Would you rather talk a little about handball or play a lot of tennis?

This is one of the questions Andrea Petkovic has been asking for a long time.

Arrived in the autumn of her professional career, the 34-year-old Darmstadt native has long since prepared for her next career.

She has written a book, judged other books on television in the “Literary Quartet” and has occasionally moderated “Sport Reportage” on ZDF for two years.

Thomas Klemm

Editor in the "Money & More" section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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Andrea Petkovic has now confirmed that she will concentrate for another year on what she does best despite her many talents. Thoughts of an end to the tennis career are put on the back burner, life as a ZDF presenter is rather calm. "The THW Kiel derby against Flensburg for the fifth time, I'll present it differently at some point," said Andrea Petkovic in Prague after she and the German women's team were eliminated from the Billie Jean King Cup Cup - the successor to the traditional Fed Cup - after two defeats was.

Desire, mood and success have returned to the Darmstadt native, especially in the past four months. Until the Wimbledon tournament, their season was so-so, it had slipped to world number 130. After the grass season, Andrea Petkovic played tirelessly and, above all, experienced a golden summer: final in Hamburg, semi-finals in Belgrade, tournament victory in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. "After Wimbledon, I had to play through everything to improve my ranking," said the Darmstadt resident.

She succeeded because she also scored a few points here and there in the hard court season and worked her way up to 76th place in the world rankings.

In the so-called Singles Race, which only takes into account the results of this year and not even older ones, she is 58th. Andrea Petkovic's match record on the WTA Tour in 2021 is also positive, 22 wins are compared to 21 defeats.

In contrast to this season, when tournaments before the corona pandemic were included in the overall standings and distorted the ranking a bit, the Darmstadt native can now go into the coming tennis year calmly and plan better.

Thanks to her ranking, she can expect to be in the main draw not only at the Australian Open in January, but also at the three subsequent Grand Slam tournaments.

They will play “under the auspices of my body”.

She had to experience at the Billie Jean King Cup that she is no longer able to cope with the stress as easily as it was a few years ago. After her 1: 6, 3: 6 defeat in the opening singles against the Czech Marketa Vondrousova (Czech Republic) on Monday afternoon and the nightly matches of her colleagues after that, she didn't get to bed until around three in the morning. 14 hours later she had to play again against the Swiss Viktorija Golubic in Prague, losing 4: 6 and 5: 7. After the short night in Prague, her body “needed 20 or 30 minutes to get going,” said the German, who lacked energy at the end of the season. "That was a shame because I made the connection through play."

After the tournament rush of the past few weeks, Andrea Petkovic's body is now sending clear signals: It is crying out for calm - before the storm into the next, probably last season.

And with that back to handball.