Starting strong in the most important tournaments of the season hasn’t been a problem for Adrian Heidrich and Mirco Gerson as the Swiss topped Pool H of the A1 Major Vienna presented by Swatch repeating what they had done at both the World Championships and the Gstaad Major.
The Swiss broke the hearts of the Austrian fans by upsetting local heroes Clemens Doppler and Alexander Horst 17-21, 21-18, 15-8 in the debut and followed it up with a 18-21, 21-15, 15-9 victory over Germans Lars Flüggen and Nils Ehlers that sent them directly to the Round of 16 of the tournament at the Danube Island.
“This is the right way for us,” Heidrich said. “Last year here in Vienna both of our pool matches were really close too, but we lost them, so I’m really glad that we were on the right side of them this time. We returned here really looking forward to do better and I’m glad we did.”
Unfortunately for them, that’s not the only trend they’ve been experiencing lately as in both tournaments they were knocked out in their first elimination match after pool play.
“Last year we won our pools in four and five-stars quite a few times, but every time we did we’d lose in the first elimination round as well,” the blocker added. “We’re obviously looking forward to change it and tomorrow we’ll have a good opportunity to do it.”
Brazilians Evandro Goncalves and Bruno Schmidt also topped a very tough pool after they downed Swiss Marco Krattiger and Nico Beeler 21-16, 19-21, 16-14 and Qatar’s Cherif Samba/Ahmed Tijan 21-18, 21-17 to secure an automatic berth at the Round of 16.
“We had some ups and downs on the first match but managed to play more consistently on the second,” Bruno summarized. “It was a tough pool with Dalhausser and Lucena and Qataris, who are physically so impressive, and I’m really proud that we came out on top. We’re struggling to make things happen and get to the place we want to be, but we’re making progress.”
Norway’s Anders Mol/Christian Sørum, Russia’s, Oleg Stoyanovskiy/Viacheslav Krasilnikov, Brazil’s Alison Cerutti/Alvaro Filho, the Netherlands’ Alexander Brouwer/Robert Meeuwsen, Spain’s Pablo Herrera/Adrian Gavira and Chile’s Marco Grimalt/Esteban Grimalt were the other teams to win their pools at the Vienna Major.
The elimination rounds starts on Friday with the men’s Round of 24 and Round of 16.
