By Cheryl Jones
In 1993, Philipp Kohlschreiber was 9 years old when Henri Leconte won the first singles title at the Gerry Weber Open. Leconte, who is French, took the title home in the inaugural staging of the tournament in an unbelievably quick hour-long match. He defeated Andre Medvedev of the Ukraine, 6-3, 6-2. It is a sure thing he savored the win, as it was his last singles title ever, capping a sixteen-year professional career.
Kohlschreiber had been playing tennis for nearly five years then. (He was a mere four-years-old when he took up the game.) Even after his first entry into the event in Halle in 2005 he might only have had a dream of winning the title in the German town that wasn’t far from his home in Augsburg. His first outing took him to the quarterfinals where he lost to the eventual winner, Roger Federer.
His next time in Halle (2007) wasn’t successful, as he lost in the first round to Finish player Jarkko Nieminen, 7-6, 6-4. In 2008, he was runner-up to – wait for it – Roger Federer, 6-3, 6-4. It wasn’t long before he won the Gerry Weber Open, though. By then, it was 2011. He took home the title after the first all German final at the GWO. Unfortunately, the tick was placed in the “W” column when fellow German Philipp Petzschner retired in the second set, 7-6, 2-0, but it was a win, nonetheless.
Today, he was in the opening match on Center Court at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the GWO. He began with a bang, but ended up losing the first set to Joao Sousa of Portugal, 3-6. Even though he seemed to be searching for the right shots, he was playing sluggishly. He did manage to play through to the second round by taking the next two sets, 6-4, 6-4. He said that he was happy to have made it to the second round and will play the winner of a match that should be contested tomorrow between Italian, Paolo Lorenzi and another German player who has shown great promise, despite his tender age of twenty, Alexander Zverev who is seeded fourth here.
Kohlschreiber’s career has had its ups and downs, and even though I might categorize it as pedestrian, he has managed to win seven singles titles. He has played his best tennis in Germany. His winnings have been anything but pedestrian, actually. He has won over ten million US dollars and since he is thirty-three, he may have a number of years remaining to chalk up a few more victories and a few more dollars.
Tennis fans are familiar with a number of German players, other than Stefanie Graf. Boris Becker did quite well during his career, winning 713 matches. Tommy Haas is in a distant second place with at least 569 wins, but Haas has been playing on the tour for most of his thirty-nine years. Kohlschreiber has crept into third place among the German men who have played in the Open Era with 407 tallies in the “W” column.
Even though Kohlschreiber’s current ranking is 56, he must feel at home here, where the crowd supports everyone – especially German players, no matter what their name is. There will be time for him to smooth out his play and face his next opponent who may very well be a crowd pleasing German. It all depends on the winner of the Zverev versus Lorenzi match.
In tennis, experience is often a decider; if that’s the case, he will have a chance to reclaim a bit of confidence and move on to another opportunity to take home a trophy that was surely in his sights the moment he struck his first ball at the Gerry Weber Open in 2005.
