In Hamburg, the tennis stars currently have the chance to collect important points at a Challenger tournament in order to make up ground in the world rankings on the sport’s exceptional talents. The hopes of the DTB men suffered a severe setback.
On Tuesday, Rudolf Molleker, the best-placed representative of the German Tennis Association, surprisingly lost in round one with 3:6 and 4:6 against the Australian qualifier Akira Santillan.
Molleker is currently ranked 219th in the world rankings and was number four in Hamburg, while his opponent is ranked 411th, almost 200 places behind Molleker. Santillan, who was able to rely on an extremely secure serve against the German, already eliminated Louis Weßels in the qualifying.
Particularly bitter: Almost two weeks ago, Molleker had to admit defeat to the man from Down Under in two sets.
German tennis hopes for Marvin Möller
From a German perspective, however, there was more bad news: Daniel Masur (number 444 in the world rankings) missed a surprise against the Italian Stefano Napolitano on Tuesday despite a very strong first set 6:1, 2:6 and 4:6.
On Monday, Lucas Gerch (number 346 in the world rankings) lost to the Swiss Antoine Bellier (number 299 in the world rankings) 3:6 and 6:7 and 20-year-old Marko Topo (number 366 in the world rankings) had to defeat the top-seeded Austrian Dennis Novak (number 176 in the world rankings) with 6:7 and 1:6.
Noel Larwig, John Sperle, Jakob Schnaitter, Mats Rosenkranz and Max Rehberg already failed to qualify. Rehberg in particular is one of the talents who are predicted to have a great future at the DTB.
In Hamburg, only Marvin Möller (number 333 in the world rankings) is holding up the German colors. The 24-year-old, who has been plagued by injuries in recent years but who has already celebrated some notable successes in 2023 and has steadily worked his way up the ATP rankings, will not play his first match until Wednesday. The opponent is the Slovakian Norbert Gombos (number 296 in the world rankings).
2023-10-18 00:13:00
#Tennis #German #disaster #Hamburg
