Tennis player Jule Niemeier: "When the demands are so high, you destroy yourself a little"

Ms. Dot Niemeier, you weren't able to make the Australian Open the previous year because you were ranked 129 in the world. You are currently in 68th position and began as the top Germans in Melbourne.

The fact that I'm in the peloton is more important than whether you feel more like a novice or a top performer. Whether you have to play three qualifying matches beforehand or not makes a significant difference from a physical standpoint.

Additionally, there is a huge mental difference between the four major tournaments. The tension and anticipation are both much stronger, and the feelings are much more intense.

That doesn't change anything for me now; the question is how do you handle the role as the new top executive?. I don't care if I'm number one, number two, or number three; all I want to do is perform well and triumph in the games.

I believe there are some players who take it a little too seriously when they play on big stages for the first time, with the French Open, Wimbledon, and US Open already in the rearview mirror. When you first enter a facility in Melbourne, Paris, London, or New York, it's very different from the smaller ITF tournaments you may have attended in the past because Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer are not present.

Instead of playing on a smaller court with only ten spectators present, I find it much more motivating to play in front of a large audience of 15,000 people. Everyone must have noticed how much I was able to take pleasure in everything when I advanced to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon last year.

Did you reflect on what you accomplished in 2022 during the season's post-tournament downtime? I tried to completely unplug from tennis while on vacation. However, it is true that the year was very productive.

Given that it was my first actual year on the tour, this was even more true. The most noteworthy accomplishment was undoubtedly defeating Anett Kontaveit at Wimbledon, which was my first victory over a player ranked in the top ten.

However, I also learned a lot from my losses that year, like those in three sets I suffered in Berlin and Bad Homburg against the Swiss players Belinda Bencic and Darja Kassatkina. It's inevitable to lose to top players and take those lessons to heart; you might even end up defeating a top ten player in the end.

What do you learn from wins or losses? After victories, I might rewatch a few moments of the game to reinforce my performance and identify lessons I can apply to the next match. However, losses are frequently much more significant.

If you win a game, you must play the next one right away, and you must deal with the following opponent fairly quickly. After a defeat, you take more time to consider everything.

Depending on the defeat, you may or may not take something positive away from it. There are some situations in which your adversary played so well that you hardly had a chance.

There are also games where you feel as though you have lost yourself because you either performed poorly or were unable to accomplish your goals. Such losses are discouraging and make you feel much worse.

You had dominated the first set against the world number one, whom you are now facing in the first round of the Australian Open, but lost in three sets to him at the US Open. How did that match feel to you?. I am aware that there might have been more in the game.

I had the impression that I had gotten carried away. It can only be a benchmark for how I approach a game like this if such a nearly perfect sentence serves as the standard for evaluating upcoming challenges.

Naturally, I won't be able to do that forever. My assertion that I always play as well as I did in the opening set against the world's best cannot stand.

Why not, you kind of self-destruct a little bit when the demands are that high. Simply put, it's impossible to play flawlessly in every game.

I do, however, have the right to affirm the excellent performance, to continue competing, and perhaps to ultimately prevail in a match of that nature. Compared to most of your rivals, you play with more variety, engaging in frequent net attacks, undercut shots, and stop shots.

It was natural for you to be this aggressive, or has it always been that way?. Being constantly on the net reminds me of how much I used to enjoy playing volleys.

Additionally, I had a youth coach who heavily emphasized volleys, which is somewhat unusual for girls of that age. I was always the offensive player who took the initiative, even when I was a young boy playing football on my brother's team at the age of ten or eleven.

Like on the tennis court, where I'd prefer to win the point on my own rather than thanks to a mistake by my rival. How do you stay composed when things don't go as planned? Do you have to force yourself to remain composed or do you naturally maintain your composure?.

On the field, I used to be extremely sensitive. However, I've improved at keeping my emotions under wraps and better managing my negative thoughts during certain parts of the game.

I'm very laid back by type, so how hard did it have to work for you?. However, I perform at my best when I'm relaxed around people or on the tennis court.

When this happens, I become emotional, am able to push myself, and even engage the audience. I probably wouldn't have carried out that action in the past.

I was an extremely shy, quiet, and introverted person. That comes naturally on the pro tour when you're surrounded by a lot of people from other countries, how did you change.

I certainly didn't intend to be at ease off the field, at ease on the field at times, and at ease emotionally at others. I've grown older and more experienced, of course.

When you take on responsibility for yourself or have to make decisions, you become more open. You made the decision to leave your parents' home in Dortmund when you were a teenager in order to train in Offenbach for a while before moving to Regensburg.

I felt as if I had lost my entire youth because I moved away from home. I don't have any regrets because everything allowed me to keep developing personally.

How much have more experienced teammates like Andrea Petkovic and Angelique Kerber contributed to your professional growth? For me, it's very important to have played on a team with Petko and Angie and to have contact with them. It's crucial for young athletes like me to get a sense of what their daily lives are like and how they conduct themselves off the field.

And how was it off the field? Easygoing, laid-back, full of jokes and laughter, occasionally getting a little out of control. It's unfortunate that this fact is frequently overlooked: professionals are also people.

If there's anything you can take away from Andrea Petkovic and Angelique Kerber, it's how intensely they train. They have a bad reputation for doing that.

The level of intensity they exhibit is truly impressive. I have accepted the challenge and am collaborating with my team to be able to maintain the intensity during training, which is a significant step in my development.

Angelique Kerber is taking a break while pregnant with her first child, and Andrea Petkovic has retired. I think Petko is always missing because she puts people in a good mood and is typically in a good mood, making her someone you can just sit down and talk to.

I'm hoping Angie will make another appearance. Now comes my favorite question Does the question I haven't even asked you annoy you? Annoyed might not be the right word, but many fear a gap that will open up as the representatives of a successful generation say goodbye.

However, it was obvious that there needed to be a generational shift. And I think that the way the situation with us women is presented makes things seem much worse than they actually are.

Eva Lys, Noma Noha Akugue, Ella Seidel, and Nastasja Schunk are some of the females who will be arriving. These players need time, so give them some.

There was a generation before us, but it stopped early, and constantly speculating about whether anyone is coming now or whether nobody is coming now doesn't make things any easier. The decision-making process is now somewhat up to us.

Iga Swiatek, a Pole who is two years your junior at 23, is currently ranked first among women, while the 19-year-old Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz is the top male athlete in the world. Sure, people in Germany place a lot of value on education and the Abitur; you can't compare that to other countries, so are German players already at a disadvantage because they are focusing on school for the time being?.

A player under the age of 18 cannot participate in many tournaments if she hopes to graduate from high school with honors. On the other hand, Eastern European athletes sometimes begin training at the age of 13 and train twice daily.

It's not good for you, but it's obvious that you'll be better off and more likely to succeed when you're 17 or 18. It will be interesting to see if someone can sustain such a workload for twenty years.

But I can say with absolute certainty that I joined the tour when I was 22 years old, and I'll likely be in good physical shape until I'm in my early to mid-thirties.

You had dominated the first set against the world number one, whom you are now facing in the first round of the Australian Open, but lost in three sets to him at the US Open.