Julia Görges is the brilliant winner of the WTA tournament in Auckland. Now two German players are considered to be co-favorites at the Australian Open, Angelique Kerber is also in top form.
When Julia Görges won the B World Championship in Zhuhai at the beginning of November, her coach Michael Geserer was a little saddened at the moment of the triumph:”We would have liked to have gone on and played the next tournament,”says Geserer,”Jule had the best run of her life,” but Geserer, one of the guarantors of the upswing’s success, can be reassured like the rest of the Görges team:
The tennis high of the 29-year-old front woman of German women’s tennis continues undiminished, and in the first week of the fresh 2018 season the international player has already won the top prize again – now in Auckland, New Zealand, where she won the title for the first time in her ninth attempt, thanks to a 6:4.7:6 victory over Caroline Wozniacki from Denmark.
“It feels, cautiously put, amazing. I am overjoyed that I can continue to play with this self-confidence and this power,”said the Bad Oldesloerin, who meanwhile lives in Regensburg in Bavaria. In order to take a break, Görges canceled her start at the WTA competition in Sydney – officially because of a knee chair.
With the Pokalcoup against A-World Champion Wozniacki, Görges aroused just as much hope for the Australian Open as the former World Rankings Champion Angelique Kerber. The Kieler made a brilliant sporting comeback at the Hopman Cup in Perth in Western Australia after the epidemic season 2017 and won all four of her individual matches at the unofficial World Championship of mixed doubles – most recently in the final against rising Swiss Belina Bencic.
However, Kerber and her comrade-in-arms Alexander Zverev were not allowed to win the tournament, but the Swiss duo, Roger Federer and Bencic, won the tournament. After last year’s frustrations, Kerber had re-orientated himself with the Belgian Wim Fissette, another renowned coach to succeed Torben Beltz,”I believe in myself and my game again,”said Kerber,”I’m looking forward to Melbourne, the first Grand Slam tournament”.
There, at the Australian Open, German interest would inevitably have focused on her every other year – on the two-time Grand Slam winner, the 2016 Melbourne winner. But the top seeded player of the DTB down under is starting from 15. January, not Kerber, but the undiminishedly form-strong Görges, which now goes into the Grand Slam adventure with an all-time ranking high of place 12.
It’s hard to believe, but true: After the sensational tournament victory at the Stuttgart Porsche Grand Prix in spring 2011, Görges did not win a tournament for six years before the change of location and coach finally paid off in autumn 2017 – with the successive triumphs in Moscow and Zhuhai and a leap in the world rankings to 14th place. Görges, previously frustrated with the lack of constancy and a zigzag ride in the travelling circus, suddenly turns out to be a pattern of stability and safety.
She has now won 14 games in a row across the seasons, true to the motto:”Once you get going, nobody stops you so easily. Not even Wozniacki, the strong third in the world rankings, who had already beaten Görges for her first title in Stuttgart. In bad tennis life situations, adverse conditions like in Auckland can immediately throw out of the course, and two days in a row continuous rain prevented all matches on the other side of the world.
But Görges, fit and focused as never before, continues to hover over the Centre Courts, on Saturday she won both the quarter-finals and semi-finals in no time at all – and on the final day she impressed with her punchy game, beat 41 direct win points against Wozniacki and repeatedly used her excellent serve as a plus point.
Power with precision – it is the trademark of the new Julia Görges, a player who is considered by most experts to be a hot favourite for the Australian Open. Just like Kerber (“I don’t start dreaming now”), Görges doesn’t allow himself to be euphoric, he doesn’t look too far forward and says:”The win is won on the pitch, not with words.