Day-7 in St. Petersburg claimed more scalps even though most of
the best players are still competing for the single’s titles. Men’s
quarter final will put Vladimir SAMSONOV in front of German Bastian
STEGER and the Slovak Thomas KEINATH against Austrian CHEN Weixing.
Belgian Jean-Michel SAIVE has Austrian Robert GARDOS between him and
the semi-finals, whilst Portuguese Tiago MONTEIRO will try to stop
German Dimitrij OVCTCHAROV.
Austrian Werner SCHLAGER will tackle Russian Fedor KUZMIN, whilst the
evergreen Spanish "Juanito" HE Zhi Wen took his place in the best 16
and now meets Jean LUNDQVIST. Another interesting match will be between
Danish Michael MAZE and Russian Alexei SMIRNOV, whilst German first
seed Timo BOLL will find Bojan TOKIC on his way.
In the female tournament, despite title-holder LI Jiao (Ned) withdraw,
the dominance of Chinese-born players continues: seven of them reached
the last sixteen. However many new upcoming players replaced some of
the most prestigious ones: Russian Elena TROSHEVA (next match vs.
Austrian LI Qinbing), Romania’s Daniela DODEAN (vs. Rita PASKAUSKIENE
from Russia) and Elizabeta SAMARA (vs. Hungarian Ckrisztina TOTH),
Hungarian Georgina POTA against Czech Iveta VACENOVSKA, Croatian Sandra
PAOVIC vs. ZHU Fang (Esp) and Danish Mie SKOV PETERSEN vs. Hu Melek
(Rus). Further matches, Tan MONFARDINI (Ita) vs. LI Qian (POL) and YIAN
Yi Feng (Fra) vs. LIU Jia (Aut).
In the doubles’ competitios, reigning men’s German duo Timo
BOLL-Christian SUSS reached semifinals (eliminating Swede Jenas
LUNDQVIST-Pat GERELL) to tackle the young Portuguese double Marcos
FREITAS-Tiago APOLONIA. Well-experienced Werner SCHLAGER (Aut) and
Trinko KEEN (Ned) stepped ahead and now have Swede Jon PERSSON and
Robert SVENSSON.
Hungarian Kriszthina TOTH and Georgina POTA reached women’s semifinal:
Veronika PAVLOVICH (Blr) and Oksana FADEEVA (Rus) will be their next
opponents In the second semi-final, Italy’s Tan MONFARDINI and
Nicoletta STEFANOVA will tackle Polish duo XU Jie-Natalia PARTYKA.
Source: www.ittf.com
