The SWT Austrian Open Men’s Elite draw is packed with young talent hoping to get the hands on glory, gold, and ‘geld’ – and, for some, claim their spot on the Tour Finals in December.
The tournament will hand out 2,000 Euro of prize money to the men’s elite, among the highest figures on the FIR World Tour this event. Also, top players will receive free hospitality and shuttle service.
At the top of the draw, Sylvain Ternon, World No.1 and World Championship finalist, has, what seems on paper, a relatively comfortable draw. First, he faces local hope Stefan Urban. Presuming he progresses, he will meet Austrian Mathias Windbacher or Brit Keith Lesser, which should be a close match.
On the same side of the draw, Michal Kurek faces Julien Castel. It will be interesting to see how Castel fares, in his first elite singles competition.
The Frenchman has had a strong debut season on the international tour, with golds at the C singles at the World Championships, where all his wins were double figures, and at the Nordic Racket Games, as well as representing France 2 at the World Championships and C doubles gold at the World Doubles and French Open. That, and a 29-8 win-loss record, suggests it is a solid decision to step up.
But he faces a very tough challenge in the form of the Pole, a very solid elite player, who took the table tennis against Jesper Ratzer in their quarter final at the World Champs (22-20) and only lost by two in squash (though only managed two points in badminton).
Presuming Kurek comes through that challenge, he faces the winner of the tie of the round, Bastian Böhm and Mandrin Mouchet, ranked 11 and 9 in the world respectively.
Both players have had great seasons. The German, just 20 years old, has climbed from 19 to 11 in the world, with wins in the elite doubles at the Swiss Open and Racket Masters Augsburg, where he also bagged an Elite Mixed Doubles win. However, probably bigger than all of those, he captained Germany 2 to a fantastic Nations Cup triumph at the World Championships.
Mandrin Mouchet, the fourth seed here, has been busy this season, having played eight international tournaments, including travelling all the way to Thailand and Hong Kong, with strong results seeing him climb from 14 to 7 in the world rankings (two down to nine on the day the tournament started). All in all, this tie is too tight to call! (Keep an eye out too for Bastian’s Instagram takeover at the tournament.)
In the other half of the draw, Simon Vaclahovsky faces 17-year-old Leonhard Prager, very strong at table tennis and tennis, and improving at the middle two. Simon won their recent encounter at Racket Masters Augsburg 13-21, 21-18, 21-3, 9-13, but all it would take would be for Leonhard to reverse that badminton and Simon would need 15 in tennis, making it extremely tight/gummi territory.
The winner of that faces the winner of an enticing tie between rising stars Matthew Davidson, from Great Britain, and Czech player Matěj Volf. Davidson recently took silver at the Norwegian Open after impressive wins over Anna-Klara Ahlmer, René Lindberg, and Noah Mamié. In a brutal final, he had a matchpoint in tennis, before Kresten won 24-22.
Volf had a strong showing at the recent World Champs, only needing one point of tennis to reach the final of the Juniors U18s (and he is a superb tennis player), which he lost in a tight match with Lucas Steyer. And in the elite, after losing to Nicolas Lenggenhager, he bagged great wins over Léon Mamié and Malte Thyregod. In fact, the non-played match next was against Davidson – we now get the pleasure of actually seeing it.
Leon Sam faces Andreas Kotala in another battle of young talents. At just 16, it is very impressive that Kotala is ranked 29 in the world (although the rankings show more tournaments under his name than all but two of the top 100 – Lenggenhager with 20 and Mouchet with 18). Sam won their only previous encounter, winning all sports, but Kotala was not even 14 at the time, and has developed a lot since, so expect this one to go down to the wire.
Number two seed Lenggenhager plays Nikola Mikac of Croatia (nice to see some Balkan representation in racketlon) in the first round. The Croat got to the final of the Seniors +45 at the World Championship so he is a hurdle to overcome, but the Swiss will likely have too much.
