Astrid Reimer-Kern and Leon Griffiths are the new IWT Malta Open singles champions.
Reimer-Kern produced a phenomenal display on Sunday to defeat Anna-Klara Ahlmer by 28 points and win the Women’s Singles title at Marsa Sports Club for a second time.
In the Men’s Singles, Leon Griffiths beat previous Malta Open champion Kresten Hougaard to collect his second title of the 2022 season.
Women’s Singles – Reimer-Kern Beats Ahlmer with Ruthless Display
There’s a reason that Astrid Reimer-Kern has reached the World Singles Championship final twice. She proved her world-class quality on Sunday with a brilliant performance to take down Anna-Klara Ahlmer in the IWT Malta Open final.
Surprisingly, these two had not met for a number of years so there was plenty of anticipation surrounding this match. In the end, though, Ahlmer was not able to keep up with Reimer-Kern.
The Swede knew that in order to have a chance she would need to lead before squash. Instead, it was Reimer-ern who led by 11 points, making any Ahlmer victory virtually impossible.
Reimer-Kern was extremely solid on the table tennis table, taking it 21-12 to open up a solid early lead. Ahlmer needed to battle back on the badminton court but had been struggling all weekend. Instead, it was Reimer-Kern who edged it, winning 23-21.
The German then wrapped up the match with an imperious 21-4 squash win to clinch the title. That is her second women’s singles title in Malta having previously won in 2017. It’s also her fifth career elite singles title and puts her just one behind Ahlmer on the all-time list.
Ahlmer is next confirmed to compete at the IWT Latvian Open in July while Reimer-Kern’s current next tournament is the World Singles Championships in August.
Myriam Enmer continues her run of podiums in 2022 as she finishes third for her third podium in three tournaments in 2022. That first gold medal is still eluding her but her results suggest that it’s going to come sooner rather than later after she beat Kirsten Kaptein today for the bronze medal.
The full Women’s Singles results are available here.
Men’s Singles – Griffiths Dominates Hougaard for Victory in Malta
Leon Griffiths is the Men’s Singles champion. It’s a sentence that we’re becoming very accustomed to hearing and it’s returned during the IWT Malta Open.
Kresten Hougaard was his opponent in the final. The Dane has pedigree in Malta having won the title in the past. But he was always up against it against Griffiths, having lost all five of their previous career meetings.
The Dane did make the faster start in the final. Hougaard snatched the table tennis 21-19, giving himself a slender lead before the badminton. Griffiths came alive on the beautiful blue badminton court in Malta, winning 21-6 to completely eradicate Hougaard’s lead.
Any chance Hougaard had of producing a comeback was dashed on the squash court. Griffiths took the squash 21-15 to leave him needing just three tennis points for the title.
It took him just six points to reach the magic number and, for the first time, he is a champion in Malta. For Griffiths, that’s title number two on the season and title number seven in his career.
Unfortunately, after his heroics this weekend, Malte Thyregod was forced to withdraw from his bronze medal match. That left Nicolas Lenggenhager joining Leon Griffiths and Kresten Hougaard on the podium.
The full Men’s Singles results are available here.
We’ll have a full report from the amateur singles categories coming with our Amateurs and Seniors report on Monday.
Interested in competing in a Racketlon World Tour event? The full 2022 World Tour is available here with a number of tournaments already open for entry.
Sam Barker / FIR Media Officer
Image Credit / Astrid Reimer-Kern
