When Julia Görges disappointed and walked slowly through the players’ area, Angelique Kerber had long since left the Khalifa International Tennis Complex with a sad expression. Despite the quarter-finals of the two top ten players and yet again good performances, the Premier 5 tournament, with its strong line-up, will enter the decisive phase this weekend without German participation.
From Ulrike Weinrich from Doha
The dream of a delightful duel between “Angie” and “Jule” in the semi-finals in Doha was shattered. While Kerber’s 6:7 (4:7), 6:1,3:6 defeat to the top seeded Melbourne champion Caroline Wozniacki (Denmark) in a partly high-class match was hard to comfort at first, Görges quickly resigned herself to her defeat.
Forced. The world ranking yearned for nothing, as she had to give up her match against Petra Kvitova from the Czech Republic (No. 16) with a score of 4:6,1:2 because of a hip injury. I don’t know yet what it is exactly,”said Görges in a tennisnet conversation. The start at the event in Dubai next week is, however, at least questionable.
The 29-year-old had already suffered a groin injury during last Saturday’s training on the palm-fringed facility – with a return from an open position “Since then, I have been playing pain pills. I don’t usually do that. But in the match against Petra that didn’t help either,”she explained.
In my first-round match, I had a lot of pain in my stomach lifted up in my first-round match. But at first things went wrong with the tables,”reported the German, who won 21:2 victories at the past six cross-seasonal events – and won the titles in Auckland (2018) as well as in Zhuhai and Moscow (both 2017).
When she woke up on Friday, the quarter-final day, then in the morning, the problem had shifted:”It was a completely different place on the hip that hurt,”said Görges. Triggers were possibly compensatory movements. At times she was unable to lift her left leg:”And then it’s just difficult if you sit down and want to stand up when you return – and it doesn’t work”.
Görges was not the only battered man in Doha. The second-placed Simona Halep retired after her semi-final move due to a tendinitis in the foot. The Romanian has also been suffering from this injury for some time. The Spanish Wimbledon winner Garbine Muguruza is already in the final of the $2.897 hard court gymnastics competition. The only semi-finals on Saturday will be played by Wozniacki and St. Kerber-Bezwinger. Petersburg winner Kvitova.
However, Kerber can travel confidently to Dubai despite his elimination and an excellent 16:2 record in the season. However, the immense disappointment was obvious to her after her defeat against her good friend “Caro” Wozniacki:”I am of course disappointed. It was a good match, I gave it all. But in the decisive moments she played her best tennis,”said the 30-year-old and announced:”I will think about what went well for me in this tournament – and what didn’t.”.