Your friend, my ticket
A small group of 9 Swiss players went to Sweden to compete in the Dillon Swedish Open. In addition to the Swedish Open, the first half of this year’s Champions League was held there, with three Swiss players competing in it.
Due to the new mode in this year’s Champions League, Nicole Eisler was the only Swiss player in the Swiss team “Swiss Army Knives”. She did her job as captain of the team well, as it is currently in 4th place, after losing two tight matches and winning the last one. Patrick Lorenz played for “Technifibre Copenhagen”, which is currently in the second spot with two wins and one loss. Michael Strässle was only able to play the first round of the Champions League for his team “KoR Oudenaarde”, before he had to pull out of the competition due to injury.
Even though Strässle was injured he tried to play in the Men’s A singles, where he won against Daniel Majetic and Dan Busby. Because of his shoulder injury he wasn’t able to do the overhead service in tennis, which makes his wins even more remarkable. In the quarterfinals the Danish world number 2 Kasper Jønsson was too strong for him.
Lorenz and Eisler were the other Swiss players in the Elite draws, but both of them lost their first round matches. After his first round match, which Lorenz could have won (there were also some problems with the tennis referee’s eyesight), he went on to win all of his other matches. Eisler was, like Lorenz, able to win her second match against the French wildcard, but she then lost against Natalie Paul from Germany in her third match.
Marc-André Rauber and Susan Rutschmann fought hard in their categories, but unfortunately they didn’t succeed like Strässle. However Rauber was able to win his last match against his Danish doubles partner, while Rutschmann got a good 4th place in the womens doubles with her partner Julia Pabisch.
The father and daughter duo, Beat and Dara Ladner, competed together in the mixed doubles. After two good wins, they lost in the semis to a Swedish pair. After that loss they wanted to go for the third spot in the tournament, but unfortunately they lost against Pabisch/Koubaa just by one single solitary point. Dara was able to get a good 5th place in the singles and getting her revenge over Pabisch in her last match. Beat had a hard draw in the Mens B, but he was up for a fight, as he won at least one match.
Esther Dübendorfer was able to bring a silver and a bronze medal back to Switzerland. In the women's B she finished third only losing to the winner Stine Jacobsen in the semis. In the Women Seniors +45 she was even able to win the silver medal. After winning her first three group matches she had to play against Lilian Druve from Sweden. She was motivated to fight for the gold medal but unfortunately she had her previous matches still in her bones and in Squash she ran totally out of energy, so she even lost her best discipline.
As usual our Mr. King was once again able to take some medals home. He won the silver medal in the Seniors +45 Doubles with his Romanian partner. But this wasn’t his only success, he was even able to claim the gold medal in the Seniors +55 doubles with his Finnish partner Ike Rautio, beating the reigning +60 world champions in the final by a single point.
Last but not least, our one and only youngster (Strässle) was responsible for one of the funniest moments. On the way back from Malmö to Copenhagen Airport as he wanted to tell the train inspector, that Lorenz has his train ticket. But as many know, Strässle doesn’t have the best English – that’s why the sentence „Your friend, my ticket.“ came out of his mouth.
Dara Ladner
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