What Happened on Day Five? | Racketlon World Championships

Zuzana Severinová, Morten Jaksland and Leon Griffiths are all through to multiple finals after the first day of action from Graz.

Day five of the Racketlon World Championships saw the tournament move from Vienna to Graz, with the Elite and Amateurs players beginning their tournament with doubles.

Severinová is through to the Women’s Doubles final with Stine Jacobsen as defending champions. She is also partnering with Leon Griffiths in the Mixed Doubles final, where they’ll take on Morten Jaksland and Nathalie Vogel.

Griffiths and Jaksland will also square off in the Men’s Doubles final, with Griffiths playing with brother Luke, and Jaksland teamed up with regular partner Kresten Hougaard.

Tourismusverband Graz Men’s Elite Doubles

Leon Griffiths is back in the Tourismusverband Graz Men’s Elite Doubles final for the second year in a row. Last year he won the title with Calum Reid. This year, he teams up with younger brother Luke Griffiths.

In the final, the Brits will play 2019 World Champions Kresten Hougaard and Morten Jaksland. The top-seeded Danes are back in the final after a superb trio of wins earlier on Wednesday.

Hougaard began with a tricky test against Michał Kurek and Mateusz Skorek, coming through that with a nine-point victory. Wildcards Sidharth Nandal and Ashutosh Avinash Pednekar were their next victims, falling to the Danes in the quarter-finals.

Austrian hopes of a title were ended in the semi-finals, as the Danes produced superb tennis to win by nine points against Michi Dickert and Lukas Windischberger and book the first spot in the final.

The Griffiths Brothers followed suit swiftly after. There was a case of deja vu for Leon in his first round. That’s because he played Pekka Kainulainen and Henrik Mustonen, the pair he and Reid beat in last year’s final. Despite winning the squash, René Lindberg and Sion Wiggin were the next victims of the Griffiths brothers in the quarter-finals.

Adarsh Vikram Narayanaswamy and Max Plettenberg enjoyed a superb run through to the semi-finals, upsetting No.3 seeds Joel Pennanen and Luka Penttinen a round earlier. That’s where their run came to an end though, with the Griffiths brothers winning by 16 points after a 13-6 tennis win.

What that leaves us with, is a blockbuster final between four players who have never faced each other in a doubles match before. Of course, they have met many times with different partners, and on the singles court, but this is the first time we will get Leon Griffiths and Luke Griffiths against Morten Jaksland against Kresten Hougaard.

The full final will be available to watch at 18:30CET on Thursday, August 25 on Streamster.tv. The bronze medal match will be half an hour earlier at 18:00CET.

The full Tourismusverband Graz Men’s Elite Doubles results are available here.

Energie Steiermark Women’s Elite Doubles

There was a very little surprise during the Energie Steiermark Women’s Elite Doubles on Wednesday. Top seeds Anna-Klara Ahlmer and defending champions Stine Jacobsen and Zuzana Severinová won both of their matches to set up a final showdown between the pairs for Friday lunchtime.

In fact, the day only saw four tennis points, with Martina Meißl and Irina Olsacher forcing those out of Ahlmer and Enmer. The reality is that the top two seeded pairs brought too much strength to proceedings.

That leaves us with two matches left to decide the podium. Anna-Klara Ahlmer and Myriam Enmer against Stine Jacobsen and Zuzana Severinová is a dream final between the four best and most active players on the circuit at the moment. The bronze medal match sees Martina Meißl and Irina Olsacher battle Nicole Eisler and Krystyna Głógiewicz.

The full final will be available to watch at 12:30CET on Friday, August 26 on Streamster.tv. The bronze medal match will be half an hour earlier at 12:00CET.

The full Energie Steiermark Women’s Elite Doubles results are available here.

Austria Trend Hotel Europa Mixed Elite Doubles

The Austria Trend Hotel Europa Mixed Elite Doubles category took place in the evening on Wednesday. Three of the finalists from the Men’s and Women’s Doubles finals are back in action in the Mixed Doubles; Morten Jaksland, Zuzana Severinová and Leon Griffiths.

Vogel and Jaksland navigated a treacherous trio of matches in order to reach the final. They beat Linnea Koskinen and Henrik Mustonen by 13 points in the first round before ending the campaign of top seeds Anna-Klara Ahlmer and Dan Busby in the quarter-finals.

The semi-final against Stine Jacobsen and Cornelius Radermacher was a fantastic match. The No.4 seeds actually led by seven points after badminton, before Vogel and Jaksland battled back to win by eight points and secure a place in the final.

The bottom half of the draw featured the best match of the day. Martina Meißl and Georg Stoisser against Myriam Enmer and Damien Andre was a tight match on paper. It proved to be so on the court as well. The two pairs battled ferociously, and after deuce results in table tennis and squash, eventually arrived at a gummiarm. The Austrians won the toss and elected to serve. In the midst of an electric atmosphere, Stoisser missed his serve to send the French fans into jubilation.

Enmer and Andre’s run ended in the semi-finals against Severinová and Griffiths. The Nick Matthew Steel City Open champions beat the French pair having already beaten Austrian duos Bettina Bugl and Marcel Weigl, and Christine Seehofer-Krenn and Lukas Windischberger. The latter in particular was a fabulous match, with the finalists winning the tennis 21-13 to secure a +6 win.

The full final will be available to watch at 18:30CET on Friday, August 26 on Streamster.tv. The bronze medal match will be half an hour earlier at 18:00CET.

The full Austria Trend Hotel Europa Mixed Elite Doubles results are available here.

Men’s B/C Doubles

It’s an all-German final in the Men’s B/C Doubles, as top seeds Patrick Oettl and Simon Vaclahovsky and No.4 seeds Thorsten Lentfer and Christian Wiessner battled through the 32-pair draw.

Top seeds Oettl and Vaclahovsky survived two tough battles, beating Fabian Bergande and Soeren Smit by three points and Bastian Böhm and Steffen Neumann by two points. In the semi-finals, they easily beat David Bennett and Jon Spinks, whose run to the final had featured two three-point and one one-point victory.

In the bottom half, Lentfer and Wiessner had breezed through the draw relatively untroubled. The duo ended the hopes of Leon Sam and Stefan Urban, who will now battle for bronze at their home tournament.

Women’s B Doubles

It will be a USA versus Czech Republic final in the Women’s B Doubles. That’s after Stephanie Chung and Joanne Schickerling rolled into the final in the top half, while No.4 seeds Nikola Cemusova and Lucie Hlavacova achieved the same in the bottom half.

Chung and Schikerling’s most impressive win came in the semi-finals, as they defeated top seeds Stine Krogsøe and Alexandra Ogram by 17 points.

Cemusova and Hlavacova also beaten a seeded pair, taking out No.2 seeds Susie Dilloway and Matilda Parslow in the semi-finals.

Mixed B Doubles

At the close of play on Wednesday, Indian duo Aadirai K A and Adarsh Vikram Narayanaswamy are the only pair already in the final. They fought through four matches, including an incredibly tight match against Cherisse Lau and Mohammed Tarik Koubaa. The Indian pair ultimately won by two points in their quarter-final contest.

The bottom half has only reached the semi-finals, with the match not able to be played due to a late finish in the evening. The match, which sees No.2 seeds Matilda Parslow and Johnny Bispham take on Hong Kong’s Tsz Yan Joyce Chan and Steven Wai Kit Cheng will take place later this week. The Hong Kong pair flew into the semi-finals, while Parslow and Bispham had to fight hard to defeat Stephanie Chung and Patrick Moran in the quarter-finals, winning by four points in a late-night thriller.

The full Mixed B Doubles results are available here.

Men’s D/E Doubles

The one category that did finish on Wednesday produced one of the day’s best matches. France’s Fabian Guidoux and Bastian Vaubert took on Vikramaditya Chaufla and Karan Taneja in a thriller in front of a packed audience.

The matches ebbed and flowed, but it was the Indians that led by eight heading into the tennis. In front of a noisy French contingent, Guidoux and Vaubert produced some fantastic racketlon tennis, eventually winning the match by one point and ensuring they were crowned the first champions in Graz.

The full Men’s D/E Doubles results are available here.