Angelique Kerber’s emotional roller coaster ride ended with a painful task at her home game. As the last German player, the 30-year-old retired in the round of 16 at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix. No local professionals had reached the quarter-finals in Stuttgart four years ago. Kerber and the sand – it remains a complicated relationship.
By Ulrike Weinrich from Stuttgart
Angelique Kerber was clearly disappointed at the abrupt end of her first assessment of her position on the unloved ashes. With her eyes lowered, her hair tied to the bun, she walked up the long corridor above the Centre Court, which leads directly into the interview area in the Porsche Arena.
The eyes were red – the traces of a bitter evening with a sad ending could hardly have been clearer. Instead of gaining further self-confidence in her living room, the site of her 2015 and 2016 Stuttgart title wins for the following weeks of the clay court season, Kerber had to admit defeat to her body.
“I’m not a player who gives up a lot, but I didn’t want to end up endangering my health. I hope to get back in shape quickly,” said the twelfth-place in the world rankings after deciding 0-6, 0-2 in the round of 16 against Anett Kontaveit (Estonia) about an hour earlier. With a heavy heart, you could tell by her gestures and facial expressions.
When she left the Centre Court, she was back in the audience for a moment, but her thoughts were already revolving around other things at that point. As soon as possible, Kerber wants to have the severity of her injury “between the thigh and groin” clarified. On Friday morning she discussed the next steps with her team around coach Wim Fissette and manager Aljoscha Thron.
Whether she will be able to attend the Premier Mandatory in Madrid (from 6 May), as planned, is not yet certain. The two-time Grand Slam winner has not had much to do with injuries of this kind in her career so far. The French Open (from 27 May) is the main destination.
Whether the injury is due to the strains in the Fed Cup last weekend (1:4 in the semi-final against the Czech Republic), she did not want to speculate. “That’s theory!” However, there is hardly any doubt that the complaints are a consequence of the change from hard to sand court. Despite her strong performance in the first round match against Czech Petra Kvitova (6:3, 6:2), Kerber still had visible problems with the adaptation.
The last grain of courage to slide is still missing. This is the most characteristic and actually also most intuitive movement on the red background. But Kerber, who travels a lot on carpet during her youth training days, made no secret of the fact that “sliding” was “not natural” for her these days either.
“I don’t feel too good on sand. And I always need a lot of matches to get used to this surface. Especially when it comes to movement,” Kerber said. Nevertheless, she was allowed to leave the Swabian metropolis with a great glimmer of hope in her luggage. “I will try to build on the match against Kvitova – and then go to the next sand court tournaments just like that,” announced the former world number one, who will again be Germany’s number one from Monday.
Due to the Kerber task, a small era came to an end in Stuttgart. In the last three years, German players Siegemund (2017) and Angelique Kerber (2015 and 2016) had triumphed in Laura, and after their exhilarating finals, they contoured the Centre Court in the winning sports car. In the three years before, an athlete with a special relationship to the event had also won in Maria Sharapova, brand ambassador for Porsche.
And in 2011 Julia Görges had entered herself on the list of champions. Apropos “Jule”: On Tuesday, after her surprising first-round finish against Czech qualifier Marketa Vondrousova (2:6, 2:6), the woman from Regensburg openly stated that she felt “mentally empty” from the Fed Cup days before: “I was finished”.
The organisers were again made aware on Thursday that the date in mid-April has its pitfalls because of the Fed Cup round ahead. After Kerber and the Russian Veronika Kudermetova (thigh blessur) in the hours before, the second seeded Garbine Muguruza had to give up her opening match against the Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (5:7) in the evening due to problems in the lower back area.
On the fourth day of the tournament, it was the third match in a row on the main square that could not be finished. Wimbledon winner Muguruza had also been on duty for her Spanish national team last weekend – and had won her two singles in a 3-1 win over Paraguay in Murcia.