Marathon victory

Top! Schwärzler reaches first Challenger final

Joel Schwärzler proved to be as strong as a bear.

(Bild: Sportmediapics.com/ Manfred Binder)

Huge success for Joel Schwärzler! The 18-year-old from Vorarlberg beat South Korean Gerard Campana Lee 6:7 (4), 6:3, 6:2 in the semi-final in Osjek after 3:05 hours and has reached the final of an ATP Challenger tournament for the first time. He will now face Poland's Kamil Majchrzak.

The match did not start at all to the liking of the red-white-red hopeful. He had to concede his first service game and Campana Lee used his second break chance to take a 2:0 lead. But Schwärzler remained focused and immediately broke back against the 19-year-old Korean. Bitter: At 2:2, Campana Lee serving at 40:0, the Vorarlberg player had three more chances to break his opponent's service, but missed them all.

Missed chances took their revenge
An open exchange of blows then developed with slight advantages for Schwärzler, who repeatedly used his cracking forehand, but also made a few unforced errors. Joel had another break chance in the ninth game, which he missed again. The tie-break was the deciding factor and the Harder player lost out there. Although he was able to make up a 2:4 deficit, he was ultimately beaten 4:7 and lost the first set 6:7 after 76 minutes.

Schwärzler fought his way back
Schwärzler had another chance to break at the start of the second set, but missed it too. He then did better in Campana Lee's next service game, which he was able to take from him with the second chance and a beautiful stop ball. But instead of increasing the lead to 4:1, the 18-year-old missed three game points and the Korean took his second chance to break back.
But Schwärzler didn't give up again, made it 4:3 after a hard-fought game, then took his first break chance to make it 5:3 and served out the set at zero to level it at 6:3.

Victory after more than three hours
The young player from Vorarlberg carried the momentum into the decider and broke Campana Lee's service game once again to take a 1:0 lead. After Joel was able to confidently confirm the break, the resistance of the Korean, who had won the Orange Bowl in 2022, finally seemed to be broken. After Schwärzler managed a second break to make it 5:2, he converted his second match point after 3:04 hours to win 6:7 (4), 6:3, 6:2

Advance to the top 500 in the world
In the final, Joel - who is already ranked 469th in the ATP live rankings and will therefore improve his ranking by almost 200 positions - will face Poland's Kamil Majchrzak. The world number 351, who had already made it to number 75 in February 2022, defeated US boy Ryan Seggerman 7:6 (2), 6:7 (6) and 6:2 in the semifinals.