Top seed Lu Yen-hsun of Taiwan proved too good for Danai Udomchoke of Thailand yesterday, beating the world No. 374 in straight sets in the first round of the OEC Kaohsiung ATP Challenger.
Lu needed just over an hour to secure a 6-4, 6-1 victory and earn a second-round clash against the winner of today’s match between Taiwan’s Huang Liang-chi and South Korea’s Na Jung-woong at the US$125,000 hard-court tournament.
Lu fired down five aces to Udomchoke’s none and saved the only break point he faced, while breaking his opponent’s serve four times.
Photo: Huang Chih-yuan, Taipei Times
The 30-year-old world No. 64 reached the quarter-finals of last year’s event before being knocked out by Marco Chiudinelli of Switzerland.
Two seeds crashed out yesterday as Greg Jones of Australia beat No. 5 seed Rajeev Ram of the US 6-3, 6-4 and South Korea’s Lim Yong-kyu defeated third seed Michael Russell of the US when his opponent retired trailing 1-4 in the second set having claimed the first 7-6 (7/3).
In other first-round single matches Japan’s Shuichi Sekiguchi beat Taiwanese wild-card Lee Hsin-han 7-6 (8/6), 6-4, while South Korea’s Jeong Suk-young beat another local wild-card, Peng Hsien-yin, 6-3, 7-6 (7/3).
In qualifying matches yesterday Chung Hyeon of South Korea beat Taiwan’s Chuang Tin-yu 6-0, 6-2 and Toshihide Matsui of Japan downed Yu Cheng-yu of Taiwan 6-7 (5/7), 6-2, 6-1 to reach the first-round proper.
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