Sleep a lot, eat well – and don’t let the postponement of the start time make you nervous: Everything voted for Angelique Kerber on the final day of Wimbledon 2018.
On the day Angelique Kerber will fight her way into tennis immortality, she first goes diving in the most famous club in the world, into cover. Three hours before the final against Serena Williams, she ranks 14th in Aarongi Park, the training grounds of Wimbledon. Farther away from the central stage of the Grand Slam Festival, the unmistakable Centre Court, it’s a place Kerber loves.
Protected from the eyes of the public, here she has her peace, here she can gather again before the big game. Wim Fissette, the trainer, fights with Kerber, brings her up to temperature. I was sure she would win,” he says later, “she was so controlled and self-confident in the last few days that I had no doubts.
Kerber spent a quiet night, she was out for dinner with her team the night before the final. There is a picture circulating on the social networks that shows her at a bus stop late this Friday. Is the Wimbledon finalist using public transport?
After her victory over Serena Williams, she excitedly denies the thrifty impression: “I just stood in front of this stop, waiting for a taxi”. Kerber then goes to bed with tennis, watching the late-night match between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, the semi-final drama under the closed Centre Court roof.
This game also confuses the schedule on Saturday. Actually, the women’s final has an irrevocable kick-off time, it starts at 2 pm on Saturday. Always. For ages. But Djokovic and Nadal go into extra time from 1 pm, and it becomes a real extra shift. The two superstars fight each other for five hours and 15 minutes – and Kerber, like Serena Williams, the opponent, is stuck on hold.
Kerber eats a few noodles at noon, then it’s time to kill, stay focused, always be ready when the start takes place. “This is a difficult time. The uncertainty of when to start. But over the years I have gained so much experience that I can do it quite well,” says Kerber afterwards.
After all, she is now one of the most experienced in the travelling circus, not quite as long on the road as Williams. But so professionally matured that the time game does not become a personal nerve disaster.
Shortly before 4 pm things get serious. Chief referee Andrew Jarrett calls on the two players to play. Kerber has just had another meeting with coach Fissette, the closest confidante. The route of the march is clear: Don’t wait and see, just take the initiative yourself. Action instead of reaction.
It had also been the motto of the past months, the motto under which Allianz Kerber/Fissette stood, so to speak. Kerber had fallen into old mistakes again at the beginning of the tournament, in the first two games she played like the struggling Kerber of 2017, running and defending only. The duo sat down to a hard manoeuvre criticism, when the second round against 19-year-old Claire Liu had only survived with a vengeance – and stated: “You can’t win Wimbledon like that”.
But then followed a convincing game after another, Kerber defeated highly regarded competition, especially the young and wild in the industry, the elegant Swiss Belinda Bencic, the tricky Russian Daria Kasatkina and finally in the semi-final the fiery Latvian and French Open winner in 2017, Jelena Ostapenko. When she now gets ready to march onto the Centre Court, she is the favourite.
And not Serena Williams, the seven-time winner, who plays her fourth tournament after pregnancy, birth and baby break. Many experts, especially from the USA and England, firmly believe in a Williams victory, much to the astonishment of Martina Navratilova, who will talk about it later this Saturday. But she herself, the nine-time winner and record winner, disagrees from the outset: “Angie has a wonderful chance. Because she plays wonderfully.”
Kerber is nervous when she arrives in the heart of Wimbledon. On the Centre Court, where the greatest champions have won, the German heroes Steffi Graf and Boris Becker. The other stars, Navratilova, Evert, Borg, McEnroe, Sampras, Federer, Nadal. And of course the Williamses, who held Wimbledon and this tennis green firmly in their possession for almost a decade and a half.
Kerber may be restless, tense, excited. But she plays herself free quickly, gets into her rhythm, finds confidence. It works on itself, right in the middle of the master plan to triumph. She’s fascinatingly cool, incredibly focused.
Part 1: The day before, the first matches, the preparation
Part 2: The match, the award ceremony, the media marathon