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Three of the top seeds won through to the quarter-finals of
the CASE Swedish Open comfortably enough, and it looked as
though fourth seed Thierry Lincou would too, but Daryl Selby
had other ideas ...
Thu 2nd, Round ONE: full draw
Nicolas Mueller (Sui) 3-1 Nafiizwan Adnan (Mas)
11/8, 9/11, 11/9, 12/10 (57m)
Simon Rosner (Ger) 3-0 [Q] Amr Khalid Khalifa (Egy)
11/5, 11/9, 11/5 (33m)
Steve Coppinger (Rsa) 3-2 [Q] Campbell Grayson (Nzl)
11/9, 8/11, 7/11, 14/12, 11/4 (92m)
Tom Richards (Eng) 3-2 [Q] Chris Simpson (Eng)
6/11, 6/11, 11/7, 11/8, 12/10 (70m)
[2] Karim Darwish (Egy) 3-0 [Q] Henrik Mustonen
(Fin)
11/7, 11/7, 11/4 (27m)
Daryl Selby (Eng) 3-2 [4] Thierry Lincou
4/11, 9/11, 11/9, 11/7, 11/3 (68m)
[3] Peter Barker (Eng) 3-0 Rasmus Hult (Swe)
11/4, 11/8, 11/7 (31m)
[1] Gregory Gaultier 3-0 Saurav Ghosal (Ind)
11/8, 11/3, 11/6 (49m) |
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AS IT HAPPENED....
 It started well for the Europeans today, with the two "German
Speakers" Nicolas Mueller and Simon Rosner
booking their seats in the quarters.
The Swiss had to work a bit harder than his German mate
though, Wan Adnan opposing a fierce resistance to
Nicki's attacking game for 57m and four games that could
have gone either way. Nicolas will be glad to close this one
finally.
For Simon, well, a bit of a simple affair, with the former
World Junior Champion Amr Khalifa not moving as well
as he normally does, and not causing too much trouble to the
German today.
A massive nail bitting encounter between Steve Coppinger
and qualifier Campbell Grayson that finally saw the
South African clinching the 5th after saving 2 match balls
in the 4th. A superb match, where Campbell played superbly
well, but finally bowed to a very strong Coppinger...
 But the best was still to come. Old Junior Pals, Tom
Richards and Chris Simpson just produced an
outstanding match. Chris was very confident, as he would be
from so many victories in their junior years. But Tom, more
experienced at the level and on that type of court, didn't
panick, and from 2/0 down, gradually clawed back to 2/2.
Again in the decider, Chris looked bleebing good, 9/5 up,
then match ball up 10/9 on a stunning nick. But yet again,
experience paid off, and it's the higher ranked that break
the heart of his mate, 12/10...
 Thierry Lincou, having had a not so good ToC in New
York, was looking forward to playing today, and it showed.
He took the first two games, the first one in 7m, the second
only just - coming back from 6/0 down. In the 3rd, at 9/9,
Lincou can taste the victory, but superb push from
Englishman Daryl Selby, 11/9.
From that point on, the
Frenchman will be physically a bit short at the end of the
games and won't be able to stop Daryl taking his first
victory on him with some excellent squash indeed.
Now for the last match of the day, Greg Gaultier
didn't take any prisonner. He made 'Will-o'-the-Wisp'
Saurav Ghosal work extremely hard in the first game -
25m - relentlessly attacking with a low percentage, keeping
errors to a minimum. Saurav, as dedicated as he always is,
just stayed with the French till the end of the first game.
After that, well, Greg just controlled the front too well
for the Indian to be able to put any real pressure on the
French...
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