Patrick Franziska's coach dried the German's sweat-soaked blue shirt with a leaf blower at WTT Champions Montpellier, because the 34-year-old would not change colour on his way to two finals in eight days.
Lars Hielscher said Franziska, the world No 15, had red shirts in his bag but refused to swap out of the blue one he had been winning in. With no time to wash it between the quarter-final, semi-final and final, Hielscher used a leaf blower in Montpellier. In Frankfurt he used a shirt-printing machine that an equipment company had on its stand in the Süwag Energie Arena.
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"He's a bit superstitious," Hielscher said. "He had red shirts with him too. But if he has won in a blue shirt, he absolutely wants to keep playing in it."
There were not enough blue shirts to go round because nobody had planned for a long stay in France. "In Montpellier he hadn't expected to get so far," Hielscher said. Volunteers searched the hall for a hairdryer, found none and came back with the leaf blower; neither player nor coach knows where it came from.
"From the quarter-final onwards there really wasn't any time, so in Montpellier I blow-dried the shirts with a leaf blower," Hielscher told Sport1. "That was all we could find."
Two finals, two defeats from in front
The shirt did not quite deliver the titles. In the WTT Champions Montpellier final on 1 November, Franziska led South Korea's Jang Woojin 3-1 and lost 3-11, 11-7, 7-11, 9-11, 11-9, 11-8, 11-8.
In Frankfurt on Sunday he took the first game of the final 11-2 against Tomokazu Harimoto and won a tight third 13-11 to lead 2-1, before the Japanese won the last three games 11-8, 11-4, 11-4. Harimoto's title was his second at a WTT Champions event this year, and the finals review has the full story of the day.
Both runs were long ones. In Montpellier, as the 17th seed, Franziska beat Alexis Lebrun from two games down in the first round, beat Zhou Qihao 12-10 in the seventh game of their quarter-final and then beat Truls Moregard, the defending champion, in the semi-finals.
In Frankfurt he beat China's Xiang Peng, came from two games down to beat his Germany teammate Benedikt Duda 12-10 in the fifth after 51 minutes, and then knocked out Sora Matsushima, the world No 1 and defending champion, 12-10 in the sixth game in the last match on Saturday night. He was back on court on Sunday lunchtime to beat Shunsuke Togami 4-2 in the semi-finals, five hours before the final.
"The battery is empty"
The schedule took its toll. At times in the last fortnight Franziska played three matches in 20 hours, and Sport1 reported that he struggled to switch off after his quarter-final against Matsushima.
"Now the battery is empty, too," Franziska said.
His run was the high point of a strong week for the home players in Frankfurt. Four Germans reached the quarter-finals, Franziska, Dang Qiu and Wim Verdonschot in the men's draw and Sabine Winter in the women's, and Winter went on to the semi-finals, where she lost to Satsuki Odo.
Franziska climbed from 18th to 15th in the world ranking after Montpellier. His club, 1. FC Saarbrücken, are at home to TTC Grenzau in the Tischtennis Bundesliga on Sunday 15 November.
