Image: Klaus Mader
In the 1st tennis Bundesliga, UTC Casa Moda Steyr suffered a severe setback in the fight to stay up. In the home game against promoted TSV Hartberg, the Gleinker had to admit defeat with 3:6. The decisive factor for the defeat was a negative run in the first individual round, when the UTC cracks had to give up all three games in the match tie-break despite their sometimes strong performance.
After a strong performance, youngster Tobias Leitner already led 8-2 in the final match tiebreak in his singles match against Styrian Joachim Kovacs, but had to admit defeat 3:6, 7:5, 9-11 after a match point was awarded. Earlier on, Czech Michael Vrbensky, who replaced Ukraine’s Vitaliy Sachko in the UTC number one position, missed a set lead in his debut against Ukraine’s Vlad Orlov and lost 6-3, 1-6, 5-10 pulled. The same thing happened to Philip Bachmaier. Steyr’s number three won the first set in the tie-break against the Italian Riccardo Bellotti, but after losing the second set also had to go into the match tie-break, which was lost 4-10.
The die was already cast, because the UTC cracks had only been able to win one of the three doubles. Vrbensky/Leitner certainly won against Orlov/Steiner in two sets. After the 1:5 intermediate result, the Steyrers at least managed to limit the damage. Simon Traxler showed strong form and didn’t give Hans-Peter Kaufmann a chance in two sets. His brother Dominik Traxler defeated Maximilian Steiner in a match tiebreak. The fact that David Pichler won in two sets at his old place of work against Hynek Barton was only of statistical value. “Unfortunately, a lot went against us today. We had numerous chances, but couldn’t take them at all,” captain Dominik Traxler analyzed the defeat.
Source: Nachrichten
