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Seeds Fall Like Ten Pins

Seeds fell like ten pins in a bowling alley at the Slovenian Open in Velenje on Thursday 17th January 2008; in both the Men’s and Women’s Singles event four of the top eight seeds departed proceedings.

In the Men’s Singles competition, fourth seed Kalinikos Kreanga of Greece lost in the opening round to Romania’s Andrei Filimon whilst at the same stage seventh seed, Croatia’s Zoran Primorac, suffered at the hands of Portugal’s Tiago Apolonia.

One round later it was farewell to Russia’s Alexei Smirnov, the number five seed and to Austria’s Werner Schlager, the 2003 Men’s Singles World Champion and the number six seed in Velenje.

Alexei Smirnov was beaten by Trinko Keen of the Netherlands whilst Portugal’s João Monteiro ended the hopes of Werner Schlager.

Meanwhile, in the Women’s Singles event there were no major casualties in the opening round but in the second round it was one fall after another.

Third seed Germany’s Wu Jiaduo was beaten by Spain’s Zhu Fang whilst fourth seed, Croatia’s Tamara Boros lost to Li Jie of the Netherlands.

Defeats for the third and fourth seeds and also for the sixth and eighth seeded women; sixth seed Wang Chen of the United States suffered at the hands of Poland’s Xu Jie whilst for eighth seed, Romania’s Daniela Dodean, the defensive skills of Tatyana Kostromina signalled her demise.

The four seeds to survive in the Men’s Singles event were the top three – Vladimir Samsonov (Belarus), Li Ching (Hong Kong), Chuan Chih-Yuan (Chinese Taipei – plus the number eight seed Germany’s Dimitrij Ovtcharov.

Meanwhile in the Women’s Singles event, the top two seeds – Liu Jia (Austria, Li Jiao (Netherlands) - both ended the day unbeaten as did fifth seed Li Qian of Poland and seventh seed Shen Yanfei of Spain.