With Day 1 of the China Open completed, no great surprises 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 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 then moving world number 1 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 and 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. 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, 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. Not the way Kelly was hoping to celebrate her birthday, but 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.
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