WTA Bad Homburg: Lisicki in the quarterfinals - and grateful for it
Cracking serves, joy of playing and an irrepressible will: Sabine Lisicki is back. In Bad Homburg she is in the quarterfinals.
by SID
last edit: Jun 22, 2022, 05:03 pm
The final serve scratched the line: an ace! Almost in disbelief, Sabine Lisicki threw up her hands over her head and rushed to the net to collect the congratulations. The former Wimbledon finalist is successfully continuing her comeback on her beloved lawn and is continuing to play for tournament victory in Bad Homburg.
"It's incredible, there were ups and downs today," said Lisicki (32) after the 6: 3, 2: 6, 6: 2 about the Belgian Greet Minnen. For her, even minutes after the match point, it was still "incredible that I prevailed".
The spectators applauded for a long time - and some felt transported back eight years to a time when Lisicki dreamed of tennis Germany as "Bum-Bum-Bine". Even before Angelique Kerber (Kiel) started her Grand Slam successes, Lisicki played for the Wimbledon title in 2013.
It's been a long, long time. Lisicki's last years were a time of suffering. She only returned to the field at two smaller tournaments on the ITF/USTA tour in Florida at the beginning of May - before that: the hard way back. First after glandular fever and several injuries, then after a total loss in the knee. The forced break lasted 18 months.
In Bad Homburg, thanks to a wildcard, she is in the main draw and justifies the trust of the tournament organizers, including Kerber and her manager Aljoscha Thron. "I'm so grateful that I got this chance from them," said Lisicki, who is far from being her old self, but has never lost her sense of grass: "I left my heart out there."
Her irrepressible will to return to the top of the world was already evident in the qualification for the tournament in Berlin or in the first round in Bad Homburg against Tamara Korpatsch from Hamburg. The joke is also coming back, her serve is still a danger for every opponent anyway.
Lisicki beat Minnen with seven aces and deservedly made it into the quarter-finals on Thursday against Caroline Garcia from France despite a high error rate. She will climb the world rankings - from rank 804 she is already around 300 places ahead. Open end.