Bad day for prominent HTT stars – Schneider & Vukicevic with early retirement

The intense Super-Sunday at the HTT-Australian-Open in UTC La Ville was not a good day for promin…

The intense Super-Sunday at the HTT-Australian-Open in UTC La Ville was not a good day for prominent HTT-names and some of the dominators of the last years on Austria’s biggest tennis popular sports series. In the eighth-finals of the first season Grand Slam tournament in 2018, among other things, the following events took place Tour finals finalist Matthias Wolf and HTT Olympic champion Anton Würflingsdobler k. o. The double exit of HTT superstars Vladimir Vukicevic and Philipp Schneider caused even more excitement. Together, the two HTT Top Ten stars have won 31 major HTT titles in the last five years, but at the beginning of 2018 the Serbian rankings runner-up and the 2-time HTT Master Winner will only remain the spectator role at the beginning of 2018, when six HTT Grand Slam quarter-finals newcomers with the unbeaten 8-game rankings first-time HTT Grand Slam quarter-finals newcomer Lukas Prüger in the last eight games at major level will be able to take part in the final. A report by C. L.

Philipp Schneider must continue to work after his 16th birthday. Grand Slam career appearances continue to wait for his first tournament victory on the very highest HTT level. On Sunday evening, the 37-year-old missed out on his third January Grand Slam quarter-final after 2014 and 2017 with a narrow 6-2,1-6,6-7 defeat to the French Kitzbühel finalist Franz Lukas. In his duel with France’s No. 1, the seventh ranked player had begun his duel with France’s No. 1 and played the first set home safely and confidently before a discussion of alleged outballs robbed the 16 times HTT title holder of his concentration and joy in the game. After losing tiebreak in the all-important third set, Schneider had to finish the 50th set. He was able to put his HTT career behind him and postpone the dream of his first and deserved first HTT Grand Slam victory once again.

However, the 2-time HTT master’s winner was in high-profile company on Sunday evening, as the final night session of the first-class fourth day of the tournament at the 27th HTT World Championships was held on Sunday evening. Tennislife January Grand Slam Tournament then also caught the Serbian runners-up and 2016’s HTT Australian Open Champion Vladimir Vukicevic. The 36-year-old from Sombor, who has always reached the final of the first Grand Slam tournament of the year in the last three years, was knocked out well before the final and in an unprecedented dimension. The last year’s number 2 seeded finalist, Maximilian Berger from Hietzinger TV, who is playing under the Norwegian flag, had to concede 1:6,2:6 in the second round of the last sixteen years and thus won the 15th place. HTT Grand Slam’s second ever defeat in the last sixteen. Last year at the HTT French Open, the 3-time HTT Wimbledon winner of China’s HTT superstar Johnny Ye was disenchanted in three sets in the round before the quarter-finals, but Vukicevic has so far been spared such a clear rejection as last Sunday evening. A splendid Maximilian Berger in form with a solid, unagitated and above all without fluctuations presented performance, however, made short work with a deficient January Grand Slam Champion of 2016. Berger also achieved his revenge for this memorable defeat in the epic one-quarter-final duel at the April HTT-500 tournament in 2016, when the 20-year-old rookie from Hietzinger TV won the HTT Wimbledon twice at 7:6,6:5, and 40:15 on the brink of defeat, before he won four match balls and three goals.