It was a lot of fun for all of us, so we stuck at it." My sisters played basketball and tennis at the start. For health reasons, but also for social contact. It was always important to our parents that we exercised, no matter the sport. "Sport has always been a huge thing for us. To what extent does it help in terms of mutual understanding when you have a family where everything revolves around sport, your two sisters play basketball at the top level domestically and your father is a well-known figure in sports journalism? But towards the beginning, when I was on holiday with my parents or had been at home for a longer period of time, it was hard to make the leap again. I learned a lot and had to become independent early on. My mother wasn't so keen on the idea of me leaving home so soon, but in the end I did it – and it was a formative period. After that, they offered me a place at the boarding school. "I commuted for that first year, always by train, over an hour from train station to train station, almost every day after school. I was 14 and you always follow the Bundesliga at the weekend – and that was probably the deciding factor that made me think: 'Wow, I can now play in the youth setup of such a huge club myself.' I think the decision was made when the management of Werder Bremen came to our house – and at the time, as a youngster, I was wide-eyed and thought: 'I want to take this chance.'"īut you continued to live in Buchholz for the time being, almost 100 kilometres away. The first clubs started to take notice of me in my home region of Buchholz in der Nordheide at that time: St. That was a great time."īut you ultimately opted for football. I often had very close, heated matches against Rudi, but once, if I remember correctly, I won 6-2, 6-0 against him. I faced players like Rudolf Molleker, who was among the top 150 players in the world and was in the main draw of Grand Slam tournaments. But I actually achieved super tournament results in my age category – with relatively little effort, because I always playing football at the same time. But when you're still so young, it's hard to say whether it would have ultimately been enough for a professional career or not. Would you really have had the chance to go similarly far in tennis? I was similar, I always liked to play stop-lob variations – but not as well, of course." (laughs) I always thought he was really cool because he's an unbelievably spectacular player, a real risk-taker. I had an all-areas pass that allowed me to go everywhere, even into the dressing rooms, which I didn't do of course. And many years ago I met Gaël Monfils, one of my absolute favourite players, at the Stuttgart Weißenhof. "I went to some tournaments and met great players like Roger Federer or even the famous Uncle Toni, Rafael Nadal's coach, at the Rothenbaum in Hamburg. You presumably also met several tennis stars thanks to your father? I also watch a lot of the guys I used to play against or who were at the same tournaments, like Alexander Zverev, who was an age group above me at the time." (laughs) That said, tennis will always be a part of me. But the decision to play football was fairly okay, I'd say. However, our parents never pushed us to do anything. "I was of course shaped by that, and tennis was also great fun for me, it still is too. A decision in favour of tennis would have been the obvious one. Your father Matthias is regarded as the voice of tennis in Germany, was a ranked player himself and played doubles in the German Tennis Bundesliga alongside French Open winner Thomas Muster. Then the time slowly came when my father told me: 'At some point you have to decide, you can't do both forever.' And in the end, I didn't decide so much against tennis as I did for football, because I also found it nice to do a team sport." The whole thing went on until I was 13 or 14. My parents had to shuttle me back and forth a lot. Sometimes I had football training and then tennis training on one day, and on the weekend there were football matches and then tennis tournaments too. Throughout my childhood, I played football and tennis alongside each other. "A clay court like this is a special place for me. It's a home game for you: as a youngster, you were even among the top 10 in Germany in your age category. Anton, we're meeting you for a SPIELFELD interview on the tennis courts of FC 1920 Zuzenhausen, which is actually only one serve away from the TSG headquarters.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |