Middle European Teams best 5th and 6th place at the first ever King of the Court Final

Doha, Qatar hosted the first ever King of the Court Finals and it could not have ended better for the local crowd, as their local heroes Cherif/Ahmed Tijan were crowned the Kings and the Germans Ittlinger/Schneider Queens. The best Middle European team ended being the newly formed Czech duo Barbora Hermannova and Marie-Sara Stochlova with a 5th place, while on the men’s side the Slovenian Nejc Zemljak and his Latvian interims partner Mihails Samoilovs finished outside of the final on the 6th place.

Hermannova/Stochlova played a strong event, advancing to the semifinals just behind the Latvian/Australian combo of Kravcenoka/Bell. In the Semifinal they won both of the first two rounds, however obviously lost too much energy doing so, as they finished the decisive third round in 3rd place behind the French and German/Lithuanian teams. Due to this unfortunate round, they had to play an extra playoff round, where they once again demonstrated their strengths and qualified for the final round with a clear margin beating teams from Japan, USA and Norway. For the new pairing of Czech Republic the journey ended in round 1 of the final, as they were not able to capitalise on the chances they had on the Queen side and finished as tournaments 5th ranked team.

The other women’s team from Middle Europe was the Slovenian/Czech duo Kotnik/Williams who finished in 11th place, literally a point shy of advancing to the semifinal. With less than a minute to go in the Playoffs to advance to the semifinals, they held the lead through a tie-breaker (longest stay) and were on the queen side, when the direct opponent the French team in an all-or-nothing last attempt got an ace on the line to go on the queens side and score the needed one more point to proceed to the next phase and eventually finish as runner-ups of the Finals in Doha.

On the men’s side Zemljak/Samoilovs made it through the first phase by eliminating the Czech/Australian duo Vaclav Bercik/Mark Nicolaidis and then securing the advancement through the extra Playoff-Round, where they were the second to clear the round behind only the Spaniards Gavira/Huerta. In the first phase they made their strongest showing, directly advancing to the Semifinal, leaving behind the greats like the Dutch/Russian duo Brouwer/Stoyanovskiy and the Brasilian/French Guto/Aye. In the first round of the Semifinal the pool Zemljak/Samoilovs did not convert enough on the few chances they had in the 15 minutes with 5 teams and were eliminated from the competition finishing as the 6th ranked of the event.

Austrians on the men’s side finished in 11th place of the final rankings. Clemens Doppler/Thomas Kunert and Moritz Pristauz with his interim partner, the older of the Samoilovs brother “the Lion King” Aleksandrs all advanced directly from Phase 1 to the Group Stage, where a bit surprisingly both teams were eliminated after the first round of 15 minutes, leaving them with no second chance to advance. The second chance to fifth placed teams was only given in Phase 1, where Bercik with his partner Nicolaidis got to play an extra round, however fell short to the Spaniards Gavira/Huerta in the Playoff.

King of the Court already announced more events this year in Hamburg (Germany), Utrecht (Netherlands) and Itapema (Brazil), while also announcing a long term partnership with Doha (Qatar).

Results
King of the Court YouTube Stream (English Commentary)
Spontent Twitch Stream (German Commentary)