Editor's note: Paul Goldstein will blog for ESPN.com twice a week during the French Open.
For those of you who read my first blog, you will recall one of my hopes was to help you get to know some of the best tennis players in the world. It is amazing to me that more people are not aware of the remarkable journey of one of the world's elite athletes. While I do not pretend to be a crack journalist, there are a few compelling stories that just need to be told.
When Croatia's Ivan Ljubicic steps on the court Wednesday to try to advance to his first ever Grand Slam semifinal, the anxiety he will experience will pale in comparison to that which he felt 14 years ago.
In 1992, with the Balkan War escalating, Ljubicic was a 13-year-old living with his Croat family in a Serbian-dominated section of Bosnia. With tensions mounting, Ivan went about being an adolescent in blissful ignorance. Speaking to reporter Paul Newman from the English newspaper The Independent Ljubicic said, "It was really dangerous, though I wasn't aware of it as a kid. When I look back on it, I realize there were a lot of people I knew personally who I just never saw again. They disappeared."
While his parents tried to shield him from the horrors going on around him, they finally felt it was too dangerous to continue living in their home. "My father used some contacts to buy three plane tickets (for his wife and two sons) to Belgrade. Adult men couldn't leave. We then went by bus all around Hungary to Slovenia and finally to a refugee camp in Croatia. It took 48 hours."
For six months, Ivan lived with his mother and brother in the refugee camp not knowing whether his father had made it out of Bosnia alive.
Finally, they got the phone call they had been waiting for. Ljubicic's father had been able to pack up as many of their belongings as possible into their small car and had managed to escape. The entire family reunited in the Croat city of Rijeka where they began the process of starting over.
Oddly enough, this horrifying experience actually gave rise to Ljubicic's tennis career. Within a year, his parents sent Ivan to an Italian tennis club that had offered to support a group of young Croat refugees. "It was the turning point of my life," Ljubicic told Newman. "It was a very tough time for all of us, but my parents decided that this would be the best thing for me. I really enjoyed tennis and financially it was good for us as a family because my parents didn't have to pay to keep me there, whereas I would have been an expense for them back in Rijeka."
In Italy, Ljubicic's tennis flourished. While it has taken many years of development, his hard work has paid off. Today, Ivan Ljubicic is the fourth-ranked tennis player in the world. Tomorrow on court Philippe Chatrier, he will take on Frenchman Julien Benneteau to attempt to advance to the final four at Roland Garros. While his individual results have been nothing short of outstanding, his proudest moment came last year as he led Croatia, his home, to an historic Davis Cup title.
Personally, I know Ivan to be a thoughtful and insightful man with as grounded a perspective on his fame and fortune as anyone I have ever encountered. I know him to be a loving husband and a doting father. I can only assume that his childhood experience has helped shape his personality. While there are certainly many worthy competitors among my peers, Ivan stands out as the type of person you can feel good about rooting for.
The chance to get to know someone like Ivan Ljubicic is one of the things I value most about my experiences traveling the globe as a professional tennis player. Gaining a perspective of foreign cultures through personal interaction is more meaningful than reading any textbook. These relationships have shaped my personality and perspective and I forever will be richer for the opportunity.
