For Tatjana Maria is that Slice The means of choice to be successful. This difficult blow is particularly effective on lawn. And: she has famous role models for this.
It can be helpful in life to look for a niche. Far away from mainstreamthat often uses the same means to achieve the goal. Tatjana Maria was looking for her own way – and she succeeds from time to time to ensure surprises. As on the time -honored lawn at the traditional tournament in London Queens Club. The 37-year-old makes so much different on the tennis court than her competitors.
Maria is the opposite of this unconditional power-Tennis, which also gains the upper hand more and more for women. Aryna Sabalanka, Iga Swiatek, Qinwen Zheng, Mirra Andreeva, to name just a few of the top players, are increasingly establishing the high-speed tennis in the world. Maria’s answer to this is the good old one Slice.
Slice got out of fashion
Maybe because Maria can no longer go with this high pace. And also because their way of playing has never been so aggressively oriented.
With her choice of blowing, however, Maria is a real spoiler who presents her opponents with almost unsolvable tasks – and thus also annoys her colossal. Because your competition is simply not used to having to react to this technique. In addition, she interrupts the rhythm of the opponent.
Nevertheless: This undercut strike has come out of fashion a little in recent years. Most of the time, this impact technique is used in the current tennis, especially when a player is in great distress.
Many top players – both for women and men – have adopted this blow. Especially on the slippery lawn, where the ball hardly jumps up and glides over the stalks at unabated high speed, this approach is an effective possibility.
Famous examples
Stefii Graf was already extremely successful with her backhand slice, she was able to do it seven times Wimbledon win. Or also Roger Federer, of whom the German ex-professional Philipp Kohlschreiber once reported, the Swiss “Has the best slice on the tennis tour”has repeatedly installed the undercut ball into his game.
Tatjana Maria chooses – not just on lawn as in the Queens – even the double variant. She also plays the forehand very often. With this she has a unique selling point.
However, what looks so simple requires a lot of feeling for the ball and is a complex technical challenge. Applied properly, it slowly but steadily unfolds its effectiveness. The slice then acts like a gradually acting, paralyzing poison, which is gradually drizzled.
Feeling lost
The lower pace and the flat jump, which forces the opponents even deeper to their knees and increase the pace themselves, change the impact routines among the opponents. Both at Maria’s victory against the Czech Karolina Muchova (No. 14 of the WTA world rankings) as well as against the Kazakhin and former Wimbledon winner Elena Rybakina (No. 11), this was impressively observed. And last but not least in the semi-finals against the American Madison Keys (No. 6).
All three lost, the longer the match lasted, and more and more the feeling for their blows and made an unusually many slight mistakes. Not because they got a bad day, but because Maria had forced her to play her. The German does not always succeed on other toppings, but on lawn their chances are all the greater due to the structural conditions.
Comeback like the stop?
It was not for nothing that the mother of two children had celebrated her greatest success in Wimbledon when she only left the semi -finals in 2022. It is not without reason that she is now in the semi -final in Queens club.
It may be with that Slice Similar to the last one with the stop. The Spanish super talent Carlos Alcaraz had made the short ball socially acceptable again and brought back to tennis as a modern means – after the stop was almost frowned upon.
Perhaps there will be more players in the future who take Maria’s Slice as a model and prefer the soulful variant of the Haudrauf method every now and then.