Australian Open:”New” Kerber now before duel with Maria Sharapova

Eleventh victory in a row, on 30. Anniversary – and now a meeting with Maria Sharapova: Angelique Kerber is again in full conversation.

On her 30th birthday. She had already won her second round match against Croatian Donna Vekic with 6:4 and 6:1 and secured a spectacular third round rendezvous with superstar Maria Sharapova at the Australian Open. And she had also listened to the ten thousand people in the Margaret-Court-Arena, who wished her “Happy Birthday” and let her live with “Hiphop, Horray”…”There was a time when I almost stopped playing tennis. And now this: It’s a dream, what happened to me. What I’ve achieved. And what else I can do,”said Kerber, happy and satisfied amidst the beautiful presents.

In fact, this day of celebration, sometimes very hot to the point of intolerance in Melbourne, was also a day to reflect on. When I look back, I feel a lot of pride,”said Kerber,” I couldn’t have expected what I managed to do:”Wildly moved were her twenties yes, for a long time she was just the intimidated marginal figure, the rather watching observer of a developing German miracle. And then all of a sudden she was on the fast lane, passed all Petkovics, Lisickis or Görges’, won two Grand Slam tournaments, became the world’s No. 1:”It’s a story that sometimes seems unreal to me,”says Kerber. Especially because she was not far from turning away from tennis in the last decade of her life. The sport, which seven or eight years ago brought her almost nothing but bitter disappointments – and doubts,”whether this is really the right thing for me.”

But Kerber’s persistence has paid off again and again, even now, when she completely renewed herself and her tennis company after the furious high-flying and the deep crash. In the season break between 2017 and 2018, the Kieler has simply reinvented herself again. What seems so easy, this return to old strength and self-confidence, even the fresh winning streak at the start of this season, was in reality paid for with hard trials and equally hard work. In Zeit Magazin, Kerber has just talked about it, in an unsparing column she looks back on the last season, a phase of disorientation, emptiness and defeats. She also explains how she later withdrew from the daily dictates of the struggle for world ranking positions and simply looked for fun in her work again. And found him, too.

Kerber, this quick-change artist, will again and again play an important role in the travelling circus in 2018, despite all the unpredictability of the industry, this can be predicted. She’s in her 30th birthday. On the occasion of her 50th birthday and her entry into this last decade of her career, she has created a strong platform for moments of success, perhaps already very topical for these Open Australian Championships. The game against Sharapova, the old companion, will undoubtedly become a key game, a crucial pointer for the title fight in Melbourne. Wherever else you look, renowned competitors have stumbled upon the Grand Slam crown, only on Thursday the incumbent Wimbledon queen Garbine Muguruza. It seems as if DTB head Barbara Rittner doesn’t have to take anything back from her assessment before the tournament, from the prognosis that “this new Angie Kerber is one who will play for the title”.

Kerber, meanwhile equipped with an 11:0 record in 2018, is not exactly a friend of the Russian tennis greats, especially not since Diva’s doping problems. But the German is not one of those who resent Sharapova’s sin case endlessly:”The subject is finished,” says Kerber,”she has served the punishment:” Now it’s all about how I can win this game against someone who is very dangerous again,”seven times Kerber and Sharapova have already played against each other, Kerber has won three times, even the last two comparisons. But that was all in Kerber’s twenties, and they’re now over:”It’s unbelievable how time flies by,”Kerber also said on this 18th anniversary. January 2018, a day in the midst of a new upswing.

Two’s gone now, though. But Kerber, the strong Kerber, is back.