Florian Harca at 10.

For the already 10. Young star Florian Harca won the teenager title of this HTT season at the…

For the already 10. Teenager title of this HTT season has young star Florian Harca at the last Tuesday evening 10. The first edition of the March HTT-150 tournament at UTC La Ville is now underway. The 15-year-old Stadthallen-Challenger-Champion of 2016 won the final of the 19th century. After only 67 minutes of playing time, Romanian qualifier Emanuel Gal won 6:3, 6:2, and crowned his comeback after a 15-month break with his second HTT career success. At the end of the 430. indoor tournament of the Open era and the 230. in UTC La Ville there were in fact two winners to cheer. The man of the tournament was undoubtedly the inferior finalist Emanuel Gal, who fought his way into his first HTT final with 7 wins in a row so that he made an incredible leap in the ITN rating and only missed the feat of becoming the first third qualifier in HTT history since 1990. A report from C.L

Only one week ago, the “Renaissance of the Routiniers” was cheered on with Martin Mayer’s triumph at the March HTT-500 tournament, but only 6 days later the HTT young stars fought back and prolonged the current and in a positive sense meant “youth madness” on the hobby tennis tour. The “HTT-teens” aged between 13 and 19 dominated the first quarter of the season in an unprecedented way. This is also proven by the bare figures: In 19 season finals so far there were 5 pure teenager finals and 9 further final decisions with U19 players to marvel at. Thus the HTT youth was in 14 of 19 finals, and with Florian Harca it set as already mentioned above the already 10th place. Teenager tournament win in 2018. The last edition of the Juniors Festival was held on Tuesday evening in the grand final showdown at the March HTT-150 tournament at the centre court of UTC La Ville, where the two 15-year-old Florian Harca and Emanuel Gal competed for 150 ranking points and a wonderful trophy held in gold.

A duel that was at eye level at the beginning, and two sovereign players saw Harca break 3-2 in the fifth game. Gal, on the other hand, had the luxury of missing out on a break-chance to re-break in his following two games. Two more match balls on his own serve to 4-5, the Romanian young star finally took a second break after 36 minutes and had to leave the first set 6:3 to number 7 seeded Florian Harca. Round 2, on the other hand, starts optimally for the young star of the Alt Erlaaer TC, who is already in his eighth Eizel match this weekend. Gal profited from two double mistakes of his opponent and was suddenly 1-0 in front. A leadership that did not last long, however, because Gal cashed the prompt re-break to zero in return for the 1:1. And because Romania’s new HTT hope for the future was also clumsy in his second service game and again remained without winning points, the cake was already eaten minutes later. Harca did not give herself any more nudity, remained sovereign with own service to the 4:1 and 5:2, while Gal could not use a break chance to the 3:4 in the finish, and finally a last break to the 2:6 cashed. Exactly 60 points ended up on Harca’s statistical credit side, while Gal gave his final debut a negative smack with a total of 43 unforced baseline mistakes.

Nevertheless, the 15-year-old from Alt Erlaaer TC was able to draw a positive conclusion after the match point. Even though Gal’s defeat in the final earned him 167th place. international title win as 70. international tournament winner of history, and also the 31. If the Romanian tournament victory of the Open era failed to materialize, the young star was happy about his March HTT-150 performance. And for good reason, because he set an unprecedented record in the ITN rating. On a tournament weekend, one player has probably never improved by almost 2 ITN points. From 7.97 to 6.08 – in the end you can even get over a final defeat against a really good playing opponent!