Top seed Lu Yen-hsun needed less than an hour to see off Huang -Liang-chi to reach the quarter-finals of the OEC Kaohsiung ATP Challenger tournament yesterday.
Lu beat his 228th-ranked Taiwanese compatriot 6-1, 6-2, claiming five out of six break points and dropping his own serve only once.
Australian No. 6 seed Matthew Ebden also had a comfortable ride into the quarter-finals, downing Jeong Suk-young of South Korea 6-3, 6-2. He was joined by another South Korean, Lim Yong-kyu, who proved too good for 285th-ranked Yang Tsung-hua of Taiwan in a 3-6, 7-6 (9/7), 6-4 victory.
Photo: Huang Chih-yuan, Taipei Times
In the last match of the day, Taiwan’s Jimmy Wang beat Hiroki Moriya of Japan 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 to set up an intriguing clash with Lu for a place in the semi-finals. The Taiwanese No. 1 and No. 2 have played against each other 10 times, with Lu winning six, including their past three meetings, the most recent of which was in Singapore last year.
Lu will be hoping to improve on last year’s performance in Greater Kaohsiung, when he lost his last-eight clash against Marco Chiudinelli of Switzerland in three sets.
In a first-round match yesterday, qualifier Yuki Bhambri of India beat Israel’s Amir Weintraub 7-6 (8/6), 6-1. The former junior world No. 1 and 2009 junior Australian Open champion overcame a ranking difference of almost 300 places to defeat the 190th-ranked Israeli Davis Cup player.
Earlier, seventh seed Yuichi Sugita beat qualifier Yasutaka Uchiyama in straight sets. The world No. 146 defeated his compatriot 6-2, 6-4 to set up a second-round encounter with 477th-ranked Bhambri.
In the doubles, top seeds Robert Farah and Juan Sebastian Cabal of Colombia won their first-round clash against New Zealand pair Mark Venus and Jose Rubin Statham 7-5, 1-6, 10-3, while Japan’s Yuichi Sugita and Arata Onozawa survived a scare against Taiwanese wild-cards Yang Tsung-hua and Hsieh Cheng-peng to win 6-2, 3-6, 10-6.
In another first-round encounter, Treat Huey and Ruben Gonzales of the Philippines, the No. 3 seeds, defeated Nicolas Barrientos and Alejandro Gonzalez of Colombia 7-5, 6-4, while in a quarter-final showdown, Matthew Ebden of Australia and Danai Udomchoke of Thailand beat Taiwanese No. 4 seeds Lee Hsin-han and Peng Hsien-lin 7-6 (7/5), 6-2.
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