IWT Czech Open
19. November 2022
5 Swiss player made it last weekend to Prague for the Czech Open. Let's come to the sensational first time victories from Nicolas Lenggenhager straight away:
Thanks to his numerous tournaments that helped him reached the 6th spot in the world ranking, Nicolas Lenggenhager started off as the number one seed of the Men Elite single draw. As only one other player in the top20 also took part, it could be thought that the victory would have been easily taken but let’s not forget that there are a lot of under-ranked players that don’t play much and that are far away from being weak, on the contrary.
The draw happened to be much in his favor as the opponents he feared the most were all on the bottom half, meaning he would only meet one of them for the last match, would he reach the final. It turned out to be the case as he won his three first matches.
With really good feelings in the first two sports, he started off his tournament with two wins 21-2 and 21-4 against his first opponent, the Czech Kamil Stanek, ensuring him a need of only 7 points in squash. He easily scored them and even won the squash 21-17. The second match against another Czech player, Michal Horácek was developping exactly as the first one until the squash where the strong playing Czech left him only 11 point over the 14 he would have needed to skip the tennis once more. As it is well known that tennis is more of a weakness as a strength for our Swiss player, he took these three points very seriously and managed to score them with the Czech having reached already 11, making the match much tighter than it would have been thought after seeing the first two sports.
In the 3rd match, he got to face the World Champion of the under 18, the German Bastian Böhm. The table tennis turned out way closer than anticipated by the Swiss but he still managed to get the upper hand and won 21-17. After that, the match went only one way with Nicolas winning 21-6 and 21-5.
In the final, he faced for the third time a Czech player, Jacub Svec. Despite having been warned of his strong table tennis, the Czech displayed a surprisingly overstrong and flawless table tennis, conceding our Swiss only 2 points. It couldn't have started worse as he lost in his 2nd best sport. Not giving up just yet, he battled back in his best sport badminton in a fair set, winning 21-5. At that point, only a great win in squash could still allow him to have a chance grabbing his first ever gold medal. But the Czech also knew that and started at top speed, leading 7-1. The following points were equally scores with Nicolas starting to find his length and the Czech having to run more and more to score each point until 15-8. Then, getting even more precise and the Czech more tired, the tendency switched and with a huge comeback, the Swiss eventually took the squash 21-17.
It wasn't as much as he had hoped but at least he limited the damages and could start a tennis without any lead on either side. As said in the beginning, tennis isn't Lenggenhager's strong suit so his hopes weren't high. But that didn't change his motivation and he fought as much as he could right from the start of the set. The surprise came slowly to the sight of the spectators: They were playing even and scoring one point each in a row. Svec was playing probably a bit too safe, thus too slow and was allowing the Swiss the take the opportunity to rush at the net. There he displayed some great volleys to battle against the strong tennis of the Czech. The Czech tried a few times to get himself to the net but the Swiss managed to pass him twice with some lucky shots and refrained him to go more often. Thus, the dynamic of the set didn't change, and on the score of 18-20, the Czech player made the only double fault of the set, allowing the Swiss to seize his first elite international title.
Lenggenghager even took home another gold medal in the Mixed Double alongside Zuzana Severinova. Congratulations! The Swiss Racketlon Federation is very pround of you!
The other Swiss also played some excellent matches! Unfortunately none of them was able to win a medal. But after the tournament ist before the tournament! Congratulations, Andreas Kotala for finishing 5th in the Jun U16, Riccardo Raimo for rank 7 in Men C, Graham King rank 7 in +50 and Marc-André Rauber rank 7 in +55.
NL & NE
