As I spent the end of 2008 (last 6 weeks) with training in India, after New Year I took some decent rest and started training properly again on 11th Jan. One week of physical training and clubmatches at the weekend in Germany made feel good and get good felling of my game.

The first tournament to come was the Swedish International Challenge from 22nd to 25th Jan. I was in the main draw but didn´t manage to beat the Indonesian playing in Denmark - Taufiq Akbar Hidayat. My movement and shots compared to autumn improved, I could feel it, but on the other hand I didn´t manage to keep playing in the pace of my opponent consistantly during the whole game. Always some 3 or 4 equal rallies and then I would make some unforced mistake, my mind just switched of. So like this I lost 18:21 and 16:21 but had some prospect of playing good at the next week´s National Championship.

If I was not forced to stay in bed for couple of days after Swedish, I would surely have done even better. Like this I had to satisfy myself "only" with the mixed doubles title, which was surprisingly easy to defend, and a bronze medal in men´s singles. I was hoping to do well especially in this event, but my semifinal match against Jan Vondra was one of my worst this season. So next time... But the Nationals were quite a big success for my club SK Badminton Cesky Krumlov as we have won 3 titles of 5 possible. Martina Benesova in women´s singles, Hana Milisova in women´s doubles and me together with Martina in mixed! So our coach Radek Votava who is apparenty doing a good job could be quite satisfied with us...

One week after the nationals the European Mixed Team Championships took place in Liverpool and I was on the team. It was great to see the best Europeans in action and be one of them. Lots of good experience for me...

Another and this time last round of Bundesliga matches in Germany right after the EC meant our team did not qualify for the play-off but there was not much time to think about it as eventually new individual tournaments were coming.

Austrian International which took place in Vienna was the first of them. Though seeded as no. 6, I got a really tough draw as I was to play against Kay Bin Yeoh from Malaysia. I played one of my best matches in this season against him, but still I lost in three sets 22:20, 13:21 and 12:21. So good experience, again, but neither a win nor good ranking points...

German Open in Muelheim was a really strong event with a lot of Asians coming for the All England and Swiss Open. But this time I was luckier with the draw. In the first round I played against Saber Afif of the Netherlands and managed to win upon him 21:19 and 21:19. I was really happy after this match as I took my chance and could maybe learn something from another match in the 2nd round against the Chinese Chen Long. Well, the match was pretty quick, I lost 6:21 and 11:21 but some quite nice rallies in the second game showed me that when well prepared it is also possible to play against such strong opponents...

Thanks to the win against Saber I will get in total (for the first time in my life) over 15000 points for my world ranking and hopefully I will soon move higher from the 85th place where I am now. My next programme is quite packed with tournaments so there will definitely be some good opportunities for it.

Sincerely,

Pavel

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