French Open 2020: Daniel Altmaier - for the first time a really strong piece by the boy from the Lower Rhine
Daniel Altmaier causes a sensation at the French Open 2020. The "boy from the Lower Rhine" is in the third round in Paris.
by Jörg Allmeroth
last edit:
Oct 01, 2020, 11:22 pm
Daniel Altmaier made a virtue out of the necessity of the corona standstill in spring and summer. Day after day, he'd darted around on the training grounds for hours or lifted weights in the gym. When he came to Paris a week and a half ago to qualify for the French Open, he secretly breathed a sigh of relief after the mammoth program: “At first the tournament seemed like a recovery for me after the whole mess.” His opponents have been getting old masters top form again and again to feel his good self-esteem, his mental and physical robustness, his hands-on attitude whenever things got serious in the red sand.
On Thursday he crowned his previous victory run with the sovereign, almost flawless 6: 3, 7: 6 (4), 6: 3 second round triumph over the favored compatriot Jan-Lennard Struff. “I had to wait a long time for this moment. Now he's here - and I'm very happy, ”said Altmaier, a really strong piece of tennis Germany for the first time. In the third round on Saturday, Altmaier will meet the Italian world number eight Matteo Berrettini.
Altmaier can close the generation gap
Everything is actually still very new, very unusual for the young, 22-year-old man from the Lower Rhine, from Kempen. But the robust athlete doesn’t look like a green debutant in his first guest appearance on one of the four Grand Slam stages, in the first tournament of his life, in which he could potentially have to play five sets. However, the determined, energetic youngster has not yet got into this embarrassment in Paris, only in the third and final qualifying round (best-of-three) he gave up a round against the Belgian Ruben Bemelmans. Otherwise, he won all twelve sets and eliminated the always unpredictable, dangerous veteran Feliciano Lopez (Spain) in the first lap.
altmaierstruff
Just like Lopez, Struff angrily pounded his racket around in 13th place on Thursday - frustrated about his sporting grievances against the superior Altmaier. Only once, at the beginning and in the middle of the second set, Struff was allowed to calculate easy chances against the qualifier after a break lead - but he ended the hopes of the tall Sauerlander for a comeback with a wonderful longline backhand to win the tiebreak 7: 4. “Great performance, my respect. That was an absolutely deserved success ”, stated men's tennis boss Boris Becker from afar. No doubt about it: Altmaier also has what it takes in the medium to long term to close the generation gap in the Davis Cup team alongside Alexander Zverev and Dominik Koepfer.
Altmaier's journey is not over yet
At the Open French Championships, however, the Lower Rhine was not expected to be so far ahead, at least now in the round of 32 in his Grand Slam debut. But while established forces such as Kohlschreiber or Koepfer had already failed, other German actors did not even survive the qualification efforts, Altmaier got going under the Eiffel Tower almost irresistibly. And that also and above all had to do with his physical constitution, with the symptom-free work after all the injuries that had repeatedly set him back over the years. “I'm in better shape here than ever. I feel healthy and fresh, ”said Altmaier.
He always seemed wiry, agile, enterprising on this unfamiliar Grand Slam adventure, he never seemed to have the feeling that he could lose anything - and has never lost before. At the same time, Altmaier radiated an inner calm, a balance that allowed him to survive every test in the matches. "I knew that there was something in it for me," said Altmaier unmoved before his first main draw matches, he sensed his chance without appearing disrespectful in front of the higher-ranking competition. He has entered new territory in many ways, reached the first Grand Slam main field, now the advance in round three. And when Altmaier looks at the world rankings in a week and a half, he will find himself in the top 150 for the first time in his career. At least - because his French Open are not over yet.
Here the single tableau in Paris
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