(by Steve Hopkins)
Kanak Jha spread excitement through the building with his upset win in the first of the four Men’s Quarterfinal matches on Sunday. Jha served beautifully, and his consistent rallies and shot-making made him the better player early in the match as he surprised Dang Qiu with three straight wins. Qiu then fought back in the next two games, building early leads just to see the lead evaporate late. In the fourth game, Dang Qiu led 7-4, just to find himself tied 9-9 (a game he won 11-9). And in the fifth game, Dang Qiu led 9-5 before Jha tied the match 10-10. This time, it was Kanak Jha that ran off two in a row to shock Dang Qiu, and rest of the draw.
The next match was a 4-1 win by Wang Chuqin over Shunsuke Togami – a much more predictable outcome with World No. 2 advancing. The higher seed won both of the Sunday evening matches as well. Truls Moregard won 4-1 over An Jaehyun and he now advances to face Wang Chuqin. And Harimoto twice trailed Xiang Peng before outpacing the 22 year old Chinese player 4-2. Harimoto will now be highly favored in his match on Monday morning against Kanak Jha – of course, Kanak Jha has played most of this tournament as the underdog and that has worked well for him thus far.
Monday is the final day in Yokohama with Semifinal matches early and the final scheduled for Monday evening.
Visit ButterflyOnline.com for the latest table tennis news and results.
