After the first day of the main tournament at Forza Denmark International, only the best remain for friday's quarter finals
A long day at Arena Nord is now over. For some players, the day has been rewarding, and they can look forward to play the quarter finals at Forza Denmark International, which commence Friday at 10.00 AM.
It has been a day with both surprising and predicted results. And for some seeded players, an exit was sometimes dangerously close. For example in the men's singles, where both Rasmus Fladberg and Joachim Persson walked on the edge of elimination in their first rounds.
A solid field
However, the two gentlemen, along with six others, ended up making it through the day winning both their matches. And namely these two Danes will feature in some interesting matches on Friday, where Fladberg is set to meet the top seeded French player, Brice Leverdez, and where Persson is up against Henri Hurskainen of Sweden.
In the ladies' singles category, Thursdays ultimately biggest surprise was the young Dane, Julie Finne-Ipsen beating Karin Schnaase of Germany in three games. That math ended 21-19 / 6-21 / 21-18 in favour of the Dane, who will now meet Kirsty Gilmour from Scotland in her quarter final. There are also two all-Danish clashes tomorrow, as Natalia Rhode and Sandra-Maria Jensen will face each other, like Anna Thea Madsen and Karina Jørgensen will.
The favourites all advanced in the ladies' doubles. Marie Røpke and Line Kruse only played one match, which they won in straight games. The same went for the second seeded Swedes, Sanne Ekberg and Amanda Högström. In total, five Danish pairs advanced to the quarter finals in this category, making the nation the most represented in this category as well.
Close call for silver medalists
It was a tough first match for Julie Houmann and Mads Kolding, who entered the tournament in the second round given their no. 1 seeding. Here they were up against the Danish national champions, Sara Thygesen and Anders Skaarup , and the match was one to watch.
Thygesen and Skaarup gained a very comfortable lead in the end of the first game, but ended up losing it narrowly in the end. The second game was close all the way and ended with a victory to Houmann and Kolding after having gone into overtime. 21-18 / 26-24 were the final cifres. The Danes, who won a silver medal at the European championships, are up against another Danish pair tomorrow, where they are set to meet Line Kruse and Anders Kristiansen.
Another very interesting match in Friday's mixed doubles'quarter finals is for example Rasmus Bonde/Maria Helsbøl, who will be facing the English duo, Marcus Ellis and Gabrielle White.
Danish supremacy
In the men's doubles, only two of the eight quarter finalist pairs are not Danish. Those two are Zvonimir Durkinjak and Zvonimir Hoelbling from Croatia and Chris Langridge and Peter Mills from England.
Otherwise, the two favourite pairs who are expected to reach the final, Anders Skaarup/Kim Astrup and Mads Kolding/Christian Skovgaard, both won their matches this Thursday. Mikkel Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Overgaard quite surprisingly won against the semi final seeded Swedes, Patrick Lundqvist and Jonathan Nordh. It was a close call, however, that ended 19-21 / 21-18 / 21-18 in favour of the Danish talents.
See all of Thursday's results here.