TENNIS: All of a sudden and after a week of talk of Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer, a few other figures have emerged from the blizzard of names that arrived in Paris in hope. While Mario Ancic has been previously marked by his semi-final run at Wimbledon in 2004, Ivan Ljubicic has risen from relative obscurity to claim a top-five world ranking.
With Ancic seeded 12 and Ljubicic four, yesterday represented the best showing of Croatian players since they stopped playing under the Yugoslavian flag in 1991.
Ljubicic, who beat Argentinian Juan Monaco 6-4, 7-5, 3-6, 4-6, 2-6, and Ancic, who defeated Spain's Tommy Robredo 6-4, 4-6, 2-6, 6-4, 7-4, for quarter-final spots, both have reached these significant career points with varying degrees of difficulty.
Ljubicic became a victim of history and timing, when he was born in 1979 in the then Yugoslavian town of Banja Luka. By 12 years of age he had won his first junior title but the start of his rise to his current status coincided with the beginning of the disintegration of his country, a federation of republics with various ethnic groups and religions.
In 1992 war hit the republic in which he lived, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and soon Bosnian Serb forces, backed by the Yugoslav army and paramilitaries, began systematic ethnic cleansing.
As people they knew began to disappear, the Ljubicic family were forced to leave, though the father, Marko, was not allowed to go.
So 13-year-old Ivan, his mother and his three-year-old brother, Vladan, found themselves on a bus driving to the airport, where they took a plane for Belgrade, never to return.
"The plane landed in the morning and the families waited for a full day there waiting for another bus," said Ljubicic. "My brother and I did what our father told us and stayed by our mother the whole time. Finally, at midnight, we departed for Slovenia, through Hungary."
The women and children crossed the border on foot, entered a second bus and drove to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. The family remained there for a week until they were moved to the Adriatic town of Rijeka in Croatia.
After staying in Rijeka for a month, they finally ended up in the town of Opatija, in a hotel that had been adapted to accommodate refugees.
In April 1993, Ljubicic and seven other talented refugee players from Bosnia and Herzegovina were invited to study tennis in Italy.
He spent almost three years there and in 1995 won the Croatian championship.
Earlier this season Ljubicic broke through in Australia and made the quarter-finals. That run continued with eight finals and two titles.
Ancic's celebrity came easier, although his place in the quarterfinal did not. After vomiting at the side of the court yesterday, then cramping mid-game in the fifth set, he proceeded to defy all logic.
After leading 5-2 in the final set, Ancic took three points in the next three games as Robredo levelled 5-5. Finally the epic concluded 7-5 in the fifth in three hours 48 minutes.
Ancic now meets Roger Federer after the world number one defeated the 20th seed, Tomas Berdych, 6-2, 6-3, 6-3.
