Ana Ivanovic Playing style

Ivanovic is an offensive baseliner. Her game relies heavily on the power, depth and placement of her forehand strokes, producing lots of winners through penetrating, flat shots, with the occasional spice of topspin. Her net play is not used as often, but her volleys are generally well executed, as are her drop shots. Her two-handed backhand is solid, but given sufficient time, she usually reverts to an inside-out forehand or a one-handed slice backhand instead. She has a huge but inconsistent serve, although she has been known for hitting aces on her second serve; she has won one-sided matches with a first serve percentage of below 40% but makes it up through her well-timed aces.

In spite of her height Ivanović has good court coverage and has been noticeably working on her fitness, which has highly improved her movement around the court. Ivanović often describes her own playing as "point by point", a mindset that has provided memorable comebacks in matches that seemed to be lost. On the other hand, her performances suffer with ups and downs on her level of playing from one match to another, and not rarely on the same one. Ivanović also tends to show difficulty in adapting and changing her strategy when not in control of the game. Overall, her style is suitable for all surfaces; Ivanović, however, prefers to play on clay courts. This is probably due to clay courts being the slowest of those played on each year, which allows her more time to reach shots from her opponents and aim up an attacking groundstroke of her own. Although it is harder to hit through opponents on clay due to the tendency of the ball to hold up off the surface, Ivanović has the necessary power to overcome a great deal of this disadvantage. As a result, she was able to use this to great effect during her run to the 2007 Roland Garros final.