What was left of the “Bum Bum”.
The story of suffering of the warrior Sabine Lisicki
By David Needy, Berlin
6/18/2023 7:32 am
Sabine Lisicki fell from the very top to the very bottom. The former world-class tennis player is going through a tale of woe that is second to none. Give up? Out of the question for the warrior. Now “Bum Bum Biene” attacks again – as a “sensitive” regained strength.
On Saturday a week ago it was time again. Sabine Lisicki attacks at the Libéma Open on the outskirts of ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands. Qualifying round, 5th place. New normal, hard fare. The former Wimbledon finalist no longer plays with the greats. 3:6, 4:6. The end against Kryszina Dsmitruk from Belarus, the 234th in the world. Return to the hotel. Pack suitcase. Departure.
Sabine Lisicki’s new routine is a painful one. Before the Netherlands there is a first-round defeat at the tournament in Wiesbaden, before that the end of the qualification at the Stuttgart Open. The 33-year-old has been fighting her way back into the tennis elite for a good year. After a break of almost three years with glandular fever and a cruciate ligament tear. Only the next step does not really want to succeed. Athletic suffering follows physical suffering.
Tennis star or discontinued model? Great moments against Serena Williams and Co. or far from simple main rounds? Even in Challenger tournaments, designed to help players outside the world top 100 to earn ranking points? Lisicki is probably somewhere in between today. Where exactly, she may not even know herself. But she knows that she believes in her ability with every sinew in her body. Of her struggle for the comeback that is still ongoing.
Ten years since the moment of glory
Now Lisicki is trying in Berlin with the bed1open good luck until next Sunday. matter of honor in their home country. And then on your favorite surface, lawn. “As a small child, I always hoped to play in the Steffi Graf Stadium,” she says in an interview with ntv.de. Thanks to a wild card, she can suddenly compete with the best tennis players in the world in the main draw. Nine players from the top ten are there, and even a single win would mean important ranking points. Far more than is up for grabs in the small tournaments that are their new reality.
In 2022, Lisicki failed in qualifying because of the dog’s throat. “Every time I step on the lawn, I believe that I can win,” she now says briskly about her Berlin plans at the second attempt. “It won’t be any different this time.” Not only experienced tennis connoisseurs know that this should not be easy because of their suffering.
In the Federal Republic of Germany, the summer of 2013 belongs to Sabine Lisicki. She was christened “Bum Bum Biene” at the time. Her moment of glory is almost exactly ten years ago. When the German bowled the great Serena Williams, then number 1 in the world, out of the round of 16 of the world’s most important tennis tournament in Wimbledon. As Lisicki marches to the final. Tears are already flowing on the grass court – before she was the favorite of the strong French Marion Bartoli. The childhood dream bursts. After that, Lisicki will never attack so high up again.
The stark contrast to the great successes: A video on her Instagram channel summarizes the suffering and the struggle back after cruciate ligament surgery in seconds: hospital, pain, learning to walk. First on crutches, then without. Then first steps on the tennis court. Restrained hits. blow through. Underneath she writes “Keep Going. Keep Pushing. Keep Believing. Stay Strong!” Always keep going, always push, always stay strong. Not for the faint of heart and only for the strongest fighters.
“Didn’t have demons on my mind”
“To be honest, nobody expected me to ever be able to play professional tennis again,” Lisicki told ntv.de. “Cruciate ligament, meniscus, lateral ligament – once everything was broken in the knee.” Many would have quit. Not Lisicki. The Berliner doesn’t even think about it. She just thinks: “When can I finally walk again? When can I finally play again?”.
For 15 months, Lisicki can’t even go jogging. It won’t be until January 2022 that she will be able to walk a few hundred meters at a time again. During the injury period, she “cannot watch tennis because it hurt too much”. But the tennis madwoman always believes in her comeback during the 18 months of torturous rehabilitation training. She has a “very big fighting spirit in me, that comes from my parents,” says Lisicki, and she can count on “enormous support” from her family. Of course there were many difficult moments. She has to fend off a few “lows”, but “doesn’t fall any deeper”, but always digs her way back to the surface. “But I didn’t have any demons in my head when I was suffering,” she says. Her attitude towards life is simply too positive for that.
And so Lisicki fights and fights. She is “in an absolute tunnel” and “doesn’t even realize how hard it was”. First, she is no longer listed in the world rankings when she starts playing tennis professionally again about 14 months ago. In her second WTA tournament after her comeback, she sensationally reached the quarter-finals in Bad Homburg. There it is also in Andorra in December. At the beginning of the year, Lisicki made it into the quarter-finals again in Mexico City, and shortly afterwards she even made it into the semi-finals in Orlando. An updraft? Then Lisicki succeeds again little. Painful bankruptcies in the qualification. The former world-class player is now in 292nd place. “Last year was actually still rehab,” explains the tennis player. “The real comeback starts now”.
Due to her injury, Lisicki has become more considered in her way. wiser maybe. If she ever looks back on her entire career, it will mean “a lot” to her that she fought her way back, she says carefully. She is now increasingly trying to look from the outside after she had found time to look back due to the corona pandemic and the knee injury. “It was so late that I really realized what I had achieved,” explains Lisicki. In tennis, things usually continue straight after a triumph. That is “hard”.
Sensitivity is Lisicki’s new strength
Lisicki would advise her two things today from 2013, when she was at the peak of her career: “To continue on the path I’ve taken and not to change too much about it. And also to ask people for advice more often. I only have learned late to talk about certain things and to get tips.” With certain things, the tennis player also means her emotions. “I’m sensitive,” says Lisicki about herself today. “I didn’t admit it before, but now I do and those emotions are also part of the reason why I fought back.” As she got older, she realized that sensitivity “is one of my greatest strengths, because those are exactly the emotions that drive me on the pitch, that make me fight.”
So now Berlin. After years of pain and 14 months of struggle to comeback. Thanks to enormous strength training, Lisicki’s knees now feel the same strength again. “Everything is good again on the pitch,” she says happily. Laughing, she quickly knocks on wood three times. But despite the superstition, she leaves no room for evil thoughts and demons on the tennis court: “I love this one-on-one, you just have to be better than your opponent that day, no matter how you do it.”
Sabine Lisicki. The former world-class player who is desperate to attack at the top again. Female warrior. “I love to go out and fight,” she says. “Even if a few tears flow on the pitch: That’s okay. That’s part of tennis. We play this game that gets under your skin. We leave our hearts out there.”