Tölzer Racquetball Club: Training and tournaments on foreign terrain

Created: 11/26/2022, 11:00 am

By: Wolfgang Stauner

Fun at the training camp: Last year, at the invitation of the friendly racquetball club Brembate, the Tölz racquetball players traveled to northern Italy (back, from left): Andrea Gierens, Gaby Christ, Marcus and Kirsten Rieger, Rita and Willi Wenzel, (front) Martin Gierens, host Marco Arnoldi and first chairman Roland Christ.

©RBC

Almost a dozen racquetball enthusiasts founded the Bavarian state association and shortly afterwards the Tölzer Club.

Even though the once glorious club has since gone quiet, chairman Roland Christ promises: "Even without courts, we'll stay on the ball."

Bad Tölz – The Tölz racquetball cracks shed the last drops of sweat a good seven years ago in the three courts in the former Flint gym.

After that, the city renovated the sports facility from the ground up, dismantling the glass courts and robbing the once famous ball artists of their sporting home.

The heavy glass elements were then stored at the Tölz building yard for five years.

Hopes for a new building elsewhere were slim, but somehow lived on.

A truck garage in Farchet has also been considered in the meantime.

But the small club with its almost 100 members simply didn't have the financial burden of a conversion in the cross.

A few hundred euros for the club treasury

In the meantime, the building yard has needed the storage space for other purposes.

"We sold the huge glass plates for a few hundred euros and put them in the club's treasury," reports Roland Christ, club manager since 2018, without resentment.

He kept the heavy door locks as a souvenir;

as well as numerous great memories of tournaments and successes from 40 years of Tölzer racquetball sport.

"The success of the Tölzer players was the inspiration behind the founding of the racquetball association," headlined the Tölzer Kurier shortly after the founding meeting in November 1982. © tk

40 years ago in November, two handfuls of enthusiastic fans of this American ball sport launched the state association and shortly afterwards the Tölzer Club in the Reutbergstüberl.

A number of German champions have come from the Tölz club: Willi Wenzel even had the honor of being the very first to enter the annals of champions in 1982 – another dozen German Championship titles followed;

also a double title with Roland Christ.

On top of that, the Tölzer European champion in singles and in doubles with the long-standing club chairman Karl-Heinz Kortes, as well as vice-European champion with the team in 1992 in Strasbourg;

the club chairman at the time, Hans Rieger, Christ and Walter Stich completed the quartet.

Other highlights in the tournament calendar were the Bavarian Championships and the Bavarian Open,

in which the former young hopes Simone Joczik and Stefano Macaluso played in the foreground.

"These were not only close matches, but also a lot of camaraderie," Wenzel looks back a little wistfully on the great times.

Anticipation for the Swiss Open

But the former cracks don't want to let the racket rest completely.

Last year, a delegation from Tölz visited a friendly racquetball club in Brembate for a training weekend.

And everyone in Tölzer is looking forward to one event: after a 30-year break, there will be a new edition of the Swiss Open in Aesch near Zurich next May.

"We'll all compete there," says Chairman Roland Christ and promises, "even without Courts we'll stay on the ball."