The petunias are blooming, the boxwood in the hydrangea border has been cut into a ball shape, and the balls are already flying in an accurate path over the net. The Wimbledon tournament has not yet opened to the public, the wrought-iron gates will not be opened until Monday morning, but the courts were already full at the weekend. While the club staff was still polishing the brass plates on the walls, the pros – after all, 256 tennis players are registered in the main draw – were also putting the finishing touches on them.
So there was still a faint smell of fresh paint and freshly mown grass in the air as Christopher Kas, 43, sat down on a bench in Aorangi Park. This part of the All England Club north of Center Court is reserved for training. In addition to the dozen grass courts, a kind of open-air gym has been created there in recent years, a large area that the athletes use for all kinds of warm-up exercises.
Coco Gauff, 19, from Florida, dynamically hopped up and down under the guidance of a coach; a few male colleagues worked with rubber bands and expanders. Jule Niemeier, 23, from Dortmund also did outdoor throwing exercises with a medicine ball. Kas, who looks after Jule Niemeier as a trainer, said that he likes to stop by this trimming area, also out of interest, “to see what the others are doing”.
Jule Niemeier travels to Wimbledon with a poor record – her hand injury has recovered
They arrived on Wednesday to get in the mood for the most famous of all tennis tournaments, where Jule Niemeier surprised the assembled competition last year. At that time, as a debutant, she only lost in the quarterfinals against Tatjana Maria, 35, her colleague from the German FedCup team. Since the beginning of this season, however, Jule Niemeier has often remained blatantly below her potential in competition: twelve first-round defeats have been her personal record since January, which resulted in a downgrade in the WTA ranking to 106th place. “I didn’t get it right this year,” she said self-critically two weeks ago.
But just when she thought she had regained her footing after beating world number six Ons Jabeur at the grass tournament in Berlin, she slipped on the sometimes treacherous track in the following match and fell on her hand. She then canceled her participation in the tournament in Bad Homburg and had to take a break to rest her bruised ankle. The injury has healed, “everything is fine,” Kas was able to report.
Pains of the past: Jule Niemeier injured her hand at the tournament in Berlin – she recovered for Wimbledon.
(Photo: O.Behrendt/Imago)
However, Jule Niemeier will also have to swing through properly if she wants to defeat the Czech Karolina Muchova, WTA number 16, who was recently in the final at the French Open, in her first round match in Wimbledon on Tuesday. And so on Saturday she added two training sessions with racquet to the medicine ball exercises.
Three official duties for Tatjana Maria, semi-finalist from the previous year
Tatjana Maria, born in Bad-Saulgau and now at home in Florida, also paid a visit to the open-air gym. However, the Wimbledon routine of a mother of two traveling the world with husband Charles-Edouard and daughters is fundamentally different. At half past nine in the morning, she reports, she first goes indoors to play tennis with her highly gifted daughter Charlotte, 9; she then takes both girls to day care at the All England Club – because then one’s own professional practice takes a toll.
They had already tried it last year, “and it worked out quite well”. In 2022 Tatjana Maria reached the semi-finals in Wimbledon. Just how brilliantly the number 58 in the world has mastered the lawn game was revealed again recently in Gaiba in northern Italy: There she was only beaten in three sets in the final by the American Ashlyn Krueger.
It should go that far again: Jule Niemeier (left) and Tatjana Maria before their quarter-final duel in Wimbledon last year.
(Photo: Frank Molter/dpa)
At the start of the tournament on Tuesday, she will once again face Romanian Sorana Cirstea, an old friend who she beat in the second round last year, “7:5 in the third set,” as she recalled; so it probably won’t be an easy game.
But at least it’s school holidays, and that means Tatjana Maria, professional tennis player and coach, is relieved of her third duty, that of family teacher. The older daughter is in fourth grade in Florida, and when the family is away, she attends classes virtually, supervised by her mom. Incidentally, the favorite travel destination for the whole family is the All England Club, says Tatjana Maria. Not only because of the ball-shaped petunias and box trees. But because the children enjoy the care in the Wimbledon crèche there the most.