Follow us on Google Discover Ash Barty had a very distinctive game style that was very effective in her dominant run at the top of the WTA rankings.
Barty won every Grand Slam other than the US Open, and spent 121 weeks as world number one in her career.
Having spent 114 consecutive weeks as world number one and just winning her third major title at the Australian Open, Barty shockingly announced her retirement in 2022.
Barty’s sudden retirement left a big vacancy on the WTA Tour, and later that year another player was compared to the Australian after reaching the Wimbledon quarterfinals.
Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty ImagesJule Niemeier: The former Wimbledon quarterfinalist who was compared to Ash Barty
That player was Jule Niemeier, the German who had only just made her top 100 debut prior to the Wimbledon Championships in 2022.
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.
However, that all changed at Wimbledon in 2022, when Niemeier beat Xiyu Wang in her first round match.
This was just the start for Niemeier, who would then beat second seed Anett Kontaveit, who has now retired from tennis, and she did so in dominant fashion.
Niemeier then beat Lesia Tsurenko and home favourite Heather Watson to make it all the way to the Wimbledon quarterfinals.
When speaking in her post-match press conference after the match, Niemeier admitted that she was only really targeting one match win at Wimbledon.
“Well, I would have taken it. Yeah, I came here, I just wanted to win my first round after losing in Paris,” said Niemeier. “Now, being in the quarterfinal in Wimbledon, I don’t know, I’m speechless. It just feels not real.”
Suggesting that Niemeier was much better than the expectations she had of herself, former world number one Tracy Austin, who commentated on the match, compared her to the aforementioned Barty.
“I compare her to Ash Barty,” Austin said at the time. “This young lady has a special set of skills and an awkward game.”
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.
What has happened to Jule Niemeier since reaching the Wimbledon quarterfinals?
This is not the only Grand Slam run Niemeier has ever been on, having reached the fourth round of the US Open just two months later.
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.
In the past three years, Niemeier has only won five Grand Slam main draw matches and only one of these has come in 2025.
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.
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.
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.