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| 09 Oct 2002 | |
| First round finally completed as rain takes a break |
The rain finally stopped for long enough in Osaka for the first round in both singles events to be completed.
Brendan Evans got his campaign off to a storming start, seeing off his first round opponent Japan’s Yusuke Iwahashi with a 60 63 win. After the match Evans was pleased with his performance, "I was serving and returning great, and I just rolled through the 1st set. Although I lost a little bit of concentration in the beginning of the second set, I was able to regroup myself and I came through." When asked how he viewed his chances for the title the American said, "I’m feeling great about how I’m playing right now."
Karoly Fodor from Yugoslavia was another seed pleased to get a win under his belt. The No.11 seed defeated another Japanese player, Kouhei Tani, in straight sets 63 62. Asked how he viewed the match, Fodor explained, "I lost the first two games, but then, I began concentrating on keeping the balls in play, and my opponent started to make many unforced errors."
Wang Cheng Hsieh (TPE) was the other remaining seed to make his way into the second round with victory over Hiroshi Ohata (JPN) 64 62.
In the girls’ draw the only seed forced to wait out the rain was Korea’s Da-Jung Hong, however the delay didn’t seem to affect her adversely. Once on court she made light work of Japan’s Moe Tsubuku 62 63.
The doubles also got under way today with the biggest shock coming in the girls’ draw where the No.1 seeds where knocked out in the second round. The Czech pair of Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Safarova have a great doubles pedigree and were hot favourites for the title, however the German pairing of Angelique Kerber and Nadja Kusterer had other ideas, and took the match in straight sets 75 63. After the match the pair were very excited by their win: "That was a big win for us. We didn’t believe we could win. We were just trying to be aggressive and come into the net as much as we could."
The No.3 seeds, Yung Jan Chan and Ting Wen Wang (TPE) and No.8 seeds, Czarina Mae Arevalo (PHI) and Seul-Ki Chin (KOR) also fell on the first day. The No.2 seeds Kristina Czafikova (SVK) and Emma Laine (FIN) had no such problems progressing to the quarterfinals, although the tight schedule due to the rain made things slightly more difficult than expected. After their second match Czafikova explained, "In the first match, we went though our opponents, but in the second match I was tired and it was tougher than the first match. Although my partner helped me out a lot, and we were able to pull it though."
In the boys’ doubles three seeds have had their progression halted early in the draw. No.3 sees Anuwat Daladom (THA) and Yu-Da Shieh (TPE) were ousted by Miles Kasiri (GBR) and Karan Rastogi (IND) 64 60, No.5 seeds Ken Chao and Wang Cheng Hsieh (TPE) fell to Jae-Sung An and Hyung Tae Kwon (JPN) 76(4) 62. Finally, in the closest match of the day No.8 seeds from Chinese Taipei, Tai-Wei Liu and Ti-Ming Wu were defeated by Sergei Bubka (UKR) and Tomohiro Ishii (JPN), in a match that went down to a final set tie-break.
Photographs by Hiromasa Mano
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