With day two at the Austrian Open coming to a close we still have a lot of British hopes to look forward to.
Paul Drinkhall was in especially fine form with four victories during the day. Firstly, he won his final qualifying group game against Japanese player Kohei Morimoto 4-2 before he beat Stanislav Golovanov from Bulgaria 4-3 in the knock-out qualifying round. He progressed to the first round where he will play world number 6 Jun Mizutani from Japan in a very tough encounter.
He then teamed up with Liam Pitchford to beat Wai-Lung Chung and Martijn De Vries 3-0 in the second stage of the Men’s doubles before they pulled off a fine shock win against Russians Fedor Kuzmin (world rank 75) and Igor Rubtsov (61) by a 3-1 scoreline to complete a fantastic day for the British number one.
His partner Joanna Parker also had a fine day as she won three times, including her progression to the first round proper of the Women’s draw. Earlier in the day she recorded a huge win over Cornelia Molnar from Croatia who is ranked 33 places above the British number two. Her 4-3 victory in the group stages meant she faced Krizstina Ambrus in the final knock-out round who she by-passed with ease after a comfortable 4-0 triumph over the Hungarian. She will face Yi-Hua Huang (35) from Chinese Taipei.
Later on she, and partner Kelly Sibley, won their first doubles match before they fell to the impressive Chinese pair of Wu Yang (9) and Fan Ying (15) who were strong favourites.
Apart from Drinkhall and Parker only one other Brit made the first round singles draw and that was Andrew Baggaley who cruised through his qualifying group with 4-0 and 4-1 wins before beating Allan Bentsen from Denmark 4-2 to reach the first round where he will face world number 22 Alexey Smirnov.
The other Brits fell by the wayside with Knight, Reed, Rumgay, Pitchford and Sibley all falling in the singles competitions while the doubles pairings were all beaten by higher-ranking opponents.
In other news, Ryan Jenkins was denied a chance to join Drinkhall and Baggaley in the first round because of a equipment fault. To read more on that story click here.
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