Some messages you never want to write. The news that Niels' coach Hans Jurgen Striek has passed away is one of those.
Niels and Hans Jurgen had been working together since 2018. At the time, Niels was just a 15-year-old male, an adolescent. At a stage when so much was changing anyway, Hans Jurgen was a calm point, a stable factor and a leader. It soon became clear that the two had a special bond. The pupil and his master soon became best friends, with honesty, commitment and trust as primal foundations.
A special bond
Hans Jurgen and Niels worked hard and passionately together. The coach from Gelderland helped Niels become a better and more complete tennis player. Soon everything revolved around Niels' goal: paralympic gold and successes at grand slams. Everything had to make way for that. Hans Jurgen also truly believed that Niels had it in him to achieve those goals, otherwise their cooperation would probably not have lasted as long as it did.
Other than that, he was always honest. If Niels didn't do something well enough, he didn't beat around the bush. If Niels won a point, game, set, match or tournament, Hans Jurgen stood and cheered loudly, proud as a young father. But never in the foreground. He always kept that spot free for Niels.
More than tennis
Hans Jurgen and Niels could read and write with each other. That's what happens when you spend so much time together, click and work together on an ambitious plan. They spent hours and hours together on the track. Sometimes on both sides of the net; other times with Hans Jurgen behind the baseline or on the sidelines.
Tennis was always the common denominator and ranked number one, but they shared something else: a great love of soccer. Hans Jurgen and Niels visited many FC Barcelona matches together, at Camp Nou and the Olympic Stadium. A nice pastime, if you're around there anyway. The men enjoyed watching those champions at work. For Hans Jurgen, an avid Feyenoord fan, it was of course more special than for PSV'er Niels.
Hans Jurgen was the ideal coach for Niels off the track as well. Because Hans Jurgen knew everyone, including the big names. That's how he introduced Niels to the tennis world. That made Niels quickly feel at home, and able to concentrate on the game.
A boss with loose laces
Niels always called Hans Jurgen "boss. It's easier to say than the three syllables of his actual first name. But Hans Jurgen did not behave like a boss. He didn't need the spotlight. Rather took the picture than be in it. Had nothing to do with ostentation. Shuffled casually across the court, wearing fashionable tennis shoes with loose laces. Even when he was on the court himself, with a racket in his hand. Just like Diego Maradona, who performed his famous warm-up to the music of Live is life with flapping laces. Some greats apparently don't need bows and buttons.
Hans Jurgen was much more. He was a father figure to Niels. Someone who always believed in him, even when Niels himself momentarily stopped doing so. Someone who allowed Niels to put things into perspective, even in the heat of the moment, with his humor, which according to Niels was drier than a rusk. Someone who liked to remove himself, because - in his own opinion - it was not about him.
A bright spot in the city of lights
But he was also someone who was cheering rock hard for Niels when he won his dream paralympic gold in Paris in September 2024. Hans Jurgen was in the middle of a tough treatment process at the time. Yet he was there that day, as a coach, on perhaps the best day of Niels' life.
A course of treatment, in other words. In March 2024, Hans Jurgen learned he had cancer. A brain tumor. He didn't hang that out in the open, also because it would distract from his work, including coaching Niels. He also didn't want Sjakie - Hans Jurgen often called Niels that - to worry too much.
After that diagnosis, Hans Jurgen, the fighter that he was, held on for over a year and a half. A year and a half in which he experienced many beautiful moments. With Niels, but certainly also with his wonderful ladies: his wife Margot and their daughters Tessa and Sofie, with whom Niels has a very good relationship.
From August 2025, Hans Jurgen deteriorated rapidly. Just before the US Open, he learned that the doctors could do nothing more for him. He didn't tell Niels a word about that, out of protection. After all, Niels had flown to New York with a clear mission, and that was to win. For that, you have to be as free as possible in your head. It worked; Niels became the big man in The Big Apple.
Back in Holland, Hans Jurgen told his pupil that he was out of treatment. Not much later the dreaded news arrived. Hans Jurgen died on September 21. The first day of autumn, at the age of 53.
His summer lasted far too short, but how he made Niels shine.