After four years, the Polish is back in a gold medal match with Bryl

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Bryl and Fijalek will play in their first gold medal match together

The moment Grzegorz Fijalek was waiting for has finally arrived as the Polish veteran and his partner Michal Bryl have advanced to the gold medal match of the A1 Major Vienna presented by Swatch. The Europeans beat Qatari’s Cherif Samba and Ahmed Tijan in two sets (21-15, 21-17) in the first semifinal of the men’s tournament.

The result ends a four-year wait for the two-time Olympian Fijalek, who was last played in a World Tour final back in 2014, with his former partner Mariusz Prudel, with who he won ten –medals – one gold, four silver and five bronze – in an eight-year partnership. The duo won a bronze at the 2015 Stavanger Major.

“I imagine it would be this way because I’m playing with a younger partner and it’s just our second season,” the 31-year-old defender said. “We’ve been doing a good job since last year, we’ve been improving step-by-step. We started the tournament very well and we’ve been playing at a really high level. I hope we can keep it in the final.”                                                                                            Their appearance in the gold medal match of the Vienna Major will be the first for the new team, which was formed at the start of the 2017 season and has five of its six matches at the Danube Island this week.

It will be the first final appearance for the 23-year-old Bryl, an Under-19 and Under-21 world champion.

“I’m very excited by what he’s showed so far,” Fijalek added. “He did a great job executing our tactics at a very high level and also helped us with a lot of powerful serves.”

The Polish now wait for the second semifinal, between Norway’s Anders Mol and Christian Sørum and the Netherland’s Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen, to know who their opponents in the gold medal match will be.