Artistic
During the quarterfinals in Florange everybody could feel the tension rising, which 4 players will be eliminated and who needs to extend the stay in the hotel for another night ?
At table 1 it was Walter Bax (BEL) who took the lead in the first set, but immediately Thomas Ahrens (GER) reacted and grabbed the second and the third. Ahrens, who already had beaten Bax during the group stages, suddenly lost control of the match. With 2-2 in sets it was finally the well experienced Belgian who took the victory and forced his way into the semi finals.
At table 2 it was Bernd Singer (GER) again who suprised the audience by a strong win over the Schelle 2008 World Champion Artistic, it was remarkable that Singer already had beaten Yaman before during the prelimenary stages but it did not had any consequences then. This evening the second confrontation ended in a disaster for the Turkish player, he has to leave through the backdoor. It felt like he underestimated Bernd Singer a little too much.....
The revelation of the tournament, Nobuyashu Sakai, had the tough task to compete against the strong belgian player Eric Daelman on table 3. Although Daelman took the initiative by winning the first set, it was Sakai who took the next 3 sets pretty easy: the conclusion was an unexpected exit for Daelman .....and the cool en steady Sakai, who never passed the group stages during a World Championship, reached the semis.
At Table 4 a Dutch battle was going on. Normally when these two guys (Martin van Rhee and Sander Jonen) compete it's hard to say who's gonna win. In an amazing first set van Rhee reached higher grounds by beating Jonen 69 to 68. Jonen, obviously very eager to come back into the game, kept scoring and cheared himself up all the time. That resulted in three consecutive winning sets and a ticket in the Semi Final. Jonen en van Rhee both performed well during the dutch ''suicide'' match , respectively 81.4 and 68.2 %.
On Sunday the first Semi Final will start at 09:00 hours:
Bernd Singer (GER) vs Nobuyashu Sakai (JPN)
The second Semi Final will start at 11:30 hours:
Sander Jonen (NED) vs Walter Bax (BEL)
The Final will start at 15:30 hours