‘A lot of people read in the players’ lounge’

Tennis star Andrea Petkovic tells Simon Briggs about the book club she’s just started

As the sporting shutdown continues, and athletes think of new ways to spend their time, usually involving home gyms and resistance bands, German tennis player Andrea Petkovic has emerged as one of the most innovative. The 32-year-old, who has reached a high of No9 in the world and also works as a presenter for German TV network ZDF, has started an Instagram book club.

“When this virus hit, I was like, ‘OK, if this is not the time, there is never going to be a time’,” says the player, who is also recovering from a third knee operation.

Her first choice for Racquet Book Club – which already has more than 3,000 followers – was a tennis book, String Theory by David Foster Wallace, but she promises also to cover fiction, as well as broader subjects such as H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald’s account of taming a northern goshawk. The club will show that book-loving sportspeople are more common than you think.

“I see a lot of people reading in the players’ lounge,” she says. “Maria Sharapova always had a book in her hands. Ana Ivanovic [the 2008 French Open champion] was an avid reader.”

Social distancing will also give her a chance to tackle some of the weightier titles she’s been putting off.

“I bought this in 2015,” she says of Frank Witzel’s The Invention of the Red Army Faction by a Manic-depressed Teenager in the Summer of 1969. “It won Germany’s national book prize that year, and I usually buy every award-winner. I never touched it for a bunch of years. Now, at last, I have actually started.”