Australian Open: Struff after Aus - "There was no energy, no quality"
When Jan-Lennard Struff had just lost the second sentence again in a nerve-wracking tiebreaker lottery, he crouched and bent back to his chair, his shoulders hanging heavily. The giant from Warstein no longer had any illusions about how this sunny Grand Slam Tuesday in Melbourne would end for him.
by Jörg Allmeroth
last edit: Feb 09, 2021, 11:06 am
“That was a moment when he pulled my tooth,” said Struff (30) later, “I thought I was somehow in the wrong film.” He, that was the blatant Australian outsider Christopher O'Connell, the man from world number 121, which ended the campaign of Struff, who started with great Australian Open hopes, mercilessly and humorlessly in three sentences with 7: 6, 7: 6 and 6: 1. “There was no real energy in me, no quality,” Struff complained afterwards, “I kept thinking: that doesn't exist. What you're doing here is unbelievable. ”The overall performance, in Struff's disarming words:“ That was nothing. And it really hurts now. "
Struff had been one of the climbers in international tennis in recent years, he had acted as a late bloomer from the middle of the tour pyramid to the expanded world elite. And he had also and especially at the Grand Slams caused a sensation and furore in the pose of the fear of favorites, the 1.98-meter giant was almost always one of the positive appearances among the German world travelers of the traveling circus. Even at the ATP Cup in the week before this Australian Open in Corona times, Struff had convinced the German team and aroused expectations with successes over highly traded competitors such as the Canadian Milos Raonic and the Serbian Dusan Lajovic.
aostruffaus2
Struff: "Low blow is difficult to put into words"
And then, on that hot summer day in Melbourne, everything was blown away for Struff, in a match that he had rightly entered as a towering favorite. And that ended with the bitterest defeat ever for one of the DTB professionals Down Under. “I had big plans for this tournament. I was actually in a good mood, "said Struff later," that's why this low blow is now difficult to put into words. "What had recently distinguished him, the coolness and precision of the so-called Big Points, had simply disappeared in the sudden performance crisis: Struff was able to didn't use any of his six breakpoints, and in both tiebreaks he sometimes made “blatant mistakes.” After O'Connell's set ball was blocked more than three meters, he asked himself quite banally: “How can this ball go so far out of bounds. “It was“ just a disaster ”today, said Struff.
In the past two years, Struff had often appeared as a passionate comebacker in smaller and larger tournaments - he had won games about which the former men's tennis boss Boris Becker had said: “Nobody has a chanterelle on Struffi But during the first big test of the 2021 season, you had the feeling that the giant was getting a little smaller and smaller with every minute played. The frustration paralyzed Struff so much that O'Connell, the Australian outsider, even had an easy time on the home stretch of the game. “I had taken a toilet break to regroup for the third movement,” said Struff, “but then everything went wrong again.” All in all, according to Struff, “it was a day that I ran out of very quickly the memory has to delete. "
aostruffaus
In addition to Struff, Yannick Hanfmann also dropped out, as expected. The 29-year-old from Karlsruhe lost against number 7 seeded Russian Andrey Rublev with 3: 6, 3: 6 and 4: 6. After the elimination of Angelique Kerber, Andrea Petkovic and Laura Siegemund, Mona Barthel from Bad Segeberg remained the only player in the women's competition.She won 3: 6, 6: 4 and 6: 4 against Elisabetta Cocciaretto (Italy) on Tuesday and scores now on Thursday in the second round on the Czech Karolina Muchova (seed list: 25th place).