In the Netherlands, everyone is talking about the Women’s World Cup final between the Oranje squad and the USA on Sunday.
At Wimbledon, all eyes this week have been on Cori Gauff, at 15 years of age the youngest female qualifer of the Open era.
It is exactly how Kiki Bertens, the best female tennis player the Netherlands has produced since Betty Stove in the 1970s, likes it.
Seeded No.4, the 27-year-old truly dislikes being at the centre of attention.
When her first round match, against Mandy Minella of Luxembourg, was moved to Centre Court, arguably the most famous court in tennis, Bertens wasn’t exactly over the moon.
“I'm not the person who likes to play on Centre Court,” she said in a news conference, after moving to the second round at the loss of five games. “But it is what it is, and I think it was just a good challenge for me to just go out there and play my first match on Centre Court and, just, like how I was able to manage the nerves and all that kind of stuff.”
And yet, Bertens now finds herself at the top of the one professional sport for women that’s known the world over.
At the end of 2017, the then No.31-ranked Bertens nearly walked away from tennis, unable to cope with the pressure and daily grind of life on the women’s Tour.
“I needed some rest, at the end of that year,” she told wimbledon.com at Roland-Garros. “I went on holiday with my boyfriend, and we talked. I came to the realisation that I didn’t want to continue my career in the way I had done. I wanted to do it in a different way, to see if I could take more out of my career than I had done until that point. And that’s exactly what I did.”
In 2018, Bertens finished the season as the world No. 9, as she won three singles titles, and reached the quarter-final at Wimbledon.
This season, she has climbed to No. 4 in the rankings, having won titles in St. Petersburg and Madrid. That's the highest for any Dutchwoman since Stove was a finalist in the singles, doubles and mixed doubles at Wimbledon in 1977.
Bertens also credited her coach and former tennis pro Raemon Sluiter, an outgoing character always cracking jokes, with aiding her rise.
“He is very important to me,” she said. “We are very close, because we are always traveling together and see each other almost every day. I see him more than anyone, but we have found a good balance.”
Her success this year has not gone unnoticed at home.
“People come up to me a lot more, but I try to do my own thing when I am at home,” said Bertens, who grew up in the small town of Wateringen, in the west of the Netherlands.
“Some of them say ‘Go on, win Roland-Garros’, like that is such an easy thing,” said Bertens, who was widely considered one of the title favourites in Paris before a bout of stomach flu forced her to retire during her second-round match.
“Dutch people can be so direct, and I find that quite hard sometimes,” she said. “But I just prefer to be left alone and do my own thing.”
Although a lot of professional tennis players reside in Monaco for tax purposes, Bertens lives in Breda, an unassuming town of 180,000 residents in the south of the Netherlands.
“Home sweet home,” said Bertens. “I need my family and friends around me, and I will never move from the Netherlands.”
An aggressive and powerful baseliner, Bertens prefers slow clay courts, but with a booming serve and strong all court coverage, there is no reason why she can’t do well on the low-bouncing grass.
During last year’s Championships, Bertens beat Venus Williams and Karolina Pliskova before losing to Germany’s Julia Goerges. Bertens entered the 2019 Championships after the best grass court season of her life, reaching the final on home soil in Rosmalen and the semi-finals in Eastbourne.
But she was on the brink of elimination in the second round, when she survived a match point to beat the crafty American Taylor Townsend on Court 18.
“I was already going to the net to shake hands,” Bertens told reporters. But she was given a new lease of life after a drop shot from Townsend on match point ended up in the net.
Next up is another tricky opponent: the unseeded Barbora Strycova, on No.3 Court on Saturday. The Czech beat Bertens in the only match they played, on hard court in Auckland, New Zealand in 2016.
“Everything we are doing here from now is a bonus,” said Bertens, who is seeded to play two-time winner Petra Kvitova, also of the Czech Republic, in the quarter-final.
