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Elise Tamaëla, the coach of Dutch tennis star Kiki Bertens, says their motto is simple - making sure Bertens remains fit when the season starts again, while speaking to the AD.nl website. Bertens recalls the time that they had learnt about the cancelation of the Indian Wells tournament.
"Last Sunday evening we were eating in a restaurant, when it suddenly went around that the tournament would be canceled. Very strange, nothing seemed to be wrong, everyone was there, trained, everything was ready. But the boss of main sponsor BNP Paribas did not want the tournament to continue.
It was confirmed later that evening. ” Tamaëla and Bertens both returned to the Netherlands and then flew again to Miami, which was also canceled and the pair are now back in the Netherlands. "We heard that President Trump was going to take measures for air traffic between the US and Europe, and we decided to stay.
We trained like everyone else, but no one knew exactly what. All WTA tournaments have been removed from the calendar until May 2. The next tournaments are now on clay in Madrid, Rome and Roland Garros in Paris. Well, it is difficult to imagine that we will play tennis in those places in seven weeks.
Common sense says there will be no clay court season this year." Tamaëla says Bertens is training outdoors for now, running up and down stairs.."We can go into the forest, onto the beach. Just don't play tennis, the courts are closed.
We had already made a whole schedule, would train with Wesley Koolhof and later on the complex of the union. Now we see this period as a seasonal preparation as you normally turn it in winter. First the physical part, then tennis/ We are looking around (for a court) If Kiki asks somewhere at a club: may I come to train, it will probably be possible somewhere.
But we don't want to get anyone in trouble, you don't do that now. The tennis will come again. ” Tamaëla is also of the view that the rankings would be frozen till the time the tour resumes but says she would like to start talking about forehands and backhands once again soon.
“(I think) that no one will lose points from last week, Indian Wells. Anyone who is injured and would not be playing anyway is in luck. You can never please everyone. Above all, it is to be hoped that this period of heavy measures will have an effect everywhere, that we will see that things will improve after a while, just like in China. Can we talk about backhands and forehands again? ”