Angelique Kerber has drawn the consequences after the disappointments of 2017 and enters the 2018 season with Wim Fissette as the new coach. The two-time Grand Slam winner hopes to gain new input from the Belgian and return to the top of the world.
Angelique Kerber opens a new chapter after her year of crisis: The two-time Grand Slam winner will in future rely on Wim Fissette as coach and has parted company with her former coach Torben Beltz.
Kerber announced the commitment of 37-year-old Fissette on Thursday. The experienced Belgian had led Sabine Lisicki to the Wimbledon final in 2013 and had already coached Kim Clijsters (Belgium), Simona Halep (Romania), Wiktoria Asarenka (Belarus) and, until a few weeks ago, Johanna Kontakte (UK).
“Wim is the beginning of a new chapter and I’m looking forward to playing with him for the first time next week,”said Kerber, saying,”He has proven many times how good he is as a coach. I wonder what we can achieve together.”
Kerber is currently on holiday in the Seychelles. Already in the past days she had announced in an emotional letter to her fans that she wanted to go “new ways”.
“For you, but also for me, because tennis is my passion,”wrote the 29-year-old, who, after her dream year of 2016 with the great moments in Melbourne and New York, is in her biggest sporting crisis to date.
Kerber had lost six of their last seven matches at the end of a very weak season, with few bright spots. For example, the high-class round of the last sixteen in Wimbledon against the eventual tournament winner Garbine Muguruza (Spain).
The introverted Kerber wants to turn things around with the new impulse generator, which is regarded as a strict but quiet type,”I am very much looking forward to working with Angie. I’ve been on the other bench a lot of times in the last few years and have been able to follow her path well,”said Fissette.
Her former coach Torben Beltz is no longer part of the team. The 40-year-old had coached Kerber during her professional career to date, except for a good two-year break (end of 2012 to early 2015), in which she was supported by Benjamin Ebrahimzadeh.
Kerber did not win a tournament in 2017 and was only in a final (Monterrey). Last year, the left-hander had triumphed at the Australian Open and the US Open and was the second German after Steffi Graf to reach the top of the WTA ranking.
One statistic in particular, however, was particularly significant in the past eleven months: while Kerber won 24 matches against top-20 opponents last year, she only managed to win one (at twelve defeats) against this category of players. In 2017, she had a total of 29:24 victories – 64:19 in her dream season.
The first tournament for Kerber next season will be the Hopman Cup in Perth from 30. December 2017 to 6. January 2018, in which she forms the German team with Alexander Zverev (Hamburg).
In a Facebook post to her fans at the beginning of the week, she had given deep insights into her soul life:”Your own value as a person should not be defined by professional success, but rather independent of it. As an athlete, you have to keep this in mind every now and then,”wrote Kerber.
She said that it was also “these important experiences, the professional setbacks”, in which one learns “a great deal” about oneself.