Another golden moment as Bayley serves up win

Will Bayley claimed his second tournament win of the year with victory in the Czech Para Open singles.

Bayley, from Tunbridge Wells, won the men’s class 7 title with a 3-0 victory over Germany’s Tokyo 2020 team bronze medallist Bjoern Schnake to add to his success at the Slovenia Open last month. He followed up with bronze in the men’s class 14 doubles, teaming up with Martin Perry for the first time, after losing an allBritish semi-final 3-1 to Paul Karabardak and Billy Shilton.

In the singles Bayley won his first match against the former Hungarian Open champion Christian Scheiber from Austria 3-0, but had a tougher test against the German Henrik Meyer, winning 3-1. He then lost only six points in a 3-0 win against debutant Milan Antic from Serbia and as group winner received a bye into the quarter-finals where he beat Daniel Horut from the Czech Republic 3-0.

Bayley had to use all his experience and tenacity in the semi-final to recover from 2-0 down against Maksym Chudzicki, fighting back to beat the Tokyo bronze medallist from Poland 11-5 in the fifth.

But in the final he was always in control against Schnake.

“I’m really happy,” said Bayley. “It was a tough match against Chudzicki and he played a really good first two sets but then

I changed my tactics and felt that worked and I played brilliantly in the next three sets.

“I’m really pleased to win another gold medal with one of my best performances of the season in the final so I’m really proud of that.”

In the doubles Bayley and Perry came through their group games undefeated with wins over Henrik Meyer and Benedikt Muller from Germany (3-1), Vjekoslav Gregorovic and Pavao Jozic from Croatia (3-0) and Ivan Bogdanovic and Mihajlo Radovanovic from Serbia (3-2).

A 3-0 win in the quarter-final against the class 7 Polish pair of Michal Deigsler and Chudzicki took them into the last four.