The Lower Austrian youngster Julian Rainer won the first-ever competition on Tuesday evening…
The Lower Austrian youngster Julian Rainer has been named the winner of the BIDI BADU Next Gen Final of the HTT on Tuesday evening. The 17-year-old from TC Allround Tennishalle Stattersdorf defeated the reigning September BTT 500 winner Theo Berger with 6:3,6:4 in a final match lasting exactly 1:17 hours, and finished the premiere edition of the Junior Masters Tournament of the best U21 players of the Hobby Tennis Tour with 5:0 victories as unbeaten champion. Rainer, who had already won the HTT-US-Open and HTT-Erste Bank Open 500 semi-finals this year, won the title at the season finale of the HTT Next Gens, and after his first HTT Tournament victory at the HTT, he is also a very hot stock for the coming season and when it comes to securing a place in the absolute elite of the HTT-Top-Ten for a place on the starting grid. A report by C. L.
The end of a really appealing and phase-wise strong final at exactly 9:37 p. m. had an unworthy character, but Theo Berger’s sixth double error at the end of the tournament at Matchball Rainer could not spoil the overall positive impression of a successful premiere at the BIDI BADU Next Gen Finals. With their 77-minute final appearance Rainer and Berger had put a successful end to an event that certainly has potential and great opportunities to play a decisive and formative role in the future in the tournament calendar of the Hobby Tennis Tour. All participants, whether players, parents, coaches, organizers or insiders of the HTT drew a satisfactory balance after five days of youth tennis. The boys had a lot of good matches, continued to gain the so important experience of appearing in tournaments accordingly, and in Round Robin mode they fought for the premiere title of a Next Gen Finals Champion at times on a really high level.
Even though the HTT superstars Lukas Prüger and Kevin Köck, who are entitled to play, refrained from competing in the forthcoming HTT tour finals, and France’s Kitzbühel finalist Franz Lukas had to cancel at short notice, the HTT’s top 8 U21 players’ tournament was full of high-calibre players. The final point behind a great event was set on Tuesday evening by the unbeaten title favourite Julian Rainer, who entered the final unbeaten, and Theo Berger from Heeres TC, who had never really got into top form after a first round defeat. The prelude to this highly eagerly awaited final went according to the programme, in which Berger had an early break after having missed the ball and three terrible mistakes, and Rainer claimed his ambitions to win the title 2-0 in return for zero. However, Berger then kept in touch with the title favourite from Stattersdorf and made the match exciting again in the first round with the re-break at 3-3. But what the 16-year-old TC is currently lacking in comparison to his top form played out in September is constancy. Playing a great game, Theo presented himself shortly afterwards with an inferior performance on his own service. He had to relinquish his service to zero, and even at 3:5 and the attempt to beat the loss of the first set, the 16-year-old did not necessarily act in the style of an HTT top 20-man. Once again the September HTT-500-Champion fought with two double errors, and so after 37 minutes the first set went to his opponent with 6:3.
At the beginning of round 2, Theo Berger let his fans back home at the live ticker hoping for a turnaround, also because Julian Rainer played a catastrophic first serve game with three double errors. Berger thankfully accepted the gift, scored 2-0 with his own serve, but despite this lead, he did not find the security in his game that would have been necessary to put Julian Rainer at risk in the long run that night. The 17-year-old from Lower Austria kept his nerve, won the next four games 4:2 before Berger rebelled again and was able to equalize with a re-break to 4:4. At 4:5, Berger was able to make up for a 0:30 with two forehand winners, but after that he made a mistake in praise and the inglorious end with the full half dozen double mistakes we have already mentioned.
I haven’t played my best tennis throughout the tournament, but at least today in the final, I’ve been the better player in control of my nerves throughout the match. Last year I had severe back problems for a long time and therefore many months without tournament tennis. Since I recently got back into full training, some things are easy to explain, including my many double errors. But Theo has also found the right means to make life difficult for me. I really had to fight for this victory. I’m very attracted to compete next year with the absolute best players of the Hobby Tennis Tour at the big event. Let’s see what the future holds “, explained the new BIDI BADU Next Gen Finals Champion on the evening after his great triumph.