Markus Söder was 13 years old when he played tennis for the first time. His father Max, a master bricklayer from Nuremberg’s Westvorstadt, did not think much of sport, and certainly not of tennis. If he wanted to do sports, his father advised him that he should rather carry a case of beer into the cellar.
His first racket was one from Intersport for 20 marks. For his confirmation he was given a better one, a Völkl club made of carbon. His mother secretly paid him coaching lessons at ATV Nürnberg, and so he learned everything a tennis player needs to be able to do: forehand, backhand, serve, volley and smash, as well as the difference between topspin and slice.
After school, Söder went to the tennis court, challenged other boys and looked after girls in tennis skirts.
When he was good enough, he played with the club team in the district league. He was coached by a Croat, “the Jugo,” who compared him to Brad Gilbert, an American professional tennis player who was feared for his ugly way of playing tennis in the 1980s. Gilbert played down-to-earth tennis without spectacular strokes, but tortured his opponents with psychological tricks and unpleasant strokes and won.
Markus Söder found that interesting: a man who elevated the ugliness of his game to a special form of cleverness.
Gilbert was never number one, but he beat all the best of his time: John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Boris Becker, Andre Agassi. At the end of his career, he wrote a book he called “Winning Ugly” and sold it as a guide to “Mental Warfare in Tennis”.
In it he describes how he drove the greats to despair, to cursing, to throwing clubs, even to the decision to end their career, also out of shame that they had lost to him.
“If I lose to players like him,” quotes Gilbert McEnroe, “what should I still do on the pitch?” “Winning Ugly” became a bestseller worldwide.
Markus Söder also read the book.
Before the game
By the time the match begins, it has already begun.
Brad Gilbert, “Winning Ugly”
On a February morning in 2020 I am sitting in the tennis hall of 1. FC Nürnberg and waiting for Markus Söder. We have an appointment to play tennis, for the second time.
The first time was two years ago, the same place, one morning at the beginning of March, also the tennis hall of 1. FC Nürnberg, and yet there are worlds between these two days.
At that time, Söder was not yet Prime Minister, but merely designated, not yet CSU chairman, but only a member of the board, he was about to storm the top. He had not yet won the last power struggle with Horst Seehofer, the prime minister and CSU chairman.
