Berlin Open: 5 Swiss Players, 4 Medals

20. Mai 2019

Friday at the Berlin Open was, like all other FIR tournaments, doubles day, with all 4 Swiss in attendance in search of silverware. Esther Dübendorfer and Oli Bühler were at least sure of one victory, as they faced each other with different partners in the first round of XB, with Oli coming away 4 points the better and getting a ticket into the second round. Unfortunately, the Russian/Latvian pair (Maxim Levente, an earlier national badminton player, and Viktorija Ratakova) got the advantage, also by a narrow margin of only 5 points. This setback was later avenged in the bronze medal match where they squeezed home by an even slimmer margin of only 2 points, with our Oli covering pretty much the whole tennis court by himself to do so. Esther and partner, on the other hand, crushed all their other opponents to finish 5th.

A very different story for our other two Swiss doubles players, Julien Meister and Graham King, who cruised to gold, only needing their tennis rackets once for half a game in the MC Doubles class, with their personal coach constantly in tow to make sure they did not falter.

Unluckily, due to a last-minute withdrawal, the MC singles draw was shaken and stirred, meaning that Julien and Graham were forced to meet in the first round, rather than in the final (!), where Meister showed no gratitude for services rendered and thoroughly meistered the King in convincing style. Between the two of them, they then went on to beat Hungary, France, Germany and Poland (though not Sweden) in several very hard-fought tussles, with Julien potting another gold, single-handedly making up half of the Swiss total of 4, and Graham finishing 179th.

Another joker for Switzerland when it comes to the singles category is Esther. She comfortably won Women's Seniors +40gold and showes that she is undoubtedly world number 1 in the Women's Seniors class! 

Graham had a similar story in the Seniors +40, where he «played down» by well over a couple of decades. A nett result of +50 in his second and third matches, were a little neutralised by having to take on Frank Kleiber in the first round, where he was, despite a spirited start at table tennis, unable to repeat his victory over the evergreen Frankie at the Turkish Open a few decades ago (ed: well, it feels like it...).

Anyway, 4 players, 4 medals (3 gold), is a pretty fair bounty for our Swiss Racketlon globetrotters.

Next stop at the end of this month is the World Doubles Championships & King of Rackets at Oudenaarde, Belgium. Allez la Suisse!

Author’s embarassed Postscript, after he later realised he had penalised Nicolas Lenggenhager, just because he didn’t turn play any doubles matches ☹. Even though Nicolas didn’t win any medals, he surely deserved to, winning 3 of his 4 MA Elite matches by a grand total of +113 points, and that against players who are not complete slouches on court either! It was just a shame his first round encounter was against the very strong Cornelius Radermacher, who made his way to the semi-finals which he had to forfait after being struck down with a virus, similar to around a dozen other players (and no, it was not «Players’ Party Hangover» syndrome). Nicolas does, however, clearly need to work on improving his badminton a bit. One of his opponents got infinitely more points against Nicolas, than he did against his first round conqueror. If you are now curious, check it out on fir.tournamentsoftware.com.

GK

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