Far far away
The final stop of the Vienna Edition was the Sportpark Süßenbrunn, previously part of the Club Danube chain. It takes a while to get to the outskirts of Vienna, specially when you are not aware of the unique bus schedule. We met at 7 pm, 30 minutes ahead of our estimated start, at metro U1 station Rennbahnweg. The public transport app told us to call the collective taxi operated by the Viennese public transport services. But the driver said he would not be there before 7:40 pm. So we took the bus he recommended. Unfortunately the this bus stopped in the middle of nowhere – as we now know, only every 30 minutes there is a bus going this far. Finally on the right bus, our navigator let us leave the bus too early, so we had to walk 3 more stops to finally arrive at the venue – about one hour after we met and 30 minutes late. Our bad!
No boxer shorts
The very friendly receptionist moved our reservation and we went to the locker room to get ready. Guess who forgot his short – again!? Right: #teamorange! Unfortunately there is no shop at the Sportpark anymore, so Joel decided to play with his trousers although our social media team advocated for him to play in boxer shorts – our fans would have loved it!
#teamorange teared a hole in his pants
We took off and to my surprise Joel moved very good! I took it a bit too easy and thought that he would soon have to pay tribute to his pants. But #teamorange stayed laser focussed and took game 1 with 11-4.
I wasn’t at my best today and I was distracted by Joel’s outfit – he even teared a hole in his pants… I tried to concentrate and managed to get to a 10-8 lead. At 10-9 I thought I had the game when Joel’s drop was too low, but because it’s hard to tell if you hit the tin here – we replayed the point. Fortunately #teamyellow also made that point and took the game 11-9.
too good
I thought that things would turn out my way now – but I was wrong. #teamorange played maybe the best two games of his life, hitting the nick multiple times and not making any error on his drop shots. On the other hand several of my back wall balls got stuck on the strange lamp apparatus. But that didn’t make the difference – he just played too good today and won games 3 and 4 with a score of 11-7 and 11-9. Congrats!
It’s bitter, losing the last match of the WSRV – Squash World Tour – Vienna Edition – but with a total score of 8-3 it was a perfectly clear overall victory for #teamyellow.
Next challenges ahead
I am looking forward to the next challenges ahead! To prepare for our next matches I have to work on my endurance and maybe lose some of the 4 kilos I gained since we started the Vienna Edition in November 2018…
Our rating
Booking: Only via phone. But no further restrictions. 2,5 of 5 stars.
Reachability: It took us quite a while to get there because of poor description by the Viennese public transport services. Anyways it’s sequestered and not very convenient to reach, specially after 7:30 pm. 1 of 5 stars.
Facilities: Only issue: no shop for people who forgot their shorts. Everything else is fine. And the very friendly receptionist earned them another 0,5 stars: 4,5 of 5 stars.
Court: Floors and walls (classic front and side, glass back) are in perfect shape. Only real issue is the lamp apparatus that declines the height a bit. The 1 cm nick is almost not worth mentioning. 4 of 5 stars.
Price: 24 Euro per hour is reasonable for the quality of the court. 3 of 4 stars.
RESULT
3 stars for Sportpark Süßenbrunn!
Website: sportparkwien.at, phone number for booking: +43 1 256 82 82
We are cooperating with the Viennese Squash Federation, the Wiener Squash Rackets Verband or WSRV. They asked us to play all courts in Vienna to show the squash-community in Vienna where they can play. The project is called WSRV – Squash World Tour – Vienna Edition. As we want to provide value to the squash community, we rating all the clubs in five categories: booking, reachability, facilities, court, price.
The Racketlon Federation Austria published a summary of all our ratings in German: