A thrilling day of doubles at the IWT Norwegian Open ended in a three-way championship gummi arm for the Mixed A – Elite Doubles title.
Number one seeds from Norway Victoria T and Ola Ulmo, number two seeds from Finland Kaisu Anttila and Pekka Tennilä, and Joel Durston of Great Britain and Mathilde Deleuran of Denmark contested it, having all won three matches in the five-pair round robin, including one each against each other.
The championship gummi arm now involves both or, as in this case, all three players/pairs playing four points in each sport, each playing serving and receiving one time.
With the Finns trailing by some way, it went down to the tennis between other two pairs, four points to be played. The Norwegians took the first two points, but then Joel and Mathilde saved two match points, setting up a gummi within a gummi!
The Norwegians won the toss, Joel served, Ola played a good, deep slice return, Joel put it up, Ola smashed, Joel put it up again and this smash from Ola was strong enough to seal the title.
That was not the only gummi drama of the day. The Finns had taken a surprise victory against Victoria and Ola 17 21, 21 12, 21 16, 11 22, saving four match points and then winning the gummi!
But they recovered with a strong 21 16, 21 11, 21 19, 5 7. It was a very impressive badminton win as Joel and Mathilde had only conceded 16 badminton points in the other three matches, including a bagel (21 0), with Mathilde being an extremely good badminton player. But Ola is even better, one of the best badminton players on tour (I reckon he might get about 15 from Sylvain Ternon…) and so it ended 21 11, with both pairs seemingly satisfied enough with that.
Mathilde won the first half of squash to love but Ola, who has improved a lot in squash, recovered to make it 21 19, meaning it was a comfortable task to get the five needed in tennis.
Earlier, Joel and Mathilde had beaten the Finnish pair 17 21, 21 6, 21 10, plus 22 so just avoiding the very strong tennis from Kaisu and Pekka.
One of the other two pairs was Swiss Pair Adeline Kilchenmann and Marc-André Rauber, who took the Finnish pair the distance, the scores being 21 9 8 21 19 21 21 7. They were also competitive throughout, winning 5 of 13 sets played.
The final pair was Saga Jönsson Slättsjö, who drove up 4.5 hours along the Swedish coast from Halmstad, where Jimmy Tay also lives, and Ignacio Sevillano, a Spaniard living in Norway who gamely stepped in last-minute to replace Matthew Davidson, the would-be number one seed who unfortunately came down with COVID/flu that he could not shake off in time for the tournament.
They were reasonably competitive and would have been more so had the matches been played to the end of tennis, since Saga is a fantastic tennis player, a Swedish first division player (until she stopped playing that recently to focus on tennis coaching).
In the men’s doubles, number one seeds Magnus Bäckström and Magnus Edby, from Gothenburg, had a very tough draw in Bart and Greg Lorkiewicz, Poles who live in Norway, unseeded as they are not so active on the tour at the moment. The brothers a little bit too strong all around, winning 21 17, 21 10, 21 18, 4 4.
Joel and Bjørn Andersen of Norway won a high-quality match against Sindre Luther of Norway and Dan Holck-Hansen of Denmark. The former three compete against each regularly in Norway, at racketlon, squash, and badminton tournaments.
Table tennis started even, 11 9 at the turn, before Sindre and Dan played attacking and near faultless TT to win 21 11. Badminton was closer and could have gone either way, but it went the same way, 21 16. Joel and Bjørn fought back with with a 21 11 squash win.
This meant Sindre and Dan needed 17 to win, and went in as favourites, as they probably would in even an even game of tennis. But Joel and Bjørn Andersen were on fire, taking a 15-5 lead, and, even though it then got more nervy, they closed it out 21 13.
In the final, the Polish pair them polished off plus 21, despite Joel and Bjørn taking the squash 21 17.
Kaisu and Mathilde won in the final of the Women A – Elite Doubles against Adeline and Victoria 23 21
