Most of the preliminary rounds of the 2009 European U17 Championships have been played, and the deciding medal matches are getting closer. Many interesting battles have been fought – and as always a few upsets have occurred.
All top seeded players are however still in the tournament, while a few third seeded players/pairs have been knocked out.
Most of the seeded players in the men’s singles event are still left in the tournament, but some few surprises have happened. Hungary’s Rudolf Dellenbach, who is in fact still U15-player knocked out the seeded Tim Stranks from England in the second round. Dellenbach however had to leave the tournament after being defeated by Jim Middelburg from the Netherlands in the third round. Middelburg will now be up against the strong Russian Anatoly Yartsev in a very interesting encounter. Wales’ Daniel Font has made two good results when first knocking out the seeded German, Kai Schäfer, and later on also beat Tolga Özsoy from Turkey. Daniel Font will now be up against top seeded Viktor Axelsen from Denmark. Third seeded Lucas Corvee from France unfortunately injured himself during an earlier match, so he has had to withdraw from the singles event.
Carolina Marin from Spain is the big favourite in the women’s singles event and until now she hasn’t had any problems reaching the fourth round. Here she will be up against Lyaysan Karimova from Russia. Very few upsetting wins have been seen in women’s singles so far, as 13 of the 16 seeded players are among the last 16 in the tournament. Only the above mentioned Karimova together with her compatriot Evgenia Kosetskaya and England’s Holly Smith have managed to knock out a seeded player.
6 of the 8 seeded pairs in the men’s doubles event will be present at tomorrow’s quarter finals. Austria’s Matthias Almer/Simon Rebhandl made a good result when knocking out the third seeded English pair Steven Cappleman/Sam Dobson in the third round. Dmitriy Imankulov/Alexandr Sorokin from Russia in the other non-seeded pair left in the tournament. In their second round match they beat the Slovenian combination Urban Turk/Mitja Semrov despite them being seeded to reach the quarter final.
All of the four pairs seeded 5/8 in the women’s doubles have been knocked out in the early stages of the event. Ukranian, Bulgarian and Turkish pairs have managed to knock out seeded pairs in this category, while the last pair seeded 5/8, France’s Lorraine Baumann/Laura Tyberghein had to withdraw from their match against Slovenia’s Kim Novak/Kaja Stankovic because of an injury. All four top seeded pairs are still in the draw.
As it is the case in women’s singles, 13 of the 16 seeded pairs in mixed doubles have managed to reach the last 16. Only Sweden’s Filip Myhren/Seydi Aktan, France’s Gaetan Mittelheisser/Lorraine Baumann and Israel’s Ariel Shainski/Alina Pugach have passed the early stages as being unseeded. The Israeli pair however had an easy match against the seeded Swedes Albin Hjelm/Hanna Ekhamre, as Hanna Ekhamre had to pull out because of an injury.
To follow the action from the 2009 European U17 Championships – click here