WTA: Kerber and Görges brave difficult Doha conditions

Angelique Kerber and Julia Görges have entered the first sixteen of the Premier 5 tournament in Doha despite difficult conditions. The two top ten players presented themselves in good shape.

From Ulrike Weinrich from Doha

Thick clouds of dust had settled all day long over the Qatari capital. But when Angelique Kerber and Julia Görges did their day’s work in the “”Khalifa International Tennis and Squash Complex”, the sky had cleared up. As a result, temperatures fell by around eight degrees to 19 degrees Celsius and a nasty wind blew. The fact that the first two German top ten players have also played on Court 1 in the shadow of the big stadium for over 20 years did not make things any easier. This is the place where Court 2 borders directly, only separated by a net.

“You had to get used to the sounds of the other place. At one point we thought there were new balls, but there were new balls next door,”reported the ninth seeded Goerges, who moved into the second round of Doha after 2007 with a 6-2,3-6,6-1 win over Czech Barbora Strycova,”I’m proud of how I handled the conditions. In the second round she made life difficult for me – especially in my service games. In the third set, I was there from the beginning, when she slackened a bit,”added the 29-year-old.

After that, Kerber (No. 8) also defied the circumstances. 20 days after her unhappy semi-final outing at the Australian Open, the two-time Grand Slam winner returned to the WTA Tour after a walk-through in the first round with a convincing 6-4,6-1 win against Australian Samantha Stosur. For Kerber it was already the 15th time. Victory in the 16th. This was a good start to the tournament. The weather conditions were a bit difficult, but I feel good. The game wasn’t too long, and I’ve been training a lot over the last few days and weeks,”said the left-handed woman, who is “relaxed” after the brilliant season opener:”The past few weeks have given me back a lot of self-confidence. I know I can fight and I have a good feeling.”

Kerber (29), 2014 Doha finalist, will face British Wimbledon semi-finalist Johann Kontakt on Wednesday in the second match of the Night Session,”It’s never easy against her. But the most important thing is that I concentrate on my game and find my rhythm,”said the Kieler. A good omen, however, is that Kerber first defeated Stosur at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro – and then immediately in the next round contacts.

Görges, who will contest her first tournament as a top ten player at the $2.897 million Qatar Total Open, will also meet Mihaela Buzarnescu on Wednesday. The Romanian declassified the sixth seeded French Open winner Jelena Ostapenko (Latvia) at 6-1,6-3. And the 29-year-old Görges will again play at Court 1, which requires getting used to. However, the Auckland winner is boasting of self-confidence in the face of eleven victories in her 13 season’s matches so far, as is Sydney champion Kerber. The first jump into the top ten was “a special moment in which you sometimes have tears in your eyes and have to pinch yourself”, Görges revealed in a tennisnet interview in Doha.

On the other hand, Carina Witthöft (Hamburg) missed the round of the 16th place with a clear 2:6,0:6 against the Danish world number one and Australian Open winner Caroline Wozniacki.