Schwarzler ahead of the promotion play-off

After seven straight victories at the highest ITF level, Joel Schwarzler has suffered another defeat. Following his opening success on Wednesday, the newly crowned winner of the Osaka Mayor’s Cup (ITF J500) from the weekend played his second Pool B match at the 2023 ITF World Junior Tour Finals in Chengdu on Thursday. The Vorarlberg player (ITF 7) lost to Russian Jaroslav Demin (ITF 3), who was already number one in the world youth rankings, 4:6, 3:6 in the final top-eight event of the season.

After the second round, all four players in the second group had one win and one defeat. Schwarzler will therefore play a direct playoff against Italian Federico Senna (ITF 10) in the second match on Friday after 4:00 AM CET against Italian Federico Senna (ITF 10) for one of the two semi-final spots. Demin represented against Serbian Branko Djuric (ITF 14) – whom the Austrian defeated 6:3, 1:6, 6:2 in his opening match.

“It was nothing today,” said ÖTV sporting director and Davis Cup captain Jürgen Melzer, who personally took care of his protégé Schwarzler in China this time, after his defeat to Demin. “There were a lot of mistakes. I think the many games in a row probably played a role, and Demin played that well. It was certainly not one of Joel’s best performances. Everything is open now in the group. Everyone has a win, and whoever wins tomorrow’s matches will be… “Not much happened, you have to play a good game tomorrow,” the Lower Austrian said.