There's no place better than South Beach to soak up some rays and forget the past. Petkovic, meanwhile, is into the quarterfinals, where she'll play Jelena Jankovic, who happens to be a good friend.
The secret of Petkovic's success may be that she is actually a stealth Serbian -- by birth. She was born in Bosnia, but raised almost entirely in Germany, where her father played professional tennis and coached after the war heated up. She grew up playing with the Serbs in juniors and feels a close connection to them. She, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic were all born in the same year, 1987.
Ivanovic and Petkovic are playing doubles together here and have side bets -- $5 for an ace or a set-ending shot, $3 for a particularly good volley -- and Petkovic happily told the media that they pay each other during changeovers.
"Because otherwise, you can sneak out and then it's gone, the money," Petkovic said, causing the attending WTA communications official to visibly grimace.