Julia Görges will enter the Fed Cup semi-final against the Czech Republic on Saturday (12.00 hrs) and Sunday (11.00 hrs/each live at DAZN) as Germany’s number one and new strong second force in the DTB team.
Jens Gerlach, the newcomer to the German Fed Cup bench, has often and gladly repeated his self-confident assessment of the semi-final sensation against the Czech Republic. It is a “50:50 match”, in which the daily form decides that one is “on par with” the “best country selection of this epoch”, says Gerlach, with the Czech team that has won the national competition three times in the last four years.
Born in Stuttgart, Gerlach, now living in the Allgäu, could hardly have radiated so much confidence if one of his players hadn’t experienced an astonishing upswing. Not Angelique Kerber is meant, she is already half a dozen years quite reliable and stable in the tighter world class, even if with some performance fluctuations.
Gerlach and the Germans in general can hope for the first German title victory since the era of Steffi Graf/Anke Huber, because with the Bad Oldesloerin Julia Görges a second very strong soloist is now represented in the team. Unlike three and a half years ago, when the Germans lost to the Czech team in the final in Prague, the pressure of expectation no longer weighs on the two-time Grand Slam winner Kerber.
Although Kerber’s success in this tennis duel in the Porsche Arena will also be absolutely essential, the current German number one, Görges, is entrusted with the management task in black and white. She is number 11 in the world rankings, Kerber number 12: “Everyone in the team wants and must get their points,” says Görges.
In a way, the distribution of roles leads back to the days when the new German Fräuleinwunder took tender shape. In spring 2011, Görges was the first player of this generation to win a really big tournament, namely the Porsche Grand Prix in Stuttgart. In the final she defeated the world number one Caroline Wozniacki.
At that moment Görges was the felt German number 1, the way up to the top of the world seemed to be sketched out. But Görges remained a one-hit wonder – and victory was just a fleeting highlight. Too often in the following years, the northern lights remained below their actual potential and at some point they were caught in a “spiral of disappointment and frustration”.
The fact that Görges, as Anke Huber, the former world-class player, says, is now expected to win against “every other player in the world” has to do with the overturning radical treatment she prescribed about two years ago. Görges moved to Regensburg, Bavaria, the home of her friend and physiotherapist Florian Zitzelsberger, also chose a new coach in Michael Geserer. Their playing quickly became more concentrated, stable, compelling.
But above all: no longer so error-prone, so unpredictable for them, for Görges. “Julia now simply enjoys everything she does more,” says Geserer, the trainer. Last year the nomad trio experienced a great season’s final spurt in hiking, with a victory in Moscow, Görges qualified for the women’s B-WC in Zhuhai, China, shortly before the end of the goal – only to hold up the trophy there. The first tournament in 2018 even brought the title hat-trick, with the Pokalcoup in Auckland, New Zealand.
The 29-year-old fueled her self-confidence again shortly before the Fed Cup showdown, with the final entry in the WTA competition in Charleston, USA. Now the hardest possible opponent is waiting on the way to the Fed Cup final, perhaps also for the overall victory (the first since 1992) already in the semi-finals – Czech Republic with its two top ten aces Karolina Pliskova and Petra Kvitova, both already once the number 1 of the world. “It will be a great, a tremendous challenge. But we can pass them,” says Görges.