WTA: One year later – Angelique Kerber as favourite to Sydney

Hopman Cup, then Sydney: Angelique Kerber will not leave the successful paths of the past tennis year at the start of her 2019 season.

Hard to believe: Almost a year ago, Angelique Kerber was searched in vain on the seed list of a WTA tournament for which the current world number two had named her. In Sydney war´s, at the premiere performance on the tour under the aegis of headcoach Wim Fissette, who, as is well known, has already moved on a little house. Not quite voluntarily, but at least in the direction of Victoria Azarenka.

At the beginning of 2018, however, everything at the Kerber Camp was still vain and there was nothing to stop Rainer Schüttler on the side from doing things differently in a few weeks’ time. Kerber will also start the coming season in Sydney, but then greeting from the very top of the tableau.

“I had a great week in Sydney,” Kerber said in the run-up to the event. “The grid was incredibly strong, and I wasn’t seeded, so I had to play good tennis to get through some hard matches.” Before her start in the Olympic city of 2000, Kerber will again compete in the Hopman Cup in Perth, the first opportunity to adapt to Australian conditions.

Ashleigh Barty, who had won the biggest title of her career with the WTA Eilitite Trophy in Zhuhai at the end of the 2018 tennis year, will also be at the start in Sydney. And who has a score to settle with Angelique Kerber: In the final of Sydney 2018 she was defeated by them in two sets.