HTT superstar Lukas Prüger puts power relations back on track at HTT

HTT superstar Lukas Prüger, after his short artistic break at the HTT-Australian Open, has been…

HTT superstar Lukas Prüger, after his brief artistic break at the HTT Australian Open, has found his way back to the road to success and has won the season opener at Masters Series 1000 level. The 20-year-old from Schwechater TC reached the final of the 10th round. February-Masters-Series-1000-Tournament against the altogether a great tournament playing Adrian Vorhemus after a hard fight and 2:12 hours of play time with 5:7,6:3,6:2 and celebrated the fifth HTT-Masters-Series-1000-Titel and the total of 10. HTT tournament victory of his career. As with the last encounter of the two HTT youngsters at the May Masters Series 1000 Tournament 2017, the leader of the rankings kept the upper hand, and after a high-class and exactly 200-point exchange of blows in the Head to Head, he increased to 2:1. In addition, the new February Master Series 1000 champion broke through the magical barrier of 10,000 ranking points as the third player in history after Franz Mayrhuber and Damian Roman. A report by C. L.

The sensational successful 2017 season has left its mark! Both physically and mentally, HTT industry primus Lukas Prüger was exhausted at the end of a last tennis year marked by titles and records, and fell into a lack of motivation. The Punchers’ doubts were intensified at the HTT-Australian Open. There, HTT No. 1 crashed out of the competition at an early stage. It was not so much the elimination in the semi-finals as the way the HTT French Open winner presented himself in the semi-finals and was presented by the later winner Markus Neuhauser. A start at the first Masters Series 1000 tournament of the new year did not seem to be in the plan and mind of the 20-year-old. But then last weekend, Prüger rose out of the ashes like a phoenix, and restored the balance of power on Austria’s biggest amateur tennis series. His 132-minute final appearance sealed the continuation of his great results of last year and so he also extended his more than excellent personal series of successes. After all, the first-ranked player has successfully competed in eight of his last ten tournament participations at the HTT, and has always reached at least the semi-finals in these 10 tournament starts. From solo or solo show of Lukas P. can still not be said, as the last tournament weekend confirmed impressively.

Already in the quarter-finals against young star Maxi Wild, the top seeded fighter had his hands full in order to reach an early elimination at the 130th minute. HTT Masters Series 1000 Open Era Tournament. It became really tricky in yesterday’s final, for which the scene waited with great excitement. In addition to the lost nimbus of invincibility on the part of the leader of the ranking list, final opponent Adrian Vorhemus had played himself more than impressive through the top-class February Masters Series 1000 tableau. Martin Steiner, Kevin Köck, Christoph Csar and Martin Zehetner have been cleared out of their way, so before the summit meeting with HTT No. 1, there was sufficient self-confidence in the House of Vorhemus. And it was exactly this new self-confidence that hit the 16-year-old, so he had to put away and equalize Prüger’s dream start of a 3-0 lead in just 12 minutes. This was possible because Vorhemus consolidated himself on his own service and Prüger lost more and more of the attractive baseline duels with the continuation of the first movement. Reconquered the early break, it went then from 3-3 with the serve to 5-5, whereby both players massed break chances to an earlier decision blurred. It was with his third double error that HTT-No. 1 was the decisive break in the first set for the 5:6, and even at the final service game of Vorhemus, Prüger didn’t necessarily present himself with four unforced errors at his best. After 57 minutes and 31 unforced mistakes, Prüger was trailing by 0:1 despite a 3:0 lead.

With a 10-minute toilet break at the beginning of the second set, Vorhemus robbed himself of a little bit of the flow of the game at the beginning of the second set, and complained about an early 0:3 as in the first set. However, the 16-year-old once again stemmed against the seemingly rolling first rankings, and once again “the double forehand” succeeded in equalizing to 3-3. It should have been the last glamorous moments of the Adrian Vorhemus in this match, because from now on it didn’t really work out much in the teenager’s game from the Waldviertel. Prüger benefited from his opponent’s many mistakes, snatched the break to 5:3 and after another 36 minutes equalled 6:3 to 1:1 in sets. It was the blackest minutes of this evening for Vorhemus, because in this phase between the end of movement no. 2 and the beginning of passage no. 3, the 16-year-old got into a total debacle. Completely off the roll, the Zehetner conqueror had to give his opponent from 3:4,30:30 in the second set to 0:1 in the third heat ten points in a row. As a result, 18 of the next 20 points played out went to Prüger, who, as in the previous sets, won 3:0 and shortly afterwards even 4:0. In the finish, Vorhemus still ran the famous result cosmetics, managed a break and even managed to reach 2:4, but that was all that was possible. Prüger countered 5-2 with a re-break won at zero and, after three defended break chances and a missed match point, served out 5-7,6-3,6-2 in the second attempt.

Actually, I had thought about participating in the February Masters Seris 1000 tournament for a long time. I had fallen from last year’s strains and my modest performance at the January Grand Slam tournament into a huge motivation hole. I then put the racket aside for three weeks, and started the tournament with the attitude to have fun playing tennis again. I hadn’t counted more than a quarter-finals in terms of the line-up and my condition. I then got back in the first few laps, but quickly, I had fun with it, and that’s why this tournament victory now gives me a lot more than every single one of last year’s successes. The final in itself was an extremely difficult match, because Adrian has improved enormously since our last duel in May last season. In the end it was a close match, which could have gone just as well in the other direction. I started well in each of the three sets, but then I always lost a lot of weight and Adrian took full advantage of that. I have to get rid of my backhand branch quickly, and then I’ll be back to normal again,”said the leader of the rankings in his statement on the first HTT season title 2018.