Five years after reaching the final in Wimbledon, Sabine Lisicki fails early in her next comeback attempt in the qualification competition.
Two weeks ago, when Sabine Lisicki wanted to find the old feeling for tennis greens on the training grounds of the Weissenhof in Stuttgart, much was the same at first glance. A large crowd had gathered around the practice courts of the Mercedes Cup, and Lisicki put her typical smile to the test with her sparring partner.
The crowd of visitors, however, was not the 28-year-old Berliner, but the maestro Roger Federer, who trains alongside Lisicki. He was, of course also in Germany, the object of fan lust.
It’s not been ages since Lisicki once had the bigger headlines on the world’s biggest tennis stage than the over-player Federer. 2013 was that, in Wimbledon: Federer was sensationally eliminated in the second round against the Ukrainian Sergiy Stakhovsky, but Lisicki marched into the final after smaller and larger tennis dramas, in between also a Grand Slam star hour against Serena Williams.
“Bum Bum-Bine” was christened the radiant German at London Boulevard, she was the most captivating face of the whole tournament, a favourite of the audience even after the final defeat against Marion Bartoli. “She will surely win Wimbledon one day,” said the industry’s grande dame, US-American Martina Navratilova.
And now, five years later? Federer, the now fabulous eight-time champion, has not yet arrived in London for the Grand Slam festivities, he is recovering from the tournament guest appearances in Stuttgart and Halle. Wimbledon has not yet begun, at least not the great Wimbledon, the Wimbledon of stars and superstars. And yet: Wimbledon 2018 is already over, at least for Lisicki, the former German bearer of hope.
In the unadorned places of the qualifying tournament, outside in the felt pampas of Roehampton, far away from the All England Club, she ended her Grand Slam run in the first round – 4:6 and 6:7 lost against the Russian Anna Kalinskaya, the world’s number 146. The result was not quite surprising, Lisicki is just getting back to the action in the travelling circus after a knee injury and a three-month absence from the tour.
“It was a first step. I’m proud to have been here at all,” said Lisicki, “I’ve been through a lot of pain, a lot of hard work.”
Kalinskaya, junior winner of the Australian Open, is a face of the future in women’s tennis, she still has her whole career ahead of her at the age of 19, she has every reason to dream. And Lisicki, even the world’s number 185? Since she lost the biggest match of her life on the world’s biggest tennis stage as the clear favourite against Bartoli, not much has gone right and well in her professional life.
One can also describe it, but not only with the winged footballer bon mot, the wisdom of Jürgen Wegmann: At first Lisicki had no luck, and then came bad luck. Bad luck, especially the many injuries, the ever new physical setbacks, the ever new, often futile comeback attempts.
If you look at their match statistics of the last years, you actually also look into a medical record: injuries on the shoulder, on the right wrist, later several times on the knees. While Lisicki fought more with her own body than with her opponents, the tennis world around her changed: Angelique Kerber became the German front woman, the Grand Slam winner, even the world’s number 1.
Everything that some had thought Lisicki could do. Then, if everything would have gone optimally, if she could have made the most of her possibilities.
But it wasn’t just the fate that came upon Lisicki with all its malice. Lisicki often lacked a clear view for an orderly, competent service team, for the right assistants at the right switchboards of her tennis company. The coach who led them into the Wimbledon final had to leave in autumn 2013 because of “different opinions” – the Belgian Wim Fissette, now coach of Kerber. The hiring and firing went on, on all levels.
Lisicki also separated from her long-standing management partner IMG and from then on the business agency arranged for a Cologne agency that also worked for Lisicki’s partner Oliver Pocher. This liaison was viewed with extreme suspicion in tennis circles, because it was clear to many that the so-called comedian above all liked to bask in the fame of his girlfriend. When the relationship later broke up, Pocher was still taking a bad beating at Lisicki with mockeries about her fitness and professionalism.
On Court 11 on Tuesday you could hear “Bravo” shouts, a cheering background noise during the whole game against Kalinskaya. It belonged to the man who always supported Sabine Lisicki, even when she had once gone her own winding way in the trials and tribulations after the Wimbledon tournament of 2013 – Richard Lisicki, the father and long-time coach. The doctor of sports science still believes that not everything is over in his daughter’s career: “We are coming back strong. We’ll be back,” he says. In Wimbledon, however, only in 2019.