Top seeds Austria reached the final of the Men’s Team event at the
Erke Austrian Open in Salzburg on Friday 31st October 2008 following an
impressive three matches to one victory over Russia but for second
seeds, Chinese Taipei it was defeat.
They suffered in a contest that went the full five match distance, being beaten by Japan.
Man of the moment for Japan was Seiya Kishikawa.
He won the vital last match of the fixture with the scores level at
two matches all, beating Chinese Taipei’s top player Chuan Chih-Yuan.
Vital Doubles
Earlier
Kishikawa had partnered Kenta Matsudaira to a nail-biting five games
doubles win over Chiang Hung-Chieh and Wu Chih-Chi, after the first two
singles matches had gone the way of Chinese Taipei.
Chiang
Hung-Chieh had given Chinese Taipei a splendid start by beating Taku
Takakiwa with Chuan Chih-Yuan following suit to beat Kenta Matsudaira.
However,
the narrow doubles victory changed the momentum of proceedings with
Taku Takakiwa beating Wu Chih-Chi in five games to level matters and
thus set the stage for Kishikawa to perform heroics.
Russians Stat Well
Meanwhile, for Austria, they did not have to recover from the brink of defeat but they did make the better start.
Alexei Smirnov beat Robert Gardos in five games but that was the only Russian success.
Werner
Schlager levelled matters by overcoming Fedor Kuzmin, Chen Weixing and
Robert Gardos then combined to overcome Fedor Kuzmin and Kirill
Skachkov before Werner Schlager brought matters to an end with victory
over Kirill Skachkov.
Injured Arm
The
result pleased the crowd and it pleased Werner Schlager who was
suffereing from a slight injury to his right arm, his playing arm.
"My
masseur Hermann Schmid did a great job and I was very focused", said
Werner Schlager. "All my opponents from today feared my forehand and I
had many more possibilities to play my backhand; our team performed
very well tonight and I am looking forward to playing in the team final
here in Salzburg."
Europe versus Asia
Certainly,
it is the result the organizers wanted, Austria on home soil in the
final against Japan, the old rivalry Europe versus Asia and who would
predict a winner.
I’m sitting firmly on the fence.
Source: www.ittf.com
