Van Rijthoven back on earth after a bizarre month: ‘I am extremely hyped’ | NOW

After the most insane month in his career, Tim van Rijthoven was able to catch his breath again this summer. The Dutch tennis sensation hopes to reinforce his sudden emergence from Monday at his first US Open. “I can be just as good on hard court as on grass.”

Not so long ago, Tim van Rijthoven was just Tim van Rijthoven. He played a challenger qualifying tournament in Surbiton, UK, at the end of May and lost directly to the world’s number 375. Nobody cared about that. More than a month later, it was no longer Van Rijthoven, but sensation ‘Tim Salabim’ who experienced a ‘tennis fairytale’.

“There is hype for everything. And I can say that I am incredibly hyped,” says Van Rijthoven in conversation with NU.nl. That wasn’t so crazy either. Just a week after his performance in Surbiton, the native Roosendaler sensationally won the Rosmalen grass tournament. Then followed his debut at Wimbledon, where Novak Djokovic had to come in handy in the fourth round to stop the unleashed Van Rijthoven (in four sets).

“It was really very alive. Everyone was talking about it. In the beginning it took some getting used to, all that attention. Now it’s a little better. After my elimination at Wimbledon, people just started doing their own thing again. not bad,” says Van Rijthoven, who can no longer walk anonymously in the Netherlands.

“People sometimes come to me for a photo. That’s very nice, but sometimes you also want to sit quietly on a terrace. The attention has decreased in recent weeks. Fortunately, I was also able to relax and look back quietly. There have also been players who said to me: ‘It’s nice to see that it’s coming out now.'”

Novak Djokovic needed four sets at Wimbledon to beat Tim van Rijthoven.

‘I couldn’t handle the pressure before’

The story is well known: many connoisseurs attributed a great tennis career to Van Rijthoven a long time ago. The quarter-finalist at the Wimbledon junior tournament in 2014 was seen as the Dutch tennis talent among the men. Burdened with high expectations and ravaged by injuries, a promising career seemed to lead to an early tennis retirement.

Expectations ebbed away due to his lesser performance, but they are back again after Van Rijthoven’s rather bizarre breakthrough. “I couldn’t handle the pressure in the past, but afterwards I’m glad that happened. I can now learn from the mistakes I made at the time. It has been an incredible learning process,” says Roosendaler, who is now 25 years old.

“It remains difficult to completely ignore expectations. There are more eyes on me. The trick is to be as busy as possible with that. The most important thing is that I am on the track for myself, not for someone else. I don’t have a mental coach to help me with that. I can talk well with my girlfriend.”

Tim van Rijthoven won the grass tournament in Rosmalen in June by beating Daniil Medvedev in the final.

‘When you see your friends doing something impossible, you want it too’

The rise of Van Rijthoven is yet another impulse for the flourishing men’s tennis. With Botic van de Zandschulp and Tallon groenpoor, two Dutchmen have already settled in the top fifty in the world this year. Van de Zandschulp and Greek track (both 26 years old) also needed time to break through.

“Perhaps that is also partly due to the Dutch culture,” says Van Rijthoven. “We have it very well here and we are quite spoiled. If tennis doesn’t work, you can do something else. That is a difference with someone from another, more difficult country for whom tennis is everything. He then quickly develops a certain killer mentality. “

“I can say that we (Van de Zandschulp, Greek track and Van Rijthoven, ed.) make each other better. I regard those guys as friends. If you see that one of your friends achieves something that you first thought was impossible, then you start to believe in it more.”

This week the Dutch trio will start at the US Open, which will be a leap into the deep for Van Rijthoven in particular. After his Wimbledon success, he only played three games, two of which were on hard courts, due to back problems. He won one of those, in three sets against the world’s number 367 on a challenger.

“I expect to be completely fit. And in training I am hitting the balls very well,” says Van Rijthoven, who has put down all his historic performances on grass. “A fast hard court is almost the same as a grass court, so I won’t do much different. At most, a little less slicing. I’m going to the US Open to play at least two games. Hopefully I can grow in the tournament.”