by Simon Daish

Placed in the lower half of the draw, no.3 seed Nina Mittelham was rarely troubled in her match against Ekaterina Guseva and only three games were played out before the German player picked up the win.

Nina Mittelham made a strong start to the tie claiming game one by a six point margin and, despite a better showing from Ekaterina Guseva following the conclusion of the opening end, the Russian was unable to pull herself back into the tie with Nina Mittelham taking games two and three to confirm her spot in the semi-finals (11-5, 11-8, 11-9).

Success for Nina Mittelham, but for Germany’s other contestants there was very little to cheer about.

Wan Yuan, who was also competing in the bottom half of the quarter-finals draw put up a fine effort against the second seed Lin Ye of Singapore in a match that featured a thrilling opening game but eventually Lin Ye got into her stride and before long she sealed her place in the next round (17-15, 7-11, 11-8, 11-8) to set up a meeting with Nina Mittelham.

“It was a challenging match… I had to change things around switching the play from forehand and started playing more backhand to backhand with a change of tempo and a change of rotation”, Lin Ye.

The top half of the draw provided another lineup between contestants from Singapore and Germany, as Zeng Jian went up against Chantal Mantz and yet again it was Singapore who came out on top.

Top seed Zeng Jian ended up progressing into the last four without dropping a game; fifth seed Chantal Mantz made the task fairly difficult for the Zeng Jian especially in the second game which went to deuce, but the Singapore player managed to hold off her opponent’s efforts to take the 3-0 victory (11-7, 14-12, 11-4).

Awaiting Zeng Jian in the semi-finals is Romanian competitor Adina Diaconu following her success over Serbia’s Izabela Lupulesku (11-5, 16-14, 11-5) in the other quarter-finals match.