Two debutants have celebrated yesterday’s opening day at the big season finale of the Hobby Tennis Tour in …
Two debutants marked yesterday’s opening day at the grand season finale of the Hobby Tennis Tour at UTC La Ville. The triple Grand Slam finalist Philipp Jahn and the 2014 HTT Olympic Champion Martin Mayer have turned Group B upside down after the first matchday of the 29th HTT Tour Finals 2018. It was not Maximilian Wild and Bernhard Scheidl, who were ranked higher according to the rankings and seedings, but Philipp Jahn and Martin Mayer, who secured themselves an excellent starting position in the fight for the semifinals of the HTT Tour Finals at UTC La Ville with their two-set wins. From the big season finale reported for hobbytennistour.at C.L
Young star Maximilian Wild has won 47 victories in his first full and so far highly successful HTT season, only one less than Lukas Prüger, who was first in the rankings. Since a few weeks the worm is in the game of the shooting star of the UTC Stockerau, and so the 4:6, 3:6 opening defeat against the triple season Grand Slam finalist Philipp Jahn from CTP Pötzleinsdorf was not surprising. The second place in the rankings was really only really aggressive on the “walk on court”, when he resolutely entered the center court and cleared all banners and roll-ups. On the court, of course, Wild prolonged the unform with which he had already become conspicuous at last weekend’s November HTT-500 tournament and caused astonishment. In the round of 16 against Michael Rosenmayer even before the end, he caught the HTT promoted of the year in the semi-final against Gerald Dominik, a symbol for the current situation of the young star. And his Masters debut didn’t start off as “Maxi” had hoped. One break at the back against Philipp Jahn, who, to his complete annoyance, also won his first service game to zero, so Wild was condemned to “chase after” right from the start.
After all, in his 62nd match of the season, the runner-up used a short weak phase of the serving Philipp Jahn to re-break and 3:3, before he even took the lead for the first time with his own serve and the first ace of this match. The fact that the 18-year-old could not make the first set even tighter, or even win, was probably because the 4-time winner of the season currently also lacks the necessary bit of luck and self-confidence. First Wild missed three match balls for 5:4, also because he did not serve convincingly with three double mistakes. And then, in the last game of the first set, he even made a mistake and lost a possible better result, when he “overplayed” a clear second serve of his opponent at 30:30, and thus faced a set ball of Jahn instead of a break ball of 5:5. With one of his always refined and sensitive set stop balls, Jahn then after 34 minutes the first set with 6:4 clear.
In passage 2, the game of the Kalksburg Masters 1000 winner crumbled into all parts, after only 13 minutes and two cashed breaks, the “Messe read”, and Jahn with a clear 4-0 lead towards Tour Final debut success was on its way. The only positive result when looking at the shooting star who was unsuccessful in the end was the morale with which Wild resisted the threatening debacle in the finish. At 1:5 and after a service game with double errors again, Wild defended his opponent’s first match point with a forehand winner to reduce it to 2:5. A second break to 3:5 documented Wild’s will not to leave the pitch as a clear loser, but in the end after only 68 minutes “shift in the shaft” was the logical consequence, and Wild’s second defeat in a row after only 14 wins with 28 unforced mistakes.
“I’m afraid my performance today was absolutely not as I had hoped. I trained twice on Hardcourt and actually played quite well, and therefore expected a lot for today”, the second ranked player was disappointed. I can’t tell you why it’s not going on at the moment. I simply don’t have an answer to that,” the 18-year-old also seemed helpless. Not completely convinced of himself and his performance at the beginning of the HTT-Tour-Finals Philipp Jahn faced his first press conference at UTC La Ville. “It was all right, but I didn’t run up to the great form either. It was sufficient, nothing more”, said the 26 year old. “So that I don’t just make it to the final again, and this time maybe I can take the trophy home with me, more will have to happen in the next few days. But once a start has been made on which you can build,” said Jahn after his 44th single season victory on the Hobby Tennis Tour. “I served more consistently than my opponent, we both didn’t excel from the baseline, but I made the decisive points,” Jahn said happily.