Nicolas Kiefer

Born: July 5, 1977 in Holzminden (NiederSachsen)
Height: 1.82 m
Plays: Right-handed (two-handed backhand)

When he appeared on the big scene in the late ’90s along with Tommy Haas as potential successors of Boris Becker and Michael Stich, I knew they had relatively slim chances to win at least one major. However, considering Kiefer’s stunning 1999 season (he was twenty-two years old then), I’d say he finished his career as an underachiever, given his modest six titles (¡he lost the last ten finals of his career, in Moscow ’05 despite leading 7-5, *4:0 against Igor Andreev) and the fact that he never won a Masters Series tournament.
During the aforementioned 1999 season – undoubtedly the best one in his career, concluded with a Masters semifinal – he was working with a veteran coach Bob Brett (twenty years on the tour then), and they implemented an interesting tactic: Kiefer played almost all his service games from the back of the court, but every time he faced a break point, he adopted serve-and-volley tactics, often doing the same at game points. Despite the predictable pattern, it worked perfectly. However, in 2000, when he seemed poised to become a Top 5 player for years to come, his career in some sense collapsed, and he never regained his composure after that.
He was an interesting player overall seeking new solutions, and around 2004, he changed his on-court strategy to become almost a regular serve-and-volley player (at least behind the first serve) on faster surfaces, he did it rather paradoxically when this style was dying out. This approach clicked well two times, allowing him to achieve his two best results, intertwined with several unexpected defeats. The first was at the Australian Open in 2006 when he reached the semifinal after a controversial marathon win over Sébastien Grosjean (having lost his previous four Slam quarterfinals: WB ’97, AO ’98, AO ’00 and UO ’00). The second came two years later at the Canadian Open when, once again, a victory over a Frenchman (Gilles Simon) preceded his loss to a great player, this time Rafael Nadal. As the son of a French mother (thus his name is not Nikolaus), he was always extra motivated when facing players from across Germany’s western border.
Kiefer will be definitely remembered as a very talented man with a stroke of genius, possessing “exceptional hand-eye coordination” according to Becker, who mentored Kiefer before the two fell out for unclear reasons. Kiefer was good to watch on every surface albeit his impatience in the course of longer rallies, didn’t allow him to get any interesting result on clay. At the Olympics in Athens 2004, he experienced the most bitter moment of his career fighting for the Gold medal in doubles. Similarly to his partner Rainer Schüttler, Kiefer didn’t often lose after squandering match points, but in arguably the most important encounter of their careers, they wasted a quadruple match point before losing to the Chilean duo. Before the Olympic Games, the Germans would certainly buy the silver medal sight unseen, but during the medals ceremony they both seemed mentally devastated…

Career record: 366–274 [ 260 events ]
Career titles: 6
Highest ranking: No. 4
Best GS results:
Australian Open (semifinal 2006; quarterfinal 1998 and 2000)
Wimbledon (quarterfinal 1997)
US Open (quarterfinal 2000)
World Team Cup champion 1998