ITTF Swedish Open: Quadri crashes out in q/final

THE hope of Nigeria’s Aruna Quadri, to clinch the 2017 ITTF World Tour Swedish Open in Stockholm, ended on Saturday, following his quarter-final defeat at the hands of top seed, Fan Zhendong.
Quadri, the first African to play in the quarter-final of the Olympics {at Rio 2016} bowed to his Chinese opponent in the men’s singles (11-6, 11-8, 12-10, 11-5).
The Oyo State-born ping ponger, it will be recalled, created one of the major upsets at the championship when he spanked number five seed, Hong Kong’s Wong Chin Ting, (11-7, 11-4, 11-8, 6-11, 2-11, 11-6), and followed it up with the demolition of number 12 seed Marcos Freitas of Portugal by four straight games (11-6, 11-4, 13-11, 12-10),
However, Quadri was overwhelmed by Fan this time.
Having lost the opening game, Quadri began to fight for every point as he established a 9-6 lead in the second game; but failed to get his act together as he allowed Fan to reduce the tally to 9-8,
Quadri elected for “Time Out”. Fan levelled as he saved one game point at 9-10, before winning three in a row to move into a three games to nil lead.
The Chinese star secured the third and the last game in style to land in the semi-final.
“In the third game I made some mistakes, he played well, Quadri is very powerful, a tough opponent.” Fan told www.ittf.com after the game.
Meanwhile, Zhou Yu triumphed over Lin Gaoyuan, number four seed (7-11, 6-11, 13-11, 11-3, 16-14, 11-6) to book a semi-final showdown with Quadri’s conqueror in the competition scheduled to end today.