In a final of the men’s Bundesliga in Klagenfurt that was hard to beat in terms of excitement and drama, the Union Stein&Co. Mauthausen defeated the defending champion Irdning 4:5 on Sunday. The Upper Austrians had several chances to win the cup themselves. It was not for nothing that ÖTV spoke of the most exciting final in Bundesliga history after the match.
Almost every single game was on the brink in the course of the final: Five of the six individual games were decided in a match tie-break. From the ranks of Mauthausen, Alexander Erler scored 6: 3, 1: 6, 10: 7 against the German Peter Gojowczyk (ATP world ranking 108), Gergely Madarasz with 6: 4, 3: 6, 13:11 against Dennis Novak and Andreas Haider -Maurer 3: 6, 6: 4, 10: 5 against Lucas Miedler. Sebastian Ofner, Julian Lenz and Filip Misolic remained successful for Irdning, so that the doubles match started with a score of 3:3.
At first it seemed as if Mauthausen could win the title, because Alexander Erler and Gabriel Schmidt made short work of Sebastian Ofner and Dennis Novak 6: 3, 6: 3. The second double was much tighter with 6:4, 7:6 in favor of Lucas Miedler / Jürgen Melzer. The decisive double between Gergely Madarasz / Dominic Weidinger and the German ATP professionals Peter Gojowczyk / Julian Lenz will go down in Austria’s tennis annals as an absolute thriller: the Mauthausen duo won the first set 7:6, after which Irdning also succeeded with 7 :6 the compensation. In the all-important match tiebreak, Madarasz / Weidinger had four chances at the score of 9:5 for the match and thus the championship title. But these remained unused and in the end Gojowczyk / Lenz won the set 12:10.
After the match point, Mauthausen’s team captain Hannes Pühringer didn’t really know how to classify the result: “Of course we were blatant outsiders against this full professional squad. Our boys played really well. It’s crazy that Madarasz beat Novak, led Schmidt against an opponent with set and break and played so sensationally in doubles, as did Haider-Maurer. It was just the icing on the cake.” In fact, one of the four master balls got caught on the net, another was centimeters out. Pühringer: “Of course we could have done that, but you also have to see the overall situation. We are extremely proud.”
Source: Nachrichten
