[3] Olli Tuominen (Fin) 3-0 Jens Schoor (Ger)
                    11/4, 11/7, 11/4 (37m)
[2] Adrian Grant (Eng) 3-0 Steve Finitsis (Aus)
                    12/10, 11/4, 11/7 (69m)

[1] Laurens Jan Anjema (Ned) 3-0 Raphael Kandra (Ger)
                    11/3, 11/9, 11/6 (43m)
[4] Mathieu Castagnet (Fra) 3-1 Lucas Serme (Fra)
                     10/12, 11/3,11/7, 11/7 (82m)

Top seeds through to the semis

The top four seeds moved into the semi finals of the Double AR Rotterdam Open Squash 2013 on Friday, but it wasn’t plain sailing for all of them in the Dutch city of Rotterdam.

Laurens Jan Anjema, Adrian Grant and Olli Tuominen all came through unscratched in their quarter finals. Top seeded Anjema, the home favourite, won the first and third game with ease, but had to fight back from 9-6 down in the second to overcome Germany’s Raphael Kandra in straight games: 11/3, 11/9, 11/6.

Grant, the global ambassador of title sponsor Double AR, displayed great skill and athleticism in his match against Steve Finitsis. Grant started off slowly, but managed to claw his way back in time to edge the first game against his hard-hitting Australian opponent. From there the Englishmen looked at ease on the show court of Victoria, dominating the next two games to secure a 3-0 win against a dangerous opponent: 12/10, 11/4, 11/7.

Tuominen had an easier time against Jens Schoor. The reigning European champion took control from the outset and simply outplayed his German opponent who couldn’t find an answer to the fast and explosive play of the Finnish number one: 11/4, 11/7, 11,4.

In the last match of the evening Mathieu Castagnet proved too strong for compatriot Lucas Serme in a highly competitive and long French encounter. Serme took the first after nearly half an hour, but this seemed to take it’s toll on the youngster, who kept working hard but lacked the explosively of the early stages of the match to really trouble his countrymen in the next three games. The final score line: 10/12, 11/3, 11/7, 11/7.

Match by match ...

On paper the match between Olli Tuominen and Jens Schoor suggested a one sided affair, however there is no discounting Jens as he has had some greta results recently to get to his career high ranking of 76.

It started very evenly, but Olli proved too strong towards the end of the games. Jens made a run in the second but again Olli’s power and explosiveness was no match for Jens, as he took the match 11/4, 11/7, 11/4 (37mins)

Both DoubleAr players, one being the figurehead and the other the ambassador, this match was going to be good for the sponsor. Adrian Grant is looking to capitalize on his hard summer training whilst Steve Finitsis is looking to continue his good form of winning titles, by taking it up a notch and beating a top player.

This is definitely what happened; Adrian known for his slower starts gave Steve a lead in the first but clawed back to win the first in a very tense encounter filled with lots of lets towards the end of the game.

From there on Adrian affirmed himself as a top player and took control of the match as Steve seemed to lose his plan in the second, but even though he found his feet in the third it was abit too late. Adrian wins 12/10, 11/4 11/7 (69mins)

Laurens Jan Anjema is looking to use this tournament as a warm up to his season, whereas Raphael Kandra is here to gain some much needed world ranking points.

At the start it was a one sided affair as LJ’s physicality was too much for Raphael. However Raphael came back in the second and showed why he is one to look out for as he took the lead, with his exciting style of play combined with great retrievals.

However LJ showed his experience to come from behind and take the game. From there the work Raphael had to put in was too much eventually going down 11/3, 11/9, 11/6 (43mins).

Mathieu Castagnet and Lucas Serme grew up together and know each others’ game very well, so this was going to be interesting.

We already know Mathieu is known for his long hard matches and Lucas for his patience and this is what we got.

A 25min long first game where Lucas took it against the odds, but then the work Mathieu had made Lucas do started to show. From there Mathieu controlled the match, but it was still a long one, eventually winning 10/12, 11/3, 11/7, 11/7 (82mins)