Summer rain and keep your nerves: Tatjana Maria wins the Australian Open

Torben Beltz grinned. “You already know what kind of court this is, right?” he said after Tatjana Maria’s 7:6 (5), 6:4 first-round win in the 1573 Arenafrom which you have a wonderful view of the Melbourne skyline: “This is where Angie fended off the match point in the first round in 2016.” Angie, that is of course Angelique Kerber; She was on the verge of early failure in the first round on this court against Misaki Doi, but won this game and her first Grand Slam title a good two weeks later. Who knows what would have happened if Kerber hadn’t won back then – but after the 2024 Olympics, she ended her career as a three-time Grand Slam winner.

“I thought to myself: Tatjana, you can’t do that to me now,” said Beltz, Kerber’s coach at the time. He has been the national coach of the German women since December, and as such he experienced an extreme situation right at the start of the Australian Open on Sunday: This game between Maria and Bernarda Pera (USA) was interrupted before the start of the tiebreak in the first set. “Australian summer” means that you sometimes experience all four seasons within 24 hours, and on the first day of the tournament the gods had first decided on summer mornings, then a crashing thunderstorm and then six hours of rain.

In Melbourne, Tatjana Maria experiences what an Australian summer can mean

That meant: loitering around the facility, but at the same time keeping the tension high; Because it didn’t continue with just any score where you could allow yourself to make mistakes – but with important moments. “I slept, waited, ate – and went to my children, who were in care the whole time; “It was a long day for them,” said Maria afterwards. As the oldest player in the women’s table – she celebrated her 37th birthday in August – and the mother of two daughters, she has a bit of experience with situations like these: “You try to visualize these moments and then implement them.”

That’s exactly what she did: Like Kerber back then, she kept her nerve, with her typical slice chops she patiently waited for her opponent to make mistakes, who came back onto the court much more erratically and ended the tiebreak with a double fault. But there was still a bit of a thrill for Beltz in the spring evening weather: Maria only converted her fifth match point to move into the second round. Beltz now has another positive memory of this place. By the way, his strategy for bridging the waiting time: “I read a book.”