The highly seeded players in the lower half of the draw in the Men’s
Singles event at the Erke Austrian Open in Salzburg all came through
their opening round matches successfully on Friday 31st October 2008.
Success
came the way of Chinese Taipei’s second seeded Chuan Chih-Yuan, third
seed Germany’s Dimitrij Ovtcharov, fifth seed Denmark’s Michael Maze
and eighth seed, Belgium’s irrepressible Jean-Michel Saive. All four
booked their second round places.
Chuan Chih-Yuan, Michael Maze and Jean-Michel Saive enjoyed
relatively trouble free passages but for Dimitrij Ovtcharov it was a
more testing path to the second round.
Comfortable Wins
Jean-Michel
Saive needed five games to beat the Czech Republic’s Lubomir Jancarik
whilst straight games verdicts were the order of the day for Michael
Maze over Poland’s Filip Szymanski and for Chuan Chih-Yuan in
opposition to Croatia’s Ronald Redjep.
Close Shave
However,
for Dimitrij Ovtcharov it was a very close call. He beat Hungary’s
Krisztian Nagy by the very closest of seven game margins in the closest
duel of the opening round.
Defeats Against Qualifiers
A
close shave but success for the higher ranked player but for three
players in the lower half of the draw that was not the situation;
Brazil’s Thiago Monteiro, Poland’s Daniel Gorak and Italy’s Mihai
Bobocica all experienced defeat.
All three lost to qualifiers.
Thiago
Monteiro was beaten by Poland’s Pawel Chmiel, Daniel Gorak lost to
Frenchman Adrien Mattenet whilst Mihai Bobocica suffered against
Austria’s Daniel Habesohn.
Successes
Reverses but for the remaining players who received a direct entry to the main draw it was success.
Portugal’s
Tiago Apolonia beat Germany’s Filus Ruwen, Poland’s Wang Zeng Yi
defeated the Czech Republic’s Michal Obeslo whilst Sweden’s Robert
Svensson and Croatia’s Roko Tosic doused French ambitions.
The former beat Emmanuel Lebesson, the latter Loïc Bobillier.
Similar Manner
In
similar fashion Hungary’s Ferenc Paszy ended the hopes of Scotland’s
Gavin Rumgay, whilst Japan’s Kenta Matsudaira and Seiya Kishikawa plus
Germany’s Bastian Steger ended Spanish hopes.
They recorded respective wins against Carlos Machado, Alfredo Carneros and Marc Duran.
Source: www.ittf.com
