With Day 1 of the China Open completed, there are no great surprises to report as far as the results go. In the men’s division, Mika Immonen has certainly looked to be in great form, easily accounting for his opening match against former world champion Thorsten Hohmann whom he bested 9-1, then sweeping aside promising Singapore player Aloysius Yapp 9-3 to put himself through to the singe elimination stage.
Filipino Jeffrey De Luna has also been impressive and through to the single elimination stage, defeating Yang Ching-Shun 9-6 and then moving Ko Pin-Yi to the loser’s side with an impressive 9-6 win. Yang kept his hopes alive defeating Waleed Majid of Qatar 9-2. Yang now needs to win his next match to qualify. Ko’s brother, Ping-Chung, narrowly lost his opening match to Alex Kazakis of Greece 7-9 and will now face a tough match against Estonian Dennis Grabe. The loser is out and the winner qualifies for the next stage. Hohmann had a tough second match in the loser’s side against Filipino Warren Kiamco, but proved too strong in the end winning 9-7, and now has to face Ko Pin-Yi, again with the winner through and the loser out.
From the women’s division, Kim Ga Young, Liu Shasha and Chen Siming played very well and qualified for the single elimination. Very impressive in qualifying also were young Filipino star Chezka Centeno and another young and promising 17 year old from China, Jiang Teng, who defeated China’s superstar player and former world champion, Pan Xiaoting 7-5. One upset was Kelly Fisher losing 6-7 to another Chinese youngster, Shi Tianqi. This was not the way Kelly was hoping to celebrate her birthday, but Ms. Fisher was very complimentary toward her victor saying how well she played. Kelly will now need to win her next match to get through to the single elimination stage.
