About the career
Began playing at age eight...Father, Tomislav; mother, Davorka; brothers Zeljko and Mladen...Speaks Croatian and English...Enjoys music, movies, table tennis and video games...Childhood idol was countryman Goran Ivanisevic...Considers hard court indoor his favorite and his serve as favorite shot...Physical trainer is Stjepan Medak and coached by Martin Stepanek.
2012
Ivan finished in the Top 75 for 2nd straight year and best ATP World Tour result was Valencia SF. Also QF in Zagreb and at London/Queen's Club where he defeated No. 5 Tsonga in 3rd set TB (l. to Querrey)...In Grand Slam play, won only match at US Open (d. Moriya, l. to eventual champion Murray)... Represented his country in Davis Cup (1-2), World Team Cup (1-2) and Olympics (1R)...Went 1-3 vs. Top 10 opponents and compiled records of 10-14 on hard, 3-4 on grass and 3-8 on clay.
2011
At the 2011 Australian Open, Dodig played Ivo Karlović in the 1st round and prevailed in a tough five set match. He was then drawn to play 3rd seed and eventual champion Novak Djokovic in the second round. He played extremely well, and although he lost in four sets he was the only player to win a set against Djokovic in the whole tournament.
He followed this up with a surprise first tournament win in front of his home crowd at the 2011 PBZ Zagreb Indoors beating last year's finalist Michael Berrer.
He then made a second round appearance at the 2011 Regions Morgan Keegan Championships, losing to the comeback kid Juan Martin del Potro. Dodig then reached the quarterfinals at the 2011 Delray Beach International Tennis Championships after beating Kunitsyn and Sela, before losing to Janko Tipsarević
First round action in the Davis Cup, a showdown between Croatia vs Germany, saw Dodig up against Kohlschreiber, but he succumbed to the German in five sets. The loss proved costly as Germany went on to prevail 3–2 in the tie to move on to the quarterfinals.
At the 2011 Sony Ericsson Open he beat Andrey Golubev in the first round. However, he lost to World No.4 Robin Söderling despite being up 4–2 in the third set.
At the 2011 Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters, he bowed out to World No.29 Tommy Robredo in the first round.
Dodig then found some good form heading into the 2011 Barcelona Open Banco Sabadell tournament. In the opening round he beat Vincent Millot before beating No.3 seed and last year's finalist Robin Söderling. He then went on to claim hard fought scalps over fast-rising Canadian Milos Raonic and home favourite Feliciano Lopez to reach the semifinals of a clay-court tournament for the first time in his career. However in the semifinals, he was inevitably stopped by five-time champion and eventual champion for the 6th time, World No.1 Rafael Nadal who is still yet to lose a match on Barcelona soil. Despite breaking twice as he broke once in each set to hang on with Nadal, Dodig eventually fell after giving a decent fight, which added to the Spaniard's current winning streak on clay.
In the second round of the Rogers Cup, Dodig stunned world no. 2 Rafael Nadal, 1–6, 7–6, 7–6 after recovering from a 1–6, 1–3 deficit before losing to Janko Tipsarevic in the third round.
On 30 August 2011, in the US Open first round Dodig lost to Nikolay Davydenko in a closely fought five sets match.
2010 Ivan Dodig finished in Top 100 for first time at a year-end best No. 88, highlighted by his second career ATP World Tour QF in Stockholm (l. to Ljubicic) as a qualifer…Qualified five times during season, including Australian Open, Wimbledon and US Open, reaching second round each time…
At the 2010 Australian Open he qualified for the main tournament, and beat former World No. 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero in the first round 2–6, 1–6, 6–4, 6–1, 6–1. However, he bowed out to Stefan Koubek in the second round.
Dodig then had a pretty average year, playing many Challenger tournaments throughout the year. He failed to qualify for 2010 French Open, but he had notably reached the second round at 2010 Wimbledon Championships beating Óscar Hernández before stretching Sam Querrey to four tough sets. He also reached the second round at the 2010 US Open after beating Fernando Gonzalez who retired with a knee injury, but Dodig retired himself with an injury against Thiemo de Bakker.
2009
By the year 2009, Ivan was now firmly on the challenger tour , in fact he managed to win his first professional title in the Sarajevo challenger raising his ranking and helping him qualify for a spot in the Croation Open in 2009. Ivan finally put it all together and won 3 matches in a row to reach the quarterfinals and knock off 3 top 50 guys at the time ( Gulbis, Andreev,and Ancic)
2007
In 2007 ivan started to qualify and win matches at the challenger level. In fact, Ivan won 2 doubles titles at the Challenger level and reached a couple of semis and quarters, raising his world ranking to 256 by the year 2008! Ivan then went on to qualify for a major ATP event in Marseille, and qualified to play none other than Novak Djokovic in his first pro level match.
... time before
Ivan started playing tennis when he was 8 years old and as soon as he picked up a racket he knew he loved the sport. He loved the competition and he had a natural talent for the game. As Ivan started to play and do well in tournaments he decided to dedicate himself to the game. Unfortunately the closest training facility was a 3 hour walk! So every morning Ivan would get up at 6am and make the 3 hour walk to practice at 9am.
The hard work and dedication paid off and Ivan started playing professionally in 2002 when he was 17 years old. He started out playing satellite and futre tourneys trying top work his way to the top. The road to the top was very hard for Ivan and required him to endure some rough situations. Playing on the satellite tour usually means playing in some strange places, not having any money , and unfortunately for Ivan , he even had to sleep in his car some nights just to be able to afford the travel expenses required to get to the next tournament.
Ivan played all over the world, even participating in some tournaments in Afrika! His persistance and focus finally started to shine through in the summer of 2005. Ivan won his first future tourney and then won his second title in Nigeria to break the top 500 in the ATP world rankings.
