Day 4 in Klosters saw again plenty of intense matches, with the Danish boys putting themselves into the spotlight.
Five players have advanced to the quarter finals in both singles and doubles. The biggest surprise among them is Benjamin Hannestad from Denmark. In singles, he confirmed his upset of Norway‘s Casper Ruud with a crystalclear straight-sets win against Romanian Bogdan Borza and has yet to concede a set. His next opponent is Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas. In doubles, Hannestad backed it up by beating the Italians alongside partner Johannes Ingildsen.
Danish male tennis hasn't seen much success with the exception of Fredrik Nielsen winning the Wimbledon doubles title in 2012. Otherwise, in almost a decade, all the headlines have been generated by female star Caroline Wozniacki. Danish coach Kenneth Carlsen, a former world number 41, hopes for improvement: “We are glad and happy to have Caroline. She is a great ambassador and deserves all the attention she gets. But hopefully, we'll have some other good results by boys, we have other promising players who are even younger than those two here.”
On the girls’ side, the Swiss medal dream is still alive despite the fact that Susan Bandecchi was no match for top-seeded Czech Marketa Vondrousova. To save the hosts honour, Jil Teichmann came atop Hungarian Fanni Stollar in three sets and will now square off against Viktoria Kuzmova. The Slovak came from a set down to beat number 4 seed Anna Kalinskaya from Russia.
Late in the afternoon, the fans saw a real nailbiter. The last Swiss men standing, Mirko Martinez & Johan Nikles gave everything they had versus experienced Spaniards Alvaro Lopez San Martin & Bernabe Zapata Miralles. After squandering a 6-1 3-2 lead, the Swiss saved seven match points in the Champions Tiebreak and missed two themselves before Martinez eventually committed a double fault at match point at the score of 15-16. It was a very unfitting end to a campaign of great fighting spirit. The Swiss had already saved four match points in their opener before advancing.
From Marco Keller in Klosters
18 & Under
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