HTT before generation change – HTT-French-Open-Off for Schneider & Co

The “Super Sunday” at the 27th edition of the HTT French Open at UTC La Ville is…

The “Super Sunday” at the 27th edition of the HTT French Open at UTC La Ville has become a stumbling block for further title favourites and top stars of the second HTT Grand Slam season. On a picture-book tennis day, aces such as the 3-time HTT Wimbledon winner Vladimir Vukicevic, the 2-time HTT Tour Finals winner Philipp Schneider, the Styrian tennis export No. 1 Alexander Schager, the May HTT 500 winner Matthias Wolf, considered by many insiders as secret favourites, and the HTT Australian Open Champion of 2015 Bernhard Scheidl had a rude awakening. The result of the former and current superstars once again shows how bombastically strong this year’s edition of the tennislife.at May Grand Slam Tournament is, however, also strengthens the opinion and position of many HTT experts who are already philosophizing about a generation change that has long been underway. From the UTC La Ville vom Altmannsdorfer Ast reported for hobbytennistour.at C.L

It is Saturday at the 27th HTT French Open 2018, and the third matchday of the second HTT Season Major event had an extremely “young and fresh program” to offer at the UTC La Ville centre court. It was “HTT Next Gen Day” on Dr. Karl Waltl Weg and the two show courts offered a fantastic show of those young gentlemen who are currently heralding something like a generation change and who will shape the tennis of the future on Austria’s biggest popular sport tennis series. Some of them have even much higher goals, and we can already be curious to see who could possibly achieve an outlier to the top. No matter if the young Slovakian qualifier Martin Priban, top talent Paul Werren, or the promising young stars Nico Mucic and Eric Adochitei, the spectators were offered youth tennis at its best. Two days later, of the highly praised shares of the future, only Romania’s title contender Eric Adochitei made it into the top 8 of the 2,000 point sand court classic.

The “Shapovalov copy” with long hair sticking out from under the cap and with an impressive performance on the court, still separates the ghosts at the moment. While some talk of a young man who in his three previous games called for a maximum of 30 percent of his skills and who has not really been challenged yet, the others see the Damian novel successor as highly overrated and not nearly in the role of co-favorite to the title. Today’s quarter-final – LIVE from 4 p.m. on www.hobbytennistour.at – will provide a first indication of this. Last year’s finalist Martin Zehetner is waiting for “Shapo”, and he has a lot of routine when it comes to everything in a four-round match at the HTT French Open. After all, the 37-year-old is in the quarter-finals of the HTT French Open for the fifth time in a row after Sunday victories over Paul Werren and Filip Markovic. Yesterday, however, was a relaxed and casual day for the number 6 seeded German Wagram star. At first he was challenged by top talent Paul Werren in an “average” match at “above-average temperatures”, and his 90th individual victory – against Filip Markovic in the round of 16 – was anything but easy.

For many other top stars of the HTT, however, yesterday’s third match day came to an unsuccessful end. The most conspicuous of course was the early retirement of Vladimir Vukicevic. The 3-time Serbian HTT Wimbledon winner had reached the second round after an unglamorous opening victory over a superbly playing and superbly fighting Sebsatian Hickl, and then took the earliest defeat of his career at an HTT Grand Slam tournament. At the “Stars for you-Court” it went wrong against clay court robot Bernd Steiner, and in the end almost as expected. Vukicevic dragged himself far away from his best form and also physically not in optimal condition over the red ash of the UTC La Ville, and had to say goodbye at the end with 5:7, 2:6 as early as never before at his 16th HTT-Grand-Slam-Start from the tournament. 2016 at the HTT French Open was also the end of a round before the round of 16, but at that time the 15 times tournament winner from Sombor had to pull out of the competition for health reasons. At the end of the day, from the HTT superstar’s point of view, a sobering 2018 season record remains: At none of his tournament starts this year, the former first-placed player made it beyond the quarter-finals.

But the super sunny fourth day also brought disillusionment in the camp of other former HTT superheroes. For example, Philipp Schneider, the most successful red-white-red HTT star of the last five years in terms of titles. He triumphed twice in the HTT Tour finals, clinched a total of 16 victories in HTT-500 and Masters-1000 tournaments and shone from the very top on the number 1 position in the HTT computer rankings to the competition. The stigma of never having won a Grand Slam tournament, however, made Schneider almost more famous than all his great successes, the Grand Slam curse of Philip S. was born. Meanwhile, nothing more can be heard of this, because Schneider would probably be happy to be able to play a major final at all at the moment. At the moment the experienced player from Horn is not able to play the big titles. The 38-year-old provided the final proof early Sunday afternoon, when he was sent home with three games against the 2014 HTT First Bank Open 500 winner Dominik Negrin, thus missing the quarter-finals for the first time ever in his fifth HTT French Open appearance. Even worse was “one-slam-wonder-man” Bernhard Scheidl. The HTT-Australian-Open-Champ of 2015 was handled in round 2 by young star Benedikt Schlederer 6:0, 6:1 and almost humiliated. “There is certainly a generational change going on, there is no discussion about that,” Philipp Schneider summed it up on the fourth day of play. So difficult times are dawning for Vukicevic, Schneider, Scheidl & Co, which may be lean in terms of success.