, because no matter what you achieve or the way you look or anything it wears out and what you're left (with) is personality and how you actually are deep inside, and that's something you want to be well known for," she says. "But I think when I'm on the court I become with a killer instincts, a real Scorpio I can see! When I'm very motivated and when I have to compete I change a little bit, I become very competitive."

And for the first time, a peek into AI's mindset during and after her slump:

"I learnt a lot about myself on and off the court, because once I was injured I was still 24 hours a day thinking about tennis, 'What shall I do? Shall I improve something or can I practise today?' and it was just very overwhelming for me and I found it very hard to deal with, because I'm a very emotional person as well, so when I wasn't thinking constantly about it it was bothering me, because I couldn't do anything about it, and it was kind of draining me."

Then, when Ivanovic resumed, she was horrified to discover that all she wanted was to get away. Her solution was to try to relax; to still practise at full throttle, but then escape with a film or shopping expedition, anything "just have your mind off tennis, because for a few months I was basically thinking 24 hours a day about tennis and what I could do to improve. I was just too stressed."

Now Ivanovic is herself again: the sunny eldest child of a Belgrade businessman (Miroslav) and lawyer (Dragana) who has added an $8million home on the Spanish resort island of Majorca to her principle base in Basel and the family residence in Belgrade. But although the season has just begun, her game is still not quite what it was, at least on the evidence from this week's Brisbane International, where she struggled through two matches and lost the third, badly, to veteran Amelie Mauresmo before heading to Melbourne to spend the week on the practice court.

In the words of one insider she is still suffering from some "serious growing pains", as she deals with the pressures of life at the top. In Queensland, for all her protestations about being happy with her first two matches, she never looked settled, or comfortable, serving poorly and alternately struggling to clear the net or spraying balls erratically, later saying she had been feeling unwell. She has split, for now, with coach Sven Groeneveld. Interesting times.