The series of injuries cancellations for the D…
The series of injury-related cancellations for the HTT Tour finals’ double competition, which will begin next Saturday at UTC La Ville, continues unabated. After HTT Olympic gold medallist Matthias Braun had already been knocked out weeks ago with a serious back injury and opened the round of a crazy series of injuries, there were further rejections due to injury a few days before the season finale of the eight best HTT double teams. Initially, the duo Lukas Danzer-Georg Weissmann had to cancel their joint debut appearance in the HTT tour finals after Danzer had injured his hand against Christian Kreidl and Benedikt Schratt in the last 16 of the November Masters Series 1000 tournament. Yesterday Saturday, China’s HTT superstar Johnny Ye, who suffered a bruise in the opening match of the November HTTT 500 tournament against Andreas Tolunay, was also caught on Saturday. The losses of Danzer-Weissmann and Curupis-Ye are now throwing the lottery pots for the draw for the HTT-Tour finals into a big mess and at the same time they are the chance for two new HTT double pairs. A report by C. L.
The injury devil does not sleep, and on the HTT currently apparently not at all. After Matthias Braun and Lukas Danzer, China’s HTT hero Johnny Ye also injured himself on Saturday afternoon and announced his retirement from the HTT Tour finals in 2017 late on Saturday night. This means that four qualified pairings for the season finale of the top 8 doubles teams will be a regular fixture. The absence of Braun-Beutler, Curupis-Ye, Danzer-Weissmann and the absence of the 2015 Tour Final champions Philipp Schneider and Andreas Trinko will open up the opportunity for four other couples to participate in the year’s most prestigious HTT event, some of them for the first time ever. At the moment Marcus Schischlik-Daniel Pfeifer, Filip Markovic-Dominik Jaros and maybe even the wildcard duo Beutler-Trinko can look forward to a Masters participation.