After the clay comes the grass. That should be the uplifting message for Angelique Kerber at the end of a cold, wet day in Paris. She had to wait for hours for her personal tournament start, while the rain pelted the plastic sheets covering the clay courts and the visitors to the French Open lined up in front of the two-story souvenir shop to buy the “Parapluie Roland-Garros Logo Tricolore” for 65 euros each. It took until the afternoon before the umbrellas could be folded up. And when the rain started again after an hour and a half, Angelique Kerber, 36, had lost her opening match in the meantime.
“A lot of things didn’t come together today,” she said after her defeat late Tuesday afternoon, 4:6 and 3:6, against Arantxa Rus from the Netherlands: She doesn’t like playing against left-handers, she doesn’t like playing in this weather, and to say that she has a burning passion for the topspin tennis of the clay court season would be an exaggeration. Angelique Kerber won her three Grand Slam trophies on the fast courts of Melbourne, New York and Wimbledon. In Paris, where her best result in 2018 was a quarter-final, she has now suffered her fifth first-round defeat.
:Farewell the hard way
A final wave after the first-round defeat? The Spaniard is not making it that easy for himself. Rafael Nadal is still the old warhorse – and wants to give it his all again at the Olympic Games in Paris this summer.
Although Kerber had recently reached the round of 16 in Rome, also on clay, she found it difficult to get into the game against Rus, number 50 in the world. She was soon 1:4 behind, fought back to equalize before losing the set. A shout from a Dutch fan on set point had irritated her, she thought the match had been interrupted, a short debate with the referee followed: “I wanted to at least have it explained.” In the second set, she had to admit defeat on the third match point. She left the fact that, as the 2018 Wimbledon champion, she had to compete on a narrow, noisy side court uncommented: “I take it as it is.”
Since returning to the tennis tour after the birth of her daughter, Angelique Kerber has lost her opening matches in both Australia and France. But the highlight of the year from her perspective is yet to come: when the grass tennis season begins in June, she will play in Berlin, Bad Homburg and then at the All England Club. “No matter how it goes here, this will also do me some good with regard to grass,” she said on arrival in Paris. Because Tatjana Maria, Laura Siegemund, Eva Lys and Jule Niemeier also failed to complete their first tasks, from a German perspective only Tamara Korpatsch from Hamburg is represented at the French Open. She beat Ashley Krueger from the USA 4:6, 6:4, 7:6. She was not bothered by the rain, nor was Jan-Lennard Struff, who defeated the Argentinian Roman Andres Burruchaga in a quick match 6:3, 6:2, 6:1 on Tuesday evening.