Wimbledon: Best match of the tournament? Tatjana Maria and Jule Niemeier inspire the inventor of tennis!
Tatjana Maria is in the semi-finals of the 2022 Wimbledon tournament - after a great match against Jule Niemeier. Both won, their duel was an advertisement for fine, classic tennis.
by Florian Goosmann from Wimbledon
last edit: Jul 05, 2022, 08:23 pm
The tennis inventor, how much you would love to chat with him for a moment. What he imagined a good tennis match to be like, you could ask him what should and shouldn't be in it. It's no longer possible, the good Walter Clopton Wingfield , without whom none of us would be here, is unfortunately no longer with us. In 1874, as the older generation will remember, he had his new game patented.
We can only speculate afterwards. He must have imagined slice balls, probably volleys too, as well as a well-placed stop ball. (On the other hand, we doubt that he was already thinking about topspin at the time.) It should be fair, after all we are in England, tennis on grass was his idea anyway, and he certainly followed the first Wimbledon tournament in 1877.
Tatjana Maria and Jule Niemeier: heavenly tennis
You don't know what's going to happen later, whether the story is right with the afterlife in hell or in heaven, but let's locate Wingfield on a cloud with a view of the earth, and you can assume that he's playing tennis looked on Tuesday and he must have been thrilled. Because what Tatjana Maria and Jule Niemeier delivered was tennis!
Yes, tennis! No wild rumgeholzung. The two of them got the game, just as a game, in all its wonderful facets. Tatjana Maria with the slice and the praise (and from the second set also with the solid forehand), Jule Niemeier with patient build-up of points (which is necessary against Maria), with surprisingly safe serve-and-volley inserts (on slice returns, that is not easy, friends!).
The mental highlight reel, it is full to bursting: How Maria attacked after a long rally, Niemeier hit a great backhand cross and Maria twirled a Bahrami-esque backhand volley stop from the extension. How Niemeier started a tweener, but Maria stood in front of the net (as you do after a successful lob) and shot away to equalize the set. And at 5:5 in the third set, like a nasty trainer, he distributed the volleys, always in such a way that the student still just about got his turn without being able to start anything, and then at the end a stop again.
119 network attacks at Maria and Niemeier
To add a few numbers to all the romance: Both were online 119 (!) times (greetings to Simona Halep), both with positive quotas, Maria made the point in 29 out of 45 cases, Niemeier in 42 out of 74 cases.
It was an advertisement for tennis, not for women's tennis or German tennis, no, nonsense, for tennis in general; In the end, the spectators on Court 1 couldn't keep their seats, there were standing ovations for both players. Who, as Wingfield must have thought, treated each other extremely fairly. Now and then a cheer, Tatjana Maria with a not exaggerated jubilation after the victory, and instead of a handshake there was a long, warm hug.
It was, and it has seldom worked out like this: great tennis!
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