Bitburger Open

Hi everyone,

Once again it's been a while since my last update and now it's already time for some action on court with the Bitburger Open starting tomorrow.

I've had a great build up to this tournament over the last approximately seven weeks. Ever since I got back from my summer trip to Asia, this tournament is what I have aimed towards. I've prepared in almost the same way as the danish singles players prepared for the world championships last week and I really feel like it has been going well. At least all the way until saturday, four days ago!

On that day I was playing a few sets with Martin Bille and Christian Lind, who are also playing Bitburger, just to sharpen up my game a little. Unfortunately I slipped in the set against Lind and felt a little pain in the region around my hip/groin. It didn't feel bad, but I still chose to take sunday off to make sure I didn't push it.

Monday morning I had high hopes of training without any pain and getting a good feeling before leaving for Bitburger today. But it didn't feel better compared to saturday, it actually felt a bit worse as the pain was now stronger. It's wasn't so painful so I couldn't finish a match, but it was just there all the time which is very annoying and frustrating as it takes away some of your focus from the game. Of course it also affected my moving ability a bit, not too much though.

I've still chosen to go to Saarbrücken, Germany, to play even if the pain felt quite bad when I woke up this morning. My hope is it lightens up by tomorrow and luckily it has actually gotten a lot better over the day. I really hope by tomorrow it's almost all gone, but I'm ready to deal with some pain. Of course I have to be cautious and if the gets worse I know I have to stop as theres also other matches and tournaments to be played. But I'm going to give it a shot tomorrow, 100%!


I still feel like my game is working well, I'm moving around court with good speed and in general I just feel confident. So when I step on court tomorrow I will try to get this feeling on there with me. If I manage to do just that, I stand a good chance of progressing through day 1 where I have to play two matches (hopefully).
First up is Yuhan Tan, who's national no. 1 in Belgium. He is a good player whom I have great respect for, so it will be a good tough start for me. I've met him once before, right after I got back from my knee injury in 2008, a match where I lost in straight sets. I believe a lot has happened since then, so it will be interesting to see how it goes tomorrow.

You can follow the match here.

The match will be played around 1 o'clock.

That's it for now, I will make sure to update at least once more over the course of this tournament.

HK