After the 0: 3 against Serbia at the start on Friday, Austria also lost the second international match in Pool F with 1: 2 and was eliminated as bottom of the group. Marach / Oswald had to bend Kevin Krawietz / Tim Pütz 3: 6 4: 6, which meant the last appearance of the soon-to-be-retired Styrian Marach in the Davis Cup team ended in a defeat.
“We knew it would be a much more difficult task than the first. Of course I’m a bit disappointed with the first lap, so I expected that we would get the point, ”said the now 41-year-old Marach. Against the Germans you knew that you had to play top tennis.
Before that Rodionov had defeated Koepfer 6: 1 7: 5 after a strong performance, Novak was defeated by Jan-Lennard Struff with 5: 7 4: 6. The ÖTV team would have had to defeat the Germans 3-0 to have a quarter-final chance. The Germans are group winners in Pool F and will play against Great Britain on Tuesday (4 p.m.) in Innsbruck to make it to the semi-finals in Madrid. Only the six group winners in Innsbruck, Turin and Madrid and the two group runners-up with the highest points made it into the quarter-finals.
Novak is lagging behind from the start
Novak had to run after a deficit from the start in the fight between the two top players in the absence of Dominic Thiem and Alexander Zverev. He gave up his service right away, but managed the rebreak at 4: 5 to make it 5: 5. Another loss of service to 5: 6 decided set one in favor of the guests. As a result, Struff could not be denied victory, a break to 2: 1 set the course for it. The second individual was over after 73 minutes.
“Of course I’m disappointed, I lost a Davis Cup match for Austria. I think there would have been more in there today. It wasn’t a good match for me, and not a bad one either, ”Novak summed up in relation to the APA. “I started with a bad service game, then came in better and better and then played a good return game. At 5: 5 in the game there were one or two bad decisions with the two stop balls, but against such a strong server like Struffi it is difficult. “
Rodionov surprised at the beginning
In the first single, Rodionov had put the hosts in the lead after a very strong performance. The 22-year-old Lower Austrian defeated the higher-rated Koepfer after 85 minutes in the coronavirus-related empty Olympiaworld with 6: 1 7: 5. “It’s a great feeling, I’m close to tears,” said Rodionov on the pitch about one of his most important victories so far. “The only thing that is a shame is that we couldn’t play in front of the fans at home. That’s a big minus. It would have been ten times better with the fans, ”said the Lower Austrian about the fans of the ÖTV team who were not absent.
Rodionov found out on Friday evening after the defeat against Serbia that he would almost certainly be used on Sunday. “So I was able to watch Dominik against Krajinovic yesterday. I already knew how to play against him. I’ve played him twice before, ”said Rodionov. The course of the game even looked like a very smooth two-set win when Rodionov had set one in his pocket after 26 minutes and was already leading 4: 2 in the second.
“In the end I was the happier”
“The tank was completely empty at 4-2 in the second, even without fans. You play Davis Cup for Austria and there are a lot of thoughts going through your head that you can’t control. In the end I was the happier, ”said Rodionov. The Austrian, in the ranking as 139th clearly behind Koepfer (54th), fell behind by 4: 2 with 4: 5 and even had to fend off two set balls. He made the break to 6: 5 and then the two-set win. For Rodionov it was the first victory for Austria in his fourth Davis Cup individual. Against Koepfer it was even his third victory in the third duel for Rodionov, including beating the Germans in three sets this year in the first round of Stuttgart on grass.
