Petkovic on Muguruza: "I like her because she's a little strange"

Isn't the world of sports full of sentences that somehow always sound the same, even with different tones and temperaments?

One of these sentences learns more from defeats than from victories, although it lacks a small, not entirely insignificant addition.

You learn when you can allow it, but that doesn't always seem the easiest exercise.

Defeats in bad phases lead from small to big concerns and to the overwhelming question: Am I really good enough?

Defeats in better phases do not leave you without a trace, but they encourage you to work better, train smarter and not make the same mistakes twice.

Ask Andrea Petkovic, who says that after a good start to the year with the feeling of being as fit and resilient as she has not been in a long time, she had the impression in the summer that she was stepping on the spot.

“At some point in July it pulled my teeth out that, despite my good feeling, I never won more than one or two matches at a tournament.

Tennis players are so strange animals that wins count after all.

I could no longer rely on what I felt in me, and I began to have doubts. "

Quarantine in Australia

But then came the tournament at Hamburg's Rothenbaum, where she overcame doubts and made it to the final, and since then the mood has been back to form.

She felt like a liberation, and a few weeks later she won another title for the first time in six years in Cluj / Romania.

The appearance in the convincing victory in the first round of the US Open against Irina-Camelia Begu (Romania) matched the knowledge and insights of summer time;

Started well, faced difficulties, reacted, won.

This Wednesday (5:00 p.m. CEST at Eurosport), the certainly not easier test against Garbiñe Muguruza, currently number ten, and with this constellation, the gods of tennis have thought something.

At the beginning of the year, the two were part of a training group during the quarantine before the Australian Open, and Petkovic says she has benefited enormously from this time together. “There was an incredible intensity, one of the things that really made me better this year. The fact that I realized that I could take this kind of training gave me incredible confidence for the season. ”Apart from the profit on a personal level. She likes the Spaniard and their alternative ideas about life. In Petkovic's original language: "I like her because she has guts and is a bit strange - but strange."

Now it can happen that Garbiñe Muguruza in New York has to digest the fruits that she cherished and tended with a competitor in Melbourne and during regular joint practice hours in the months afterwards.

On the one hand, a look at the previous record of the two might not have that much to say, because the last of the three joint encounters was five years ago.

"I'm looking forward to the match"

On the other hand, because Petkovic is 3-0 on the other hand, there may be a little bit of confidence in it. In addition to the one she already has. “I'm fit and ready,” says Andrea Petkovic, “it'll be a huge challenge, but I'm looking forward to the match.” And she knows that she doesn't have to do it all by herself. Since the audience is back in the stands, recently increasingly in larger numbers, it is easier for everyone to activate emotional reserves when things get difficult in the game.

Like Angelique Kerber's victory at the start over Dajana Jastremska from Ukraine, who put a lot of pressure on with uncompromising play throughout the game. But as so often in the past few weeks, Kerber resisted with all his might and did not let up when the matter was almost lost at the score of 3: 5 and 0:30 in the third set. For the fifth time this year she won a game in which she lost the first set, and she says that the environment also played a part in that.

“The audience actually pushes me to get everything out of me; it shows me that I only play my best tennis with spectators. ”She does not want to hear any of the voices that they want to place in the row of promising candidates for the title - also in memory of the famous march to the semifinals at Wimbledon .

“I think that completely different people and players are favorites than me”, but let's see how things develop. In round two she will meet Anhelina Kalinina, and this constellation also has a history. In Paris at the French Open, Germany's best lost quickly and clearly against the Ukrainian in the first round, and at the time it didn't look like she was still having much fun with this game. That was a little over three months ago; three months with many victories and a few defeats with a learning effect.