Will There Be A New Tennis Boom In Germany?

Written by: Staff on 19th July 2013

Will There Be A New Tennis Boom In Germany?

epa03791073 Tommy Haas of Germany returns the ball in the second round match against Slovenia's Kavcic during the ATP Tennis tournament in Hambug, Germany, 17 July 2013. EPA/AXEL HEIMKEN |

A couple of former German touring pros don’t believe that Sabine Lisicki’s run to the Wimbledon final will ignite a new tennis boom in Germany, which has seen its participation decline since its golden generation of Grand Slam winner Steffi Graf, Boris Becker and Michael Stick called it quits.

“I think what we need – and that is not just here in Germany, the same goes for the United States, for example – we need a new superstar, very badly so,” former touring pro Peter Moraing told Dw.de. “If Sabine wins that is good, but we also need a man who can win the major tournaments, we have been saying this for quite a while: If you have a hero in a sport, people get interested, TV stations come to cover the sport, the younger generation will come into the clubs to try out for themselves, whether they like the game or not. Like in Switzerland now, for example, the clubs are pretty full and the schools are very busy and that is because of Roger [Federer] and before that they had Martina Hingis a few years ago, so the superstars are very important for the sport in their country.”

Germany’s top four male players are No. 11 Tommy Haas, Philip Kohlschreiber, Florian Mayer and Daniel Brands. While the 35-year-old Haas had had a good year, he hasn’t been able to reach the final of a major. The other three are not seen to be impact players.

Germany does have a good group of women with Lisicki, No. 9 Angelique Kerber, Mona Barthel, Julia Georges, Annika Beck and Andrea Petkovic, so perhaps it will be the females who generate more interest.

Former German touring pro Udo Riglewski, who played doubles with Stich, does think that Lisicki’s run will have an impact, but not a large one.

“It helps, for sure when Lisicki wins,” Riglewski said. “It helps to boost tennis a little bit. But no one will start playing tennis because of her. There are just too many different things that kids can do today. When we were young there wasn’t that much on TV and we didn’t have the internet. We played tennis because there happened to be a tennis club in town. Nowadays the kids here play tennis and dance and learn music and do so many different things. So I think a real tennis boom like we had one in the 1980s will never happen again. Unless there is maybe an unbelievably strong No. 1 player like Boris was at the time. Even if Haas wins a big tournament, that will not trigger a boom. Maybe people will then come to watch the next event he plays at, but we won’t see more people signing up in tennis clubs to reach the number of two million members or more. Those times will never come back.”

Riglewski doesn’t blame the German Tennis Federation for falling to produce another superstar. Some analysts believe that systems can create a top player, but he thinks that environment can only take a player so far.

“You can plan to create good players and help them work hard and practice hard, but in the end you need more to become a superstar,” he said. “They need to train hard too, of course, but I believe you are born to be a superstar. No one had planned to have Becker win Wimbledon at age 17. It was not because of any plan that Stich graduated from school at age nineteen, starts playing tennis and then goes to win Wimbledon just one year later. This is nothing you can plan. And in top class tennis, Germany is doing well at the moment, we have a lot of players in the top 100. We are the country with the second or third highest number of players in the top 100. What we really need is another superstar again.”

Riglewski traces the start of Germany’s tennis boom back to the 1970s, well before Graf and Becker came on the scene in the mid to late 1980s. But even though the establishment of a host of new clubs predated Graf and Becker’s ascension to No. 1, their success drove the popularity of the sport to new heights.

“Tennis was on TV almost every day and that was then the peak of the whole tennis boom here in Germany,” he said. “And after that it went down, but we’re still doing okay. Now we still have 1.7 million members in tennis clubs, down from 2.5 million at the height of the tennis

Moraing is somewhat optimistic about what’s ahead for his country, saying that there still is a solid playing population that is still one of the biggest on the planet. He did add however that it’s important for the German Tennis Federation to keep entry costs low for kids who are not from wealthy backgrounds.

“The future for tennis still looks pretty good in Germany,” he said. “There are a lot of promising kids playing tournaments and traveling a lot. We see 10-year-olds and 12-year-olds practicing a lot.”

©Daily Tennis News Wire

Topics: Andrea Petkovic, Angelique Kerber, Annika Beck, Boris Becker, Daniel Brands, Florian Mayer, German tennis news, Germany tennis news, Julia Georges, Michael Stick, Mona Barthel, Philip Kohlschreiber, Sabine Lisicki, Steffi Graf, Tommy Haas

Follow 10SBALLS.COM on:

Facebook:

Twitter:

10sBalls_com says:

July 19, 2013 at 8:29 am

Will There Be A New Tennis Boom In Germany? – http://t.co/QJ73McBVzh #tennis @TommyHaas13 @sabinelisicki @BleacherReport @ESPNTennis
Hedemkk says:

July 19, 2013 at 5:16 pm

RT @AndreaUpdate: Will There Be A New Tennis Boom In Germany? http://t.co/uUXEWcONUV