Coach Jan de Witt - "Nobody can talk themselves out"
The past few months, Jan de Witt has only managed the training work by telephone with his protégé Nikoloz Basilashvili. But de Witt was by no means boring.
by Jens Huiber
last edit: Jul 20, 2020, 09:30 am
Werder Bremen will continue to play in the German Bundesliga in the coming season. From the expanded tennis cosmos, nobody will have enjoyed this news as much as coach Jan de Witt. The alliances are otherwise spread across other clubs: Jan-Lennard Struff and Davis Cup boss Michael Kohlmann are very close to BVB, Philipp Kohlschreiber, although not a burning football fan, can do a lot with Bayern, Alexander Zverev possibly also - after all, the German number one has already hit balls with Thomas Müller and Mats Hummels (at that time still in Munich).
Oldie Philipp Petzschner had to celebrate Arminia Bielefeld's resurgence in the past few weeks, Maximilian Marterer is somewhat out of line with his affinity for TSG Hoffenheim. But nobody is closer to the footballers than Coach de Witt: he regularly exchanges views with Werder coach Florian Kohfeldt, but is not in direct contact with the team, as he told tennisnet.
Critique by Struff, Khachanov and Gasquet
De Witt had enough time for that. Because his protege Nikoloz Basilashvili is only expected in Halle / Westphalia these days to start training at Breakpoint Base. For the US tour, which is scheduled to start in Washington on August 14. Even if there is still a big question mark behind the restart of the ATP events. In any case, his team had not yet booked flights.
He basically shares the criticism of players like Struff, Karen Khachanov or Richard Gasquet, who had negatively commented on ATP's information policy in the past few days. But: “At least I am personally well informed because I try to speak to a lot of people. Also with people from USTA who are trying to get this tournament series going. But basically we are probably not so well informed because many of the people involved do not know it. ”After everything that one hears from the USA at the moment, one has of course to ask whether the tour is such a good idea now starting from there again.
If the US tournaments do not take place, he will also be curious about what will happen to the ATP Challenger events that are scheduled to start in Washington.
From the point of view of de Witt, the events on the Adria Tour brought at least one positive aspect: "Now no one can excuse themselves that they did not know how things could go wrong." that young people are not given any opportunities to behave unreasonably.
De Witt expects a good starting field at the US Open
USTA tried to exclude unreasonableness of the Belgrade type with its presented concept for the US Open. By creating a bubble for players and coaches. "It doesn't scare me at all," Coach de Witt continues. “I'm more frightened that people can rent a house somewhere and can bring ten people with them. And then they are not in the test and can go anywhere. And we have seen enough times that there have been positive cases that were not noticed during the first test. I believe that USTA will therefore make the rules much stricter. ”
The biggest problem is the logistics anyway. “We have a bunch of players who want to come to Halle for training now, but who cannot enter the EU at all. And at the moment it is not at all clear what will happen when you come back from America. ”Which, according to de Witt, would not have a disastrous effect on the starter list at the US Open. “I believe that despite the current circumstances, a majority of the players would choose to play. Of course, money plays a role here, but they have all not played for half a year and are now hot again to come out and measure themselves against the others. ”