Koen Hageraats and Joerg Kanonenberg made it through to the final of the Men’s Elite after an intense day of action in Rotterdam.
Koen had the hardest time of it, in the extremely strong top half of the draw, with two incredible wins, over Luke Griffiths in the quarter-final and then racketlon legend Jesper Ratzer in the semi-final, who he humbly deemed probably the two best players in the tournament.
The number one seed, on home soil, beat three-time World Champion Luke Griffiths by just two points.
Most would probably consider the best racketlon matches those with tight scores across all the four disciplines, marathon matches testing each players’ will and skill.
But there can be great intrigue in matches with heavy wins in all of the sets too, the players working out, respectively, how to play in a way to not make mistakes and to raise their game, perhaps play some riskier shots than normal, to get into double figures. That proved the case here as Koen won 21-4, 7-21, 21-9, 7-20.
In the semi-final against Jesper he won 21-10, 7-21, 21-9, 13-11. The first two sports went mostly as expected. Squash was key.
Jesper was the favourite, with Koen saying he would have been happy with a 21-19 win, but the Dutchman controlled rallies, with great strength and depth, against someone who has played for the Danish national team.
John Williams, former squash pro in the commentary box, was raving about how good of a performance it was. Koen said it was his best scoreline in a squash set in racketlon. Many rallies were so physical and impressive, Koen brought out roars and Greg Gaultier-esque celebrations.
Earlier in the day, Jesper had beaten Malte Thyregod 21-13, 21-23, 21-3, a turnaround from their result in Denmark earlier this year, showing the trademark preparation and focus Jesper has for the World Championships.
In the other half of the draw Joerg progressed to the quarters by beating compatriot Thorsten Lentfer 11-21, 21-8, 21-12, 10-3 and Bastian Böhm by winning 21-7, 21-14, 12-21, 21-12 over Brit Jonathan Ritter.
Their semi-final was also very high-quality. Bastian opened strongly with a TT win to 11, before Joerg turned things in his favour with wins to 17 and 8 – and then the fireworks began.
Despite the tight score going in, Joerg up seven, there was not even a trace of racketlon tennis. Probably the best two at tennis on tour, playing the best tennis I have ever seen at racketlon, thumping groundstrokes, low over the net, hitting lines. Bastian especially has an incredible ability to hit with full power even at full stretch.
He led pretty much all the way and by the turn he had reduced arrears to four overall, leading to thoughts of a gummi, but Joerg found the extra bit of inspiration needed to take the victory – and even ended up in the positive at the end, 15-14.
It was a great day all around for ‘The Canon’, as John Williams has dubbed him. It could be double gold for Joerg as he also reached the final of the Seniors +40.
