NBL Pro League opens July 8 in New York

The second season of the NBL Pro League opens in New York on Friday, July 8 when the Seattle Smash square off against the New York Nets at the CP Badminton Club in College Point, New York.  Headlining for the Nets will be Howard Bach, two-time Olympian, 2005 World Champion and the winner of a record 18 U. S. national titles in men's singles, men's doubles and mixed doubles.  Joining Bach on the Nets will be Judith Meulendijks of the Netherlands, a 2000 Olympian and women's singles finalist at the 2010 U. S. Open; Petr Koukal, a five-time Czech national champion and 2008 Olympian; and Johanna Goliszewski, a doubles specialist who has won titles at the 2010 Hungarian Championships and 2011 Slovenian Championships.

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The Seattle Smash will be led by Tony Gunawan, the 2000 Olympic gold medalist and 2001 and 2005 World Champion.  Gunawan was also the Male MVP of the 2010 NBL Pro League when he played for the Pasadena Racquets.  He will be joined by Simone Prutsch, a 2008 Olympian who has won 13 national titles in Austria; Nicola Cerfontyne, the 2011 English national women's singles champion, and Alistair Casey, Scotland's highest world-ranked men's singles player and winner of the 2010 French Polynesian International.

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The Nets then travel west to play the Los Angeles Strings - the 2010 NBL champions -  at the Walnut Gymnasium in Walnut, California on Sunday, July 10.  Brice Leverdez, a four-time French national champion and finalist in the 2010 U. S. Open and 2010 Canadian Open, will return to the Strings this year.  New players on this year's Strings roster include Maja Tvrdy, a 2008 Olympian and winner of 11 Slovenian national titles; Salajkit Ponsana, a 2004 Olympian and 2009 Southeast Asian Games gold medalist; Sabrina Jaquet, an 11-time Swiss national champion, and Michael Fuchs, the winner of four German national titles and the 2010 U. S. Open mixed doubles champion.  Fuchs played on the California Walnuts last year.

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The third and final match of the 2011 NBL Pro League season will be played on Sunday, July 17 at the Bellevue Badminton Club in Bellevue, Washington, when the Seattle Smash host the Los Angeles Strings. Michael Lahnsteiner, a two-time Austrian national singles champion, will join Nicola Cerfontyne, Simone Prutsch and Alistair Casey on the Smash roster.  The Strings will once again feature Brice Leverdez and Sabrina Jaquet, and will be joined by Eva Lee, a 2008 Olympian and winner of nine US national titles, and Kevin Cordon, a 2008 Olympian and winner of the 2011 Peru International Championships.  Cordon defeated Lahnsteiner in a very close match in the final of the Peru tournament, so the Smash will be looking forward to a rematch.    

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An NBL Pro League match is played entirely on one court and features nine games, with each game played up to 15 points: men's singles, men's doubles, women's singles, women's doubles and mixed doubles.  After a 15-minute half-time, the remaining four games include a women's event (home team choice of singles or doubles), a men's event (home team choice of singles or doubles), mixed triples (two men and one woman versus two men and one woman) and another mixed triples (two women and one man versus two women and one man).  Each game won is a point in a team's total score; the home team decides the order of games.

Want to play doubles this summer with the NBL pros? Click here

Sponsors of the NBL include Yonex and Badminton Warehouse.  For more information, visit www.playNBL.com and click on Professional