The grass was fresh and springy on Berlin’s Center Court when Petra Kvitova’s instincts kicked in. A few steps were enough, she reported later with a smile, then she swung the racket almost on autopilot: Lawn is her favorite surface, on this green carpet, she said, playing tennis feels “very natural” to her: “I have to be practical don’t even think.” Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic, 33, is a two-time Wimbledon champion and is still a phenomenon on a close-cropped background.
Barely an hour after leaving the press room of the Berlin lawn tournament, coincidence wanted a similarly talented actor to sit in the same chair: Sabine Lisicki, 33, who had also caused a sensation on the most famous tennis stage as a Wimbledon finalist ten years ago. Although Kvitova and Lisicki didn’t compete against each other at the Grunewald facility, they did do so one after the other on the same pitch. A coincidence that gave viewers the opportunity to compare their careers in tennis: two lives that ran almost parallel for a short time before fate took a different direction.
Kvitova started the tournament at Hundekehlesee: she had hardly found her footing on the turf when she defeated her Czech colleague Karolina Pliskova, a former world number one, 6:3, 6:4. The Bett1Open in Berlin is once again so prominent that the elite duels in the first round. Lisicki then had to compete with France’s Carolin Garcia, number four in the world: she hit 15 aces, didn’t allow a break in the first set, but then gave up the tie-break. In the second half, it was just a miss on a volley she threw in in game seven that set off her 6-7(2), 3-6 loss. Anyone who examined the matches between Kvitova and Lisicki for intensity, impact strength and precision may only have noticed differences in degree. And yet there are reasons why Kvitova, Wimbledon champion in 2011 and 2014, is still number nine in the world rankings – and Lisicki, finalist in 2013, is in position 308.
Jule Niemeier threw the defending champion Ons Jabeur out of the Berlin tournament on Tuesday
She was only allowed to play in this Berlin tournament, a WTA competition in the second highest category below the Grand Slams, with a prize money of 780,637 US dollars, because she received a wild card for the main draw from the organizer. This meant that she didn’t have to struggle through the qualification in advance like her German colleague Jule Niemeier, who is in the second round. Niemeier, 23, who surprisingly reached the quarter-finals at Wimbledon last year, managed on Tuesday to beat the defending champion from Berlin, Tunisian Ons Jabeur, number six in the world, 7: 6 (4), 6: 4.
Lisicki is a member of the host LTTC Rot-Weiss Berlin, a club with a bathing jetty at the lake, where the club members still throw the balls over the net in their traditional white dress. In addition, the organizers probably wanted to honor their small Wimbledon anniversary with the wild card. She expressly thanked those responsible for this gift when she was asked to the microphone after her defeat. Because it was the first time since her serious knee injury that she was back in the main draw of such a big tournament between the white lines. “Playing matches like today helps,” she said. “You need that after such a long time so that you can hit the important balls correctly.”
Open detailed view
On the lawn with autopilot: Petra Kvitova, 33, number nine in the tennis world.
(Photo: O.Behrendt/Contrast/Imago)
In October 2020, Lisicki was fighting her way back from a break from glandular fever when her cruciate ligament tore. “Really everything was broken, cruciate ligament, inner ligament, outer ligament, meniscus,” she reported at the time. She walked on crutches and it was 18 months before she was able to return to work at a small tournament in Florida. Since then, she has competed wherever the opportunity has arisen, including second and third-rate ITF and Challenger tournaments. And if she can get straight into the peloton, then she plans to switch from Thailand to Mexico at short notice. “Last year I was number 1200, now I’m at three hundred,” she says. But life as a leader scorer is hardship.
Petra Kvitova also experienced this after a horrendous period of suffering. In 2016 she was attacked in her house, the perpetrator cut the tendons on the fingers of her batting hand, and it took years before she had overcome the trauma, was able to hold a racket and was finally back in Australia in 2019 in the Grand Slam final. As the oldest player in the top ten, she recently won the lucrative tournament in Miami. There is a way back, that’s the message. Sabine Lisicki will still play doubles in Berlin, then she travels to Bad Homburg: she was in the quarter-finals there last year. By the way, on grass.
