All seeds through to Flowerbulb quarters
12th December 2009The Flowerbulb Open started today with eight first round matches, five of them featuring Dutch players. Unfortunately for the home crowd there was only one that progressed to the next round as all top seeds proved the seeding committee right.
Second seed Annelize Naudé - a former winner of the WISPA Tour 4 event in the Dutch city of Hillegom - beat Leonie Holt of England in straight games. On the adjacent court Margriet Huisman was battling hard for a place in the quarter-finals against her much more experienced compatriot. The 25-year old was denied though by France’s Coline Aumard, who managed to outlast Huisman in the closest match of the day. At 1-1 in games there was a crucial game which was extended to 15-13 in the favor of the French girl. Huisman fought her way back to win the fourth, but quickly found herself 9-2 down in the fifth. Although she threatened to make an unthinkable comeback - closing the gap to only one single point - it was Aumard who eventually took the decider and therefore the match.
Earlier in the day, Norwegian Lotte Eriksen had already beaten Dagmar Vermeulen. After dropping the first easily, Vermeulen played a good second game in which she made a crucial mistake at 7-7 with a reverse boast off the serve which landed right in the middle of the court. The error proved very costly as the Dutch woman was only able to score three more points in the rest of the match with Eriksen looking more and more confident in the third. Meanwhile on the court next door top seed Emma Beddoes was up against Germany’s Sina Wall. This match was a lot more closely contended then the scores suggest. Wall worked the rallies well with some good drives and working boasts but was unable to really threaten the retrieval and volleying skills of Beddoes.
Netherland’s Milou van der Heijden played some great squash in patches against Adel Weir making sure the South African had to use her retrieval skills to cover the entire court, but it was the unforced errors of the Dutch junior which proved to be detrimental to the match. Weir now takes on England’s Victoria Lust, who overcame compatriot Carrie Ramsey in four games, winning quite convincingly after having dropped the first to her younger opponent.
England’s Lauren Selby defeated Muqaddas Ashraf in a straightforward match. The Pakistani who was competing in her very first International WISPA event was outplayed by a more experienced Selby, who goes on to play Stephanie Edmison. The Canadian seemed too powerful for Holland’s Mellissa Meulenbelt in the early stages of the match, but the Dutch girl fought hard to get a game before Edmison took back full control in the fourth.