Despite a good performance, Sabine Lisicki failed early on at the tennis tournament in Bad Homburg.
The 33-year-old lost her opening match at the event, which was worth almost 260,000 US dollars, against the Russian Anna Blinkowa after a big fight 6: 3, 1: 6, 5: 7 and, like the previous week, lost at her home tournament in Berlin the first round.
Lisicki was originally supposed to play her first match against Zhu Lin, but the Chinese canceled at short notice. The outsider started well against Blinkowa, number 44 in the world rankings. After an early break, the long-injured Wimbledon finalist from 2013 also lost a service game to make it 4: 3, but immediately managed the re-break and a little later won the set.
But then the thread broke. Lisicki, who is only 308th in the world rankings and only made it into the field of 32 players thanks to a wildcard at the Wimbledon dress rehearsal, had to give up the second set 6-1. In the third set she was unable to use a 4:1 lead. After almost two hours, Blinkowa converted her first match point to victory.
Maria meets Swiatek
On Monday, the other two German participants will also intervene. Tatjana Maria is dealing with the world number one and four-time Grand Slam winner Iga Swiatek from Poland. Anna-Lena Friedsam, who came into the tournament for the injured Jule Niemeier, meets Mayar Sherif from Egypt.