{"id":208639,"date":"2025-10-18T10:42:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T10:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/208639\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T10:42:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T10:42:10","slug":"the-former-wimbledon-quarterfinalist-who-is-now-ranked-outside-the-top-230-after-being-compared-to-ash-barty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/208639\/","title":{"rendered":"The former Wimbledon quarterfinalist who is now ranked outside the top 230 after being compared to Ash Barty"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\/ Follow us on Google Discover <\/a> <\/p>\n

Ash Barty had a very distinctive game style that was very effective in her dominant run at the top of the WTA rankings.<\/p>\n

Barty won every Grand Slam other than the US Open<\/a>, and spent 121 weeks as world number one in her career.<\/p>\n

Having spent 114 consecutive weeks as world number one and just winning her third major title at the Australian Open<\/a>, Barty shockingly announced her retirement<\/a> in 2022.<\/p>\n

Barty\u2019s<\/a> sudden retirement left a big vacancy on the WTA Tour<\/a>, and later that year another player was compared to the Australian after reaching the Wimbledon<\/a> quarterfinals.<\/p>\n

\"JulePhoto by Ryan Pierse\/Getty ImagesJule Niemeier: The former Wimbledon quarterfinalist who was compared to Ash Barty<\/p>\n

That player was Jule Niemeier, the German who had only just made her top 100 debut prior to the Wimbledon Championships in 2022.<\/p>\n

Niemeier, who was 22 years old at the time, had reached two WTA Tour semifinals before, but she had never won a Grand Slam main draw.<\/p>\n

However, that all changed at Wimbledon in 2022, when Niemeier beat Xiyu Wang in her first round match.<\/p>\n

This was just the start for Niemeier, who would then beat second seed Anett Kontaveit, who has now retired from tennis<\/a>, and she did so in dominant fashion.<\/p>\n

Niemeier then beat Lesia Tsurenko and home favourite Heather Watson to make it all the way to the Wimbledon quarterfinals.<\/p>\n

When speaking in her post-match press conference<\/a> after the match, Niemeier admitted that she was only really targeting one match win at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I would have taken it. Yeah, I came here, I just wanted to win my first round after losing in Paris,\u201d said Niemeier. \u201cNow, being in the quarterfinal in Wimbledon, I don\u2019t know, I\u2019m speechless. It just feels not real.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suggesting that Niemeier was much better than the expectations she had of herself, former world number one Tracy Austin<\/a>, who commentated on the match, compared her to the aforementioned Barty.<\/p>\n

\u201cI compare her to Ash Barty,\u201d Austin said at the time. \u201cThis young lady has a special set of skills and an awkward game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Niemeier would lose her quarterfinal match to Tatjana Maria, and she did not gain any ranking points for this run due to a dispute between Wimbledon and the WTA Tour that year.<\/p>\n

What has happened to Jule Niemeier since reaching the Wimbledon quarterfinals?<\/p>\n

This is not the only Grand Slam run Niemeier has ever been on, having reached the fourth round of the US Open<\/a> just two months later.<\/p>\n

Niemeier reached a career-high ranking of world number 61 later that year, but it has been more of a struggle for the German since then.<\/p>\n

In the past three years, Niemeier has only won five Grand Slam main draw matches and only one of these has come in 2025.<\/p>\n

Niemeier has only won 11 of her total 35 matches throughout the 2025 season, with only two of these coming in main draw matches on the WTA Tour.<\/p>\n

She has even recently dropped down to the lower-level ITF Tour to play a 75k event in Vienna, but Niemeier was beaten in the first round by world number 681 Ellie Schoppe.<\/p>\n

As a result of this recent form, Niemeier has fallen down the rankings and is currently the world number 239, after falling outside the top 200 for the first time since 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Follow us on Google Discover Ash Barty had a very distinctive game style that was very effective in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[89857,89858,101,118,56,54,55,116,6546],"class_list":{"0":"post-208639","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ash-barty","9":"tag-jule-niemeier","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom","15":"tag-wimbledon","16":"tag-wta"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}