Only one way from the top
It must have felt like all her Christmases had come at once. In 2016 Angelique Kerber could not stop winning. It was great. She could not have wished for more.
She won the Australian and US Opens, she reached the Wimbledon final, she deposed Serena Williams from the top spot in the rankings – other than winning the lottery, there was nothing more she could have done.
The trouble is that from the very top, there is only one way to go: down. And that is what happened to Kerber last year. The pressure of defending her ranking points and trophies was bad enough, but the constant demands on her time from sponsors, from tournaments, fans (some of them extremely famous fans), the media – it was all too much. Her form dipped, her ranking fell and she was only a shadow of the player she had been.
To go back to square one and start all over again, and do it at the age of 30, was asking a lot but that is what Kerber did. In the off-season, she got herself a new coach in the form of Wim Fissette and set off back up the rankings. Now, after a 6-3, 6-3 win over Jelena Ostapenko, she is back in the Wimbledon final where she will meet Serena Williams, just as she had two years ago.
“I think I cannot compare, like, this year with 2016 or '17,” she said. “I'm really proud to be back in the Wimbledon final after especially last year where things weren't like I was expecting actually.
“To being here again, that was, yeah, a goal when I start this year, you know, to playing good in majors, in the Grand Slams, and to be reaching the finals again. It's a great feeling. It's still one more match to go. But, yeah, I think for me it's great.”
The groundwork was done in the pre-season training sessions. Fissette got to work straight away and in the six months he has been working with Kerber, he has reignited her desire and rediscovered her motivation.
“I think I changed a few in my team around,” Kerber said. “I was doing a good pre-season. Also with Wim, with fitness coaches, some physios, my whole team, I think they helped me good to coming back, to really believe in me again.
“Yeah, we tried to improve my game every single practice. We're going out there, we're trying to improve like step by step. I think it's still a process.”
That process appears to be working spectacularly well already although the ultimate test is always Williams in a major final. Chasing her eighth title in SW19, Williams looks unstoppable, just as she was two years ago. Kerber, though, thinks she starts on level terms with the great champion: they are both on the comeback trail, they both know what it is like to win major titles. It is just that Williams has rather more of them, especially here at Wimbledon.
“I think it is a completely new match,” Kerber said. “I think, yeah, we both learned a lot. She's coming back. For me also, I'm coming back from 2017. I think it will be a new match. I know that I have to play my best, best tennis to beat her, especially on the grass, on the Centre Court, where she won so many titles here.
“She is always pushing you to the limits to play your best tennis. This is the only chance to beat her.”
The only slight weakness in this argument was the fact that it was Serena Williams she was playing in the final – and she does not play by the same rules as everyone else. Just 10 months after a very complicated delivery of her first child, there is no way she should be playing as well as she is. But she is. That’s Serena for you.
“She's always going out there to win the matches,” Kerber said. “I think it doesn't matter against who she is playing. She's trying to play like she played the years before where she won the big matches.
“Now for sure she had a lot of big confidence, especially after the matches she won here already. She knows the feeling to going out on this stage where you are in the finals, especially here. She won here, I don't know how many times.
“Yeah, she's a fighter. She's a champion. That's why she is there where she is now.”
And now Kerber must try and find a way to beat her. Getting back to the top is not as easy as Serena is making it look.
