Against Finland
2:0! Austria has one foot in the Davis Cup
Austria's men have one foot in the second qualifying round of the Davis Cup final tournament. After Lukas Neumayer's surprising opening win against Otto Virtanen, Jurij Rodionov followed suit. With a 2:6, 6:3, 6:3 against Eero Vasa, he made it 2:0 despite some initial difficulties. "That was the perfect first day," said a delighted captain Jürgen Melzer.
With his somewhat surprising success over Otto Virtanen, Lukas Neumayer had given his team-mate Jurij Rodionov an ideal template. Captain Jürgen Melzer had also said: "If one of us beats Otto, it looks good."
However, Austria's number one initially found it extremely difficult to add the hoped-for, indeed expected, second point. Yet he was only up against the current world number 568, Eero Vasa. The 27-year-old had never cracked the top 500. But that also helped him. He had nothing to lose, hit every ball with all his might and was particularly accurate on his first serve.
In contrast, Rodionov, as so often in the role of favorite, seemed somewhat inhibited. When Vasa served first, the 25-year-old never really found his way into the rallies and had no means of returning for a long time. As a result, the clear outsider from Finland clearly took the first round 6:2.
But Rodionov gradually fought his way into the second set. "Jürgen also helped me with tips, I tried to make the rallies longer, to give him more question marks," he explained later. The break to 4:2 was the redemption: "I fought, ran and moaned," he said. This eased Rodionov's tension somewhat, while his opponent began to make more mistakes.
Although the Austrian missed the double break, he forced the deciding third set 6:3. The world number 155 was clearly the better player in this set, ultimately winning 2:6, 6:3, 6:3. The fans celebrated him with "Sweet Caroline". So everything looks set for promotion.
On Saturday, Alex Erler and Lucas Miedler could make it 3-0 in the doubles and thus secure promotion to the second qualifying round. In this round, the men's tennis team would play either Canada or Hungary in September for a place at the final tournament in Bologna.
This article has been automatically translated,
read the original article here.
Kommentare
Liebe Leserin, lieber Leser,
die Kommentarfunktion steht Ihnen ab 6 Uhr wieder wie gewohnt zur Verfügung.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
das krone.at-Team
User-Beiträge geben nicht notwendigerweise die Meinung des Betreibers/der Redaktion bzw. von Krone Multimedia (KMM) wieder. In diesem Sinne distanziert sich die Redaktion/der Betreiber von den Inhalten in diesem Diskussionsforum. KMM behält sich insbesondere vor, gegen geltendes Recht verstoßende, den guten Sitten oder der Netiquette widersprechende bzw. dem Ansehen von KMM zuwiderlaufende Beiträge zu löschen, diesbezüglichen Schadenersatz gegenüber dem betreffenden User geltend zu machen, die Nutzer-Daten zu Zwecken der Rechtsverfolgung zu verwenden und strafrechtlich relevante Beiträge zur Anzeige zu bringen (siehe auch AGB). Hier können Sie das Community-Team via unserer Melde- und Abhilfestelle kontaktieren.