Jule Niemeier has so far been unstoppable on her Wimbledon debut. In a nerve thriller, the German tennis hope reaches the round of 16, as does the mother of two, Tatjana Maria.
Jule Niemeier and Tatjana Maria continued their fabulous series of successes at the grass classic in Wimbledon with great feelings. The two German tennis players are each in the round of 16 for the first time in a Grand Slam tournament.
The 22-year-old Niemeier defeated the Ukrainian Lessia Zurenko 6: 4, 3: 6, 6: 3 in a nerve thriller and confirmed her previous success against the third in the world rankings Anett Kontaveit from Estonia. “It just took a load off my heart, that had nothing to do with the match two days ago today,” said Niemeier about her jubilant gesture. “I’m just very happy that I won the match in the end, even if I didn’t play my best tennis.”
Maria, twelve years her senior, created a big surprise and won 6:3, 7:5 against world number five Maria Sakkari from Greece. In her previous nine Wimbledon attempts, she had never gotten past the third round.
Maria: “I’m just happy”
“It’s hard to find words. I’m here with my two children for the first time, »said Maria on the pitch, completely overwhelmed. “It’s such a special place for me. Here I played pregnant. To be able to do this now with my family, there are no words for it. I am just happy.” In the second set, Maria caught up a 2:5 deficit against Sakkari, who was seeded five, and used her second match ball after 90 minutes. Now she meets Latvian Jelena Ostapenko, against whom she lost in doubles.
Niemeier is still there in doubles alongside Andrea Petkovic and showed no physical weaknesses even after more than two and a half hours of action the day before. Rather, the game was a mental matter. In a break festival, both players stole the serve 21 times. After 2:04 hours, Niemeier converted the first match point through a backhand mistake by her opponent.
“I think a lot of people expected me to win that relatively easily today,” she said. «We have adjusted to it. If you beat a top ten player two days ago, you want to win the next match to prove it to yourself. That also played a role.”
“It was an emotional roller coaster ride”
For the biggest success of her career, she collects the equivalent of 219,000 euros. “It was an emotional roller coaster ride,” said coach Christopher Kas. “We’re on a certain cloud, and we’ll just keep riding it and then we’ll see how far it takes us.”
In her Wimbledon debut, Niemeier now meets Brit Heather Watson, who defeated Tamara Korpatsch in the first round. “She’s a great player, an experienced player,” Niemeier said of her 30-year-old next opponent. “Hopefully we’ll play on a bigger court because I felt pretty confident on Court 1.”
Instead of playing on Court 1 in the second largest stadium, as against Kontaveit, Niemeier played on the 18th outdoor court, and the world number 97 had windy conditions. their problems at the beginning. In her two sovereign two-set victories in the tournament, Niemeier had not yet received a break – and gave up the first of a total of ten of her service games against Zurenko right at the beginning, and that to zero.
With brains, Niemeier brought the match home
“The match after such a match is not easy,” said coach Kas in view of the much-noticed success of Kontaveit, who was number two. The beginning was nervous, in the first three games alone Niemeier made ten unforced errors, and it quickly became 0:3. She slowly came into play and equalized to make it 3:3. A mistake by Zurenko sealed the win of the first set after 49 minutes.
However, the sense of achievement did not ensure consistency. Again Niemeier had to accept two service losses in a row, again it was 0:3. Although she was able to equalize again as in the first set, the security did not return.
At the start of the third set there were five breaks in a row, and Niemeier went to the bench with a disbelieving smile at 3:2. With a volley, the Dortmund woman got the first serve of the round and held her index finger to her temple. With brains, Niemeier brought the match home.
