In this paper, a Takagi-Sugeno (TS) approach is proposed for the position control of a hydraulic servo cylinder. Based on a nonlinear mathematical model of the test rig, an exact quasi-linear model with state-dependent matrices is derived and reformulated as a TS fuzzy model. In this framework, the given lower and upper bounds of the nonlinearities are considered by separate local models belonging to a polytope. The adaptive feedback control gains are given by a weighted combination of those of the corner models. To improve the position tracking behaviour, the TS control structure is extended by feedforward control actions as well as an observer-based disturbance compensation. Here, a lumped disturbance force - consisting of imperfections of the feedforward friction model and parameter uncertainty - is estimated by a reduced-order nonlinear observer. The benefits of the proposed control structure and the achieved control performance are shown by experimental results from an implementation on a test rig.