Punch crowns mega-season with impressive triumph at HTT-tour finals

With young star Lukas Prüger, the most successful player of the year has reached the end of the season…

With Jungstar Lukas Prüger, the most successful player of the end of the tennis year has brought the season finale of the Hobby Tennis Tour to a worthy conclusion, and the last big event in 2017 also brought a deserved winner. The 19-year-old from Lower Austria sat down on Saturday evening at the 28. The HTT-Tour finals in the final match against the ranked fourth and surprise man Matthias Wolf in 1:28 hours of playtime won 6:4,6:2, thus triumphed for the first time at the “Masters in the UTC La Ville”, and celebrated his seventh season title and the overall 9 tournament victory of his career, which had already been extremely successful this year. At the end of an atmospheric evening at the center court of the UTC La Ville, however, two winners were actually standing in the square at the final award ceremony. The defeated Matthias Wolf, with his surprising final entry and just over 16 hours of regeneration time between the semi-finals and the final, grew beyond himself during his “Masters debut” and made a promising performance for the future. Report by C. L

The traditional and glamorous end of the season for the best 8 hobby tennis tour players of the year ended Saturday evening with the final showdown in singles & doubles, and became the triumph for seasonal nominator Lukas Prüger. The 19-year-old from Schwechater TC crowned with his HTT Tour Finals success, which was never questioned in eight days of the tournament, an extraordinary season rich in prestigious titles with the victory in Austria’s most important tennis tournament, which has meanwhile been recognized in Austria. And it was no ordinary victory that the HTT industry leader celebrated at the 1,194 tournament of the HTT Open Era since 1990. In the 28-year history of the HTT tour finals, Prüger became the third youngest champion of all time after Patrick Schwing and Martin Kova. Even more impressive, however, is the manner in which the 17th master winner of the HTT history in the 11th century is presented. Final of his career won the ninth title. Without losing the set to win that event in which the best eight of their guild compete, and where you can’t play a single match against a weaker opponent, testifies to the exceptional performance of this season’s and the last eight days. HTT-Tour-Finals-Champion without losing a set, this was last achieved by Lukas Planteu in 2011 and four players ahead of the 19-year-old player from Lower Austria. Only 28 submitted games on their way to the title, looking at the HTT archive, this balance sheet proves to be the best of all time. Actually Klaus Hofer in 1994 (13 games) and Martin Kova in 2003 (23 games) had better statistics, but both of them were “walk over” after a few games. Played out all 5 matches, so far the master winner of 2002 Franz Kastler held the record with 29 delivered games. Following Roman Hamm (1993), Franz Kastler (2202), Franz Mayrhuber (2009), Lukas Planteu (2011) and Philipp Schneider (2013), Prüger is only the sixth player to have received title honours in his Masters debut.

Only for the third time in history since 1990 were two newcomers to the finals of the HTT tour finals faced off against each other, and this debutante finale was also the new edition of the preliminary round duel between Lukas Prüger and Matthias Wolf. The roles before the fourth meeting of the two top 5 stars this year were clearly distributed. Lukas Prüger, the big favourite, for whom every result other than victory would have been a disappointment, while the surprisingly strong tournament underdog Matthias Wolf, in his seventh career finale and after his semi-final effort against the Serbian rankings runner-up, also took the place at 20 minutes past 6 p. m. due to the shorter break compared to his opponent in the final as an outsider. However, the 29-year-old Viennese did not want to give in to the defeat expected by many insiders and experts, and so the Vukicevic conqueror had a furious start. Two break possibilities in the opening game fended off punters in the opening game, with the ranked first on his first serve game the service was taken away, yes, Wolf got a dream start into the 121th game. HTT season finale. As so often seen in this week’s tournament, however, a break proved to be not the big advantage, and so Pruder’s prompt re-break was not really surprising, but the fact that Wolf found three more break possibilities to 4:2 minutes later was even more surprising. Shortly after the match, Wolf missed out on three big points for the rest of the match after two weak returns, forgetting to put the HTT industry’s best guys under real pressure. At 3:3 followed “dry times” for serveral serveers and three more breaks in series, which put Prüger in a position of 5:4 in the direction of 1:0. The 19-year-old fixed it only after a 10-minute service game in which he fought off four break opportunities of his opponent before turning the fifth set point into a service winner after 54 minutes.

Wolf also had a better start in the second set. As already in passage 1, the ranking fourth from SKVS Flötzersteig managed the first and early break to 2:0, but the winner of the July-HTT-500 had already shot his powder in contrast to the first set. After a service game, Wolf cashed the re-break, which came about by return of mail, with three double errors that were unworthy of a master final, and Wolf also seemed to want to fight the bulwark of Lukas Prüger with empty tanks. The 29-year-old had to pay tribute to the strain of his memorable semi-final battle against Serbian defending champion Vladimir Vukicevic at the latest. 2:46 hours of play and a break of only about 16 hours made the difference to Lukas Prüger, who “sprinted” into the final in 77 minutes against Kevin Köck. Wolf was not able to put on any more physical or mental strain, and so the stage was free for a last 15-minute gala in which Prüger demonstrated impressively and demonstrably why he was the dominating man in 2017 and advanced to the big seasonal dominator. Prüger played big for the last time in these glorious HTT tour finals at the centercourt of UTC La Ville, turning his family’s eyes at 8:00 p. m. on the dot and playing his first match ball with an ace in the style of a great champion. Minutes later, Prüger stood as a victorious and radiant hero with the microphone in his hand on the spot where he enchanted the HTT community for the last eight days, celebrating the finest tennis in five matches. Thanks to the organizers, praise to his opponent, and then the third youngest master’s winner of all time from the hands of HTT-legend Franz Mayrhuber – his sign Tour-Finals-Champion 2009 and 2012 – received the “weighty” and as always silver trophy. In addition, there was an HTT cheque for a FREE tennis year in 2018 and a covering contract for 200 euros from Tom’s First Serve. For the festive conclusion and under the sounds of “Hall of Fame” and a very effective confetti rain, Prüger was allowed to celebrate his triumph and savour his triumph in the style of an ATP pro.