2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, over the past four years Martin Zehetner has been something of a tribe…
2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, over the past four years Martin Zehetner has been a regular in the semifinals of the HTT French Open. This year the decision of the Top 4 at Austria’s most prestigious hobby tennis tournament without the 8-time title holder of TC Deutsch Wagram will be staged. The 37-year-old had to admit defeat to Romanian young star Eric Adochitei in only 64 minutes 4:6, 3:6 in the quarter-finals, and therefore continue to wait for his first HTT Grand Slam title win. Adochitei, on the other hand, is still without a set loss after his fourth match in this tournament, and has become the player with the lowest ranking of an HTT French Open semi-finalist in the history of this tournament. From the UTC La Ville reported for hobbytennistour.at C.L
The semi-final of the 27th HTT French Open edition will take place for the first time since the 2012 season without top ten players. At that time six years ago, Clemens Beywinkler led the semi-final quartet consisting of the Mödlinger himself and Messrs Udo Philipp, Niklolaus Kremser and Alexander Geisler into the semifinal decision at the biggest sand court tournament of the city as No. 23 and best ranked player. The new staging of a Top Ten free HTT-FO-Semifinal came about because the last two Top-Ten-Mohikans left the quarter-finals without a hitch. June 4, 2018, he will not be remembered well by Messrs. Lukas Prüger and Martin Zehetner. And the centre court was also not good ground for last Tuesday’s two finalists. Where the two HTT stars celebrated their greatest HTT French Open success a year ago, 12 months later they had to face bitter moments and defeats in two sets.
Last year’s finalist Martin Zehetner opened the high-class quarter-final day on the Altmannsdorf branch with his duel of the generations against the almost 20 years younger Romanian young star Eric Adochitei. The Shapovalov copy from the Carpathian Republic rushed through the first three rounds of this year’s HTT French Open with only four games handed in, earning the respect of veteran Martin Zehetner. However, he started with the habit & routine of playing a May Grand Slam quarter-final, after all the 37-year-old from Deutsch Wagram was for the fifth time in a row among the last 8 of the most important sand court tournament of the HTT on Tuesday afternoon. The 2-times Kitzbühel winner also managed the first break to 3:2, in addition one to 4:3, before he afforded himself a blackout, which inevitably ends fatal in the quarter-finals of such a tournament and with own opponent with the quality Adochiteis. With no less than 16 points in a row, i.e. four “love games” en suite, the eighth in the ranking after leading 4:3 was trailing 4:6, 0:1. Once again, the veteran returned, leading Zehetner 2-1 in the second set with a successful break, but last year’s finalist had a massive problem on his way to his fifth HTT French Open semi-final in a row.
And that meant serve. Only 55 percent of the first service had the consequence that the 3 times Marchegg-Champ had to go over the “second” more often than he liked, and thus played into the cards of his opponent. Whenever Zehetner brought his second serve into play, he was already on the road. Dynamic, precise and with powerful power, Adochitei chased his returns into the opponent’s field. In the end, Zehetner scored only 32 percent of points after the second serve. Adochitei himself had no problems with his own serve for a long time, and finally fixed his fifth HTT career semi-final after only 1:04 hours playing time with 6:4, 6:3, in which he will meet Philipp Jahn. The young Romanian also provided some remarkable HTT French Open details. Up to this HTT Major weekend, Adochitei had only won one Grand Slam match so far, the first round of the 2016 HTT Australian Open against Sebastian Hickl, which ended with a 5-1 ret. success. Now he is in the semifinals of the most important sand court tournament of the HTT, and that as number 288 of the HTT-Computer-Ranking. Never before in the Open Era of HTT has a low ranked player been in the semifinals of the HTT French Open.