After the win in Gifhorn last Tuesday we were facing a double match weekend in the German premier League and against strong opponents. On Saturday we met the current national champion Berlin and on Sunday we received Rosenheim in our hall.
In the German League you have to travel quite some miles for the away matches and fortunately one of the longest trips lies behind us. Friday evening we drove to Berlin in our very comfortable mini bus and we spent the night in an hotel. The next day, after breakfast, we took a walk through lively Berlin and had a cup of coffee at Starbucks watching people passing by. This city radiates so much energy and that generated a very good mood for the match to come.
The encounter itself went very well. Marcus Ellis and I played very strongly in our men’s doubles and we won. But the ladies doubles drew the short straw. “Dima†Zavadsky defeated Chetan Anand from India but in the second men’s single Alexander Roovers had to accept the superiority of Kenneth Jonassen the former European Champion and present Coach of Team England. In the ladies single Judith Meulendijks repeated her unexpected win from February again by defeating Juliane Schenk in two games. It looks like Juliane is completely lost after her win in the Singapore Super Series earlier this year. It’s a pity to see a world class player fighting against herself. I really hope that she will find the way up soon again, but as a team we still were very happy with Judith and her achievement. The mixed doubles was won by Berlin making the final score 3-3. So we could take 1 point back home. After a quick meal we raced back to Mülheim.
Sunday was our first home match in the RWE Hall which is our home base and where we will play 5 out of the 9 home matches. The other 4 will be played in the hall where the German national ladies team is training. Rosenheim was our opponent. Again Marcus and I won in 2 games and this time the ladies doubles was won quite easily by our girls. Alexander Roovers had to get going in his single versus Hannes Käsbauer but once on steam he finished the job very convincing in 2 games. Zavadsky lost his match in three games but Judith got hardly any resistance from her opponent who didn’t seem to believe in herself. The mixed doubles, rather unexpectedly, went to Rosenheim putting the final score on 4-2. After 3 matches Mülheim is second in ranking with 5 points. If you like to see all the results in detail you may copy the following link in your browser.
http://www.alleturniere.de/sport/team.aspx?id=34638DA5-B97F-44FE-9229-CFD63DECF3E1&team=10
For the people who can read the German language well and who are interested in a newspaper report of the matches, copy the following link in your browser.
http://www.derwesten.de/sport/lokalsport/muelheim/bvm-setzt-sich-ganz-oben-fest-id7051896.html
Next Saturday we’ll play our second home match versus Bonn Beuel but first I have a week of hard training at Papendal ahead of me.
