Mayer plays Szabados in September Masters-1000 endgame

Andreas Szabados won his first HTT title on Tuesday evening on ?Viennese soil? …

Andreas Szabados missed his first HTT title win on “Viennese soil” on Tuesday evening, and thus also missed the chance to move past HTT Wimbledon winner Bernhard Scheidl to 6th place in the latest edition of the HTT Computer Ranking List. After tournament victories in St. Egyden, Baden and Seebenstein, the 29-year-old from Lower Austria had to admit defeat in his first HTT career final on Masters Series 1000 level against Martin Mayer, who played unleashed in phases, in only 66 minutes with 2:6, 1:6. Mayer again celebrated his sixth HTT career tournament victory in the final of the 10th September Masters 1000 edition and his second HTT Masters Series 1000 title after February 2014. With his third success of the season, the 36 year old from Lower Austria is also very close to his first qualification for the HTT Tour finals at UTC La Ville from 24 November to 1 December 2018. From there reported for hobbytennistour.at C.L

The 2018 open-air season ended on Tuesday evening with Martin Mayer winning the title in the final of the 10th September Masters Series 1000 Tournament in magnificent and almost late summer conditions. The 36 year old from Muckendorf won the final night session of the Outdoor Season 2018 in a purely Lower Austrian final derby against Andreas Szabados clearly in two sets, and made a huge step towards the first Masters qualification with 1000 ranking points won. In his 40th season and 90th career single, Mayer had a first break opportunity in his opening game as a rebound-beater, but the 36 year-old left it unused, as did two more of these big points in his opponent’s next service game. But even Szabados had no “hands and brains” on his five break opportunities, and after 20 minutes of playing at a score of 2:2 and 21 total points each, a close match and a really brutal fight for the last Masters Series 1000 season title in the open air seemed to develop.

In this apparently hot and highly contested phase of this 115th season finale, Szabados then afforded the decisive slip-ups and drop-outs with which he hoisted Mayer onto the winning road. First, the 29-year-old from Lower Austria made a mistake with his first double mistake, which was equivalent to the first break to 2:3. Two more possibilities for a prompt re-break missed, Szabados stumbled at his 20th start of the season with his concluding second double mistake in the seventh game into the next and already decisive second break to 2:5. Mayer thankfully accepted the gift offensive of his opponent, and after exactly 37 minutes served the first set with 6:2.

14 minutes later, Mayer already had his hand on his sixth HTT victory trophy, because with two breaks and two brilliantly played serve games, the 2014 HTT Olympic Champion had shot himself a clear 4-0 lead. While Mayer played big and crowned his gala performance under the starry sky of Altmannsdorf partly with “Stop & Praise”, Szabados noticed mistakes and two racket changes. At least the game of honour at 1:4 still looked out for Szabados, who has no chance for a long time, before Mayer closed the bag and fixed the 6:2, 6:1 victory with a last break. “I’m very happy about this tournament victory: But I’m even more happy about the 1000 points and that this chase after the Masters is over. Now maybe I can finally play tennis again in the coming weeks. The past tournaments were always under the motto “to collect as many points as possible for the Masters”, and brought from my point of view more cramp than anything else. I am now relieved after this success”, said the newly crowned September Masters Series 1000 Champion and successor of Vladimir Vukicevic, who was also pleased with his HTT career high ranking No. 8.