In the last round of the regular season of the first Bundesliga, the Pressbaumer on Saturday was mainly about home rights in the semifinals.
“To do this, we have to celebrate a big win even in the bottom of Carinthia, and hope for a victory for Traun in Wolfurt,” said section manager Andreas Meinke, who knew that this was the only way to overtake Vorarlberg and move up to second place.
The Pressbaumer competed in Carinthia with a suitably strong team, even if Philip Birker, Philip Katsaros, Ema Cizelj and Vladimir Vangelov were not ready to play. The Carinthians renounced their legionnaires Filip Spoljarec, Blagovest Kisyov and Atanaska Spasova. So the chances were good for a clear victory!
The first men’s doubles were played for Pressbaum team leader Adi Pratama and Brit Steven Stallwood against Miha Ivancic and Philipp Drexler. The Pressbaumers clearly won the first set with 21:10. In the second set, the Carinthians came into play a little better, but still had to accept a straight 2-set defeat.
The second men’s doubles were even more clearly in favor of Pressbaum. Indonesia legionnaire Andrei Adistia and ASV top talent Jakob Sorger left Martin Cerkovnik and Markus Grutschnig no chance and thus created a 2-0 lead. A hurdle on the way to victory was thus cleared out of the way.
A real double specialist. Pressbaum’s newcomer Andrei Adistia this year delivered a fantastic performance both in men’s doubles with youngster Jakob Sorger and alongside Dimitria Popstoykova in mixed.
Andreas Meinke
For the women’s doubles, Nina Sorger and Carina Meinke again competed for Pressbaum against two young players from Carinthia. For Denise Hofer and Alina Kopetzky, the match turned out to be the expected “teaching quarter of an hour”. “The two Carinthian girls were hopelessly overwhelmed,” said section head Meinke almost sorry for the opponents. His daughter and her partner contributed the third point for Pressbaum.
Traditionally, the individual games continued. And for the Carinthian Philipp Drexler, it was only about gaining experience against a real world-class man. Pratama increased against the youngster in a relaxed pace with his 21: 6, 21: 7 win to 4: 0.
“The game went according to plan, everything pointed to the hoped-for 4-point victory and the news from Vorarlberg was good,” said Meinke’s optimism.
In the second men’s individual, Jun Mai faced the Carinthian Miha Ivancic for Pressbaum. And not entirely unexpected, Ivancic got the upper hand against Pressbaum’s Indonesian in two sets. Ultimately, it should be the honor point for the hosts.
At this point in time, Meinke only knew one thing: “Now we are not allowed to give up any more points!”
After Dimitria Popstoykova had clearly dominated her women’s singles against the young Denise Hofer, Stefan Ratheyser made everyone in the team tremble again briefly. After clearly winning the first set against Markus Grutschnig, he had to give up the second. “With the anger in his stomach he made short work of it in the third set,” Meinke was happy about the 21: 8 set success.
As in the last encounter against Traun, it was 6: 1 before the last game. The decisive mixed was played by Adistia / Popstoykova against Martin Cerkovnik and Conny Ertl. And this time the victory should succeed. The Indonesian-Bulgarian pairing clearly dominated the two Carinthians and set the end of the 7-1 success with a clear 2-set win.
Since Traun was able to defeat Wolfurt 5: 3 at the same time, Pressbaum secured second place after the basic round ahead of Wolfurt due to the better set balance!
Wolfurt is now also the opponent in the semifinals, which will be decided in just one game. “Our advantage is that we can now fix the finals in front of our own fans on March 31st”, Meinke is looking forward to the match and is hoping for many “thumbs”. “This team deserves it!”
.
