Tennis – Morocco’s Midler narrowly missed the doubles title

Lukas Midler had a successful start to this year’s clay court season last week. Together with regular partner Alexander Erler, Tollner played his way to the second final of the season at the ATP 250 Championship in Marrakech (Morocco). However, the ÖTV duo were far from winning the title.

After confidently mastering the first round, Midler and Earler, the number three seeds, initially stumbled in the quarterfinals. However, after saving two balls, the Austrians gained the upper hand. In the semi-finals, there was a relatively safe victory over the five seeds in the tournament, Maxime Cressi (USA) and Albano Olivetti (France). The two entered their fourth final in an ATP tournament.

There they met unranked Brazilian-Italian duo Marcelo Demouliner and Andrea Vavassori (ATP doubles of 98 and 52). Already at the beginning of the game, Midler had to give up his service game to achieve 1: 2. The ÖTV pair could not win back this break, which means that the first round was lost 4: 6. In the second set, Midler and Erler, after the opponents led 40-0 , turning the match over and breaking it themselves. The two held this until they won the set 6:3. So the tiebreaker had to decide who could take home the title. “Unfortunately, we kept running after them,” Midler reported. Because in this they were already trailing by 0:4 and 4:8. After catching up with the tie at 8:8, the two saved the match ball at 8:9 and then had the chance to win the match themselves at 10:9. However, all three points were scored the following by the opponents, which ultimately meant the tiebreaker of the match was lost by a narrow margin of 10:12. This means that Midler and Earler will have to continue waiting for their fourth ATP title.