They stood in a small corner behind Court 18 for a few minutes, all the Niemeiers who are buzzing around in Wimbledon these days. Mother Annette, father Michael, brother Jona, plus trainer Christopher Kas, the physio Florian Nowy. There was high five, hugs, and in the middle of the group Jule Niemeier took a deep breath and wiped the drops from his forehead. She was still sweating. Her face revealed that she was much more upset than when she was there before. But she looked incredulous again. round of 16 Wimbledon. So now actually the next chance, even to the quarter-finals. The Niemeiers are going to hang out here at the All England Club for a while, their daughter got them into it. Incidentally, it was not to be the only successful German family story that day.
In the second round, Niemeier literally swept over Anett Kontaveit, 6:4, 6:0 in less than an hour. This time she had to work for 2:04 hours, and in the meantime it didn’t even look that good what she was doing. Niemeier grumbled a bit, once she kicked the ball away with her heel, she got into a negative whirlpool of feelings. “She didn’t feel great all the time,” explained Kas, who briefly made himself available to the media. Niemeier first had to go to the changing room.
“That’s the important thing,” said the coach: “then still being ready. If you don’t feel so good, do enough active things, sort your thoughts.” And so Niemeier won 6: 4, 3: 6, 6: 3 against the Ukrainian Lesia Zurenko. “In the end, Jule was the one who sorted the thoughts better,” said Kas, who admitted with a smile: “We’re on a certain cloud, and we’ll just keep riding it.”
The learning curve of the 22-year-old Westphalian is going up very quickly
Faster than expected, German women’s tennis has produced a player who actually has the skills to beat good opponents in a big tournament like Wimbledon. Niemeier, 22, from Dortmund, is the first of a truly younger generation to draw attention to itself. But she is not the only German in the round of 16. At least as surprisingly, Tatjana Maria, 34, reached the round of 16. The mother of two children defeated world number five Maria Sakkari from Greece 6: 3, 7: 5 and then cried tears of joy on the pitch. Angelique Kerber, for her part, experienced a surprise, but of a different kind. The 2018 Wimbledon winner lost to Belgian Elise Mertens 4: 6, 5: 7, the 34-year-old had acted far too passively.
Angelique Kerber has to leave London.
(Photo: Matthew Childs/Reuters)
Niemeier, on the other hand, played powerfully, only her hard serve let her down this time. But she had already braced herself for a bit of a dip in form after the roiling win over Kontaveit. “It is important that I continue to develop in all areas so that I can win even on days when not everything is going well,” she said. That was on Wednesday. On Friday she proved that her learning curve is really going up. And apparently leads directly to the cloud on which it arrived. “I’m happy that I won, even if I didn’t play my best tennis,” Niemeier later said.
She hadn’t found her way into the game that took place on Court 18, where John Isner and Frenchman Nicolas Mahut played for three days in 2010 before the American won 70-68 in the fifth set. Record-breaking numbers from the past, when it wasn’t the Champions tie-break rule starting at 6-6. Niemeier had other things in mind. She was quickly trailing 3-0, then sorting as Kas said. 3:3 and then 6:4. Another slump in set two, 0:3, a short catch-up race, 3:3, another slump, 3:6. In the third set, Niemeier called out “Come on!” for the first time, and his fist came. After five breaks – Zurenko also seemed very nervous – Niemeier was the first to serve through. The decisive hit. “The whole match was decided from the head,” she said, “it was a roller coaster ride.”
Tatjana Maria still practices her unusual style of play
Niemeier now meets the Englishwoman Heather Watson, who is 109th in the world rankings, twelve places behind her. Kas made it clear that the team’s approach will not change: “We try to approach it with a lot of joy and enthusiasm. How much is really left under stress is always a completely different story.” But he also gave a very special reason why the quarter-finals would be special: “The quarter-finals were the goal from the start. I’m here in the Last Eight Club,” he said with a grin. In 2011 he reached the semi-finals in doubles at Wimbledon. “And then you get a ground ticket every year. It’s very difficult to get tickets here. And now our goal is for Jule to get into the last eight – then we’ll have a lot more tickets next year.”
Maria, on the other hand, was speechless, who had won her last match in a Grand Slam tournament at the US Open 2019 – in Wimbledon she now has three wins in a row. She now has a second daughter, her husband Charles Edouard is her trainer, the whole clan can often be seen at the facility, everyone knows her. Maria has stayed true to her style of play, she plays both backhand and forehand with a backspin, as if she wanted to mow a meadow. “When you lose matches, some think, oh, they can’t play tennis,” she said before her third round game, but also emphasized: “In the end, it’s just a different way of playing. And I think that’s very effective on the women’s tour .”
Yes, because Sakkari, unnerved, pushed balls into the net in rows. Maria is now fighting against Jelena Ostapenko from Latvia for a place in her first quarterfinals. Like Niemeier, the round of 16 is a novelty for her. “It’s such a special place for me,” she said on the Wimbledon pitch. “Here I played pregnant. There are no words for doing this with my family. I’m just happy.”