Michael Stich will be admitted to the famous Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport this summer – and has given an interview worth listening to in the course of this honour.
Michael Stich has always been known for clear words – for words whose content has a great deal of weight. After being nominated three times, he will soon be part of the Tennis Hall of Fame, a place that enjoys a much higher reputation in the USA than in Germany, which Stich himself had only become aware of in the course of his career.
In the podcast Beyond the Baseline, US tennis journalist Jon Wertheim spoke to Stich about his life and the tour – and of course about his relationship with Boris Becker.”As a player, we have always tried to beat each other and were not the best friends for this reason alone,” said Stich:”We always had the highest respect for each other, even at active times. But:”We are still very different people and personalities, each of us walks differently than the other, and none is better than the other.
On the other hand, Stich spends time – in addition to his work as a tournament director in Hamburg – for his Michael-Stich-Foundation in order to attract attention for AIDS. He follows the current tennis events in a healthy way and, like so many others, misses the variance and the different types of players. Today it’s just a matter of playing as hard as possible, putting in as many strokes from the baseline,”The creativity is missing,”says Stich, who believes that Grigor Dimitrov, above all, believes in changing this.”He’s a great player, but I’d love to see him play more creatively and use the weapons he has.”
The myth that it is no longer possible to play serve and volley on the slower grass is also contradicted by Stich,”I don’t think so. It’s not only about power and speed, but also about skillful placement – and about using the surface for my own benefit,”says the 1991 Wimbledonchamp,”If I only play with topspin in the middle, the ball jumps off higher because of me. But when I play chip-and-charge, with the slice to the T-line, I challenge my opponent. He then has to get out of his comfort zone and play from a different position. (…) I haven’t seen any of the top players play passing strokes for five sets.”
When I lost the first set 6:2 and realized that my tactics didn’t work out, I tried something else. Because it doesn’t matter if I lose 6-2 or 7-6. As long as I lose, it’s a bad result. So I can try something else and see if I can win. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll think of a new tactic next time,” but if you look back when players walked off the court ten, twelve years ago after playing against Roger Federer and said it would have been a pleasure to play against Federer, it couldn’t be the challenge of a competition “No matter how good the guy is, you have to take the risk, get out of his comfort zone and try something. And if you lose – okay. You’ll do better next time.”
The complete interview with Stich – about the Hall of Fame, his disappointment with the youngsters and the reason why he wouldn’t be a good coach for Rafael Nadal – can be heard here!