Tim Pütz is a courageous person. Sometimes he dares to do something that others don’t. For example, he once said critical things about Boris Becker.
In 2017, the German tennis team played their relegation game in Oeiras. Portugal. Becker, the three-time Wimbledon winner, was part of the entourage for the first time as Head of Men’s Tennis of the German Tennis Association. He sat behind team boss Michael Kohlmann in the stands, stood on the training ground and gave interviews. Pütz was focusing on this person too much. “It’s great that Boris is here,” he said after the selection had avoided relegation, “but Michael was the much more important man for us. The fact that we won 3-2 here deserves Michael the greatest respect.” Nobody threw himself so passionately in front of Kohlmann back then.
Tim Pütz also acts with this vigor on the pitch. In double.
He is the best shadow player that the German team has had for years, he is rarely in the focus. Because only a few people outside of the industry know him, because he is not a luminary individually, because he also took a different path in the tennis world. Perhaps some of you remember Eric Jelen, Andreas Maurer, Patrik Kühnen. On the double page of Boris Becker and Michael Stich, it was these professionals who first enabled the German team to win the Davis Cup three times, in 1988, 1989, and 1993. Pütz is now the one who could play a similar role. He’s the one who opens the doors to the German team. Maybe even those in the final.
Final arrangements: Tim Pütz (left) exchanging game strategies with Kevin Krawietz.
(Photo: Leonhard Foeger / Reuters)
This Saturday, the DTB selection will contest the semi-finals against Russia (1 p.m., Servus TV) in Madrid, which is favored by Daniil Medvedev and Andrej Rublew. The German team came this far for the first time since 2007. In the group stage they won 2-1 against Serbia and Austria, in the quarter-finals against Great Britain a 2-1 win. There is much to criticize about the new Davis Cup. For example, that non-tennis investors around the footballer Gerard Piqué dictate the traditional competition and want to leave Europe from 2022 and host the final phase in Abu Dhabi. Or that the mode – with group phases in three cities – is different again for the second edition. One change helps the German team, of course: the upgrading of the double. There are only two instead of four singles. This is where Pütz and Kevin Krawietz come into play. If it is 1: 1 after the individual, Germany has the best chances. It was like this three times. Even the world number one Novak Djokovic and his partner Nikola Cacic lost to the two.
You know from Krawietz, 29, how good he is. The Coburger won the French Open twice (2019, 2020); With the energetic Cologne Andreas Mies, 31, he, the haven of peace, fabricated German tennis history. When Mies underwent knee surgery in early 2021 and was absent for six months, the duo broke up. Mies returned recently. Kohlmann faced a difficult choice: “Of course he was an option,” he said of Mies. But he decided: Pütz will stay put this time. The 34-year-old from Frankfurt had already played with Krawietz in Tokyo. They won two rounds. “The chemistry” that they are raving about was still not quite right. In the coming season, Kohlmann revealed, Krawietz and Mies will be a duo on the tour again. But now, in Innsbruck, where the group stage was, and in Madrid, where the semi-finals and finals take place (Sunday, 4 p.m.), Mies is loyal this time – to Pütz.
“No one would have thought of Tim Pütz under other circumstances” – says Tim Pütz
Pütz has an inconspicuous and yet essential gift: He makes sure that his partners shine. He completes preliminary work. He’s not a weak point. Sometimes he takes the lead, secretly, without it appearing that way. Jelen also often pulled Becker along, and that got lost in the Becker hype. In an interview with SZ, Pütz once talked about his life as a double professional and remembered that he was often an emergency solution. “No one would have thought of Tim Pütz under other circumstances,” said Pütz, disarmingly honest. Initially, Philipp Petzschner and André Begemann were absent. So he came to the Davis Cup; he who was never promoted, he who used a tennis scholarship in Alabama to study economics and practice tennis at college. In 2015 he made it to 163rd place in the singles, it never got higher. The double was his chance. 18th in the world rankings, it is current. He never stood higher. Germany has a world-class player and doesn’t notice it: that’s its story.
To illustrate Pütz’s class: with New Zealander Michael Venus he triumphed this season in Hamburg – and then even at the Masters tournament in Paris-Bercy – in the final they defeated the five-time Grand Slam champions Nicolas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert France. In the Davis Cup, Pütz’s record is flawless: 7-0. Krawietz has 6-0 victories. In 2017 in Portugal it was Pütz who secured the point in doubles with Jan-Lennard Struff – now the front figure in singles alongside Dominik Koepfer and Peter Gojowczyk. In Spain in 2018, Germany lost the quarter-finals 2: 3, but Pütz defeated Feliciano Lopez and Marc Lopez with Struff after 4:39 hours. If you ask him about his achievements, then as now, Pütz says dryly: “Could have gone the other way.”
“Butz” is what Feliciano Lopez called him four years ago. Apparently he didn’t know Pütz. That should be different this time. His name has long been known, at least in tennis.