Andrea Petkovic

Andrea Petkovic (Andrea Petković, ǎndrea pêtkoʋitɕ; born 9 September 1987) is a German former professional tennis player. Born in Tuzla, SFR Yugoslavia, to Serbian father Zoran and Bosniak mother Amira, she moved to Germany at six months old and turned professional in 2006 at the age of 18. A former top-10 player, Petkovic reached a career-high singles ranking of world No. 9 on 10 October 2011, becoming the first German female player ranked inside the top 10 since Steffi Graf in 1999. That year, she played in the quarterfinals of three Grand Slam tournaments as well as a Premier Mandatory final at the China Open, and qualified as an alternate to the WTA Tour Championships. Petkovic suffered three separate injuries in 2012: a back injury in January, an ankle injury in August and a knee injury in December that kept her out for nine months, and almost saw her fall out of the top 200. She rebounded in 2014 by reaching her first Grand Slam semifinal at the 2014 French Open and later winning the WTA Tournament of Champions at the end of the season. Petkovic has won seven WTA Tour singles titles and one doubles title, as well as nine ITF singles and three ITF doubles titles. Petkovic became the German national champion in 2007 and 2009. Andrea Petkovic was born in Tuzla, SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, SFR Yugoslavia. When she was six months old, the family relocated to Germany. Petkovic first took to the tennis courts when she was six; her father Zoran Petković, former Yugoslav tennis player and member of the Yugoslavia Davis Cup team, was a coach at a club in Darmstadt at the time. He introduced her to the sport and later became her coach. She was able to finish high school before competing in tennis full-time because Zoran never pressured her into joining the professional circuit. Apart from tennis, she likes to educate herself by reading; her favourite authors are Goethe and Wilde. Her mother Amira is a dental assistant while her younger sister Anja is a student. Petkovic graduated from high school in 2006 with an Abitur from the Georg-Büchner-Schule in Darmstadt.