Jeong Yoon Young of Korea and Jawairiah Noordin of Malaysia brought down the top two seeds in stirring fashions to lead the charge of the less-fancied bets in the second round of the Holcim ITF Women’s Circuit at the Rizal Tennis Center yesterday.
Jeong leaned on his superb shot making and solid baseline play to stun top seed Sacha Jones of New Zealand, 6-3, 7-6 (5), while Noordin pulled the rug from under second pick Lu Jia Jing of China, 6-4, 6-3, to advance to the quarterfinals.
Those losses left No. 4 Lavinia Tananta of Indonesia, a 6-2, 6-4 winner over Eloide Rogge-Dietrich of France, as the highest ranked player in the tournament after No. 3 Nguyen Thuy Dung of Vietnam crashed out a round earlier.
Nguyen bowed to Korean Kang Seo Kyung, 4-6, 0-6, Tuesday.
The rest of the favorites – No. 5 Ayu-Fani Damayanti of Indonesia, No. 7 Qiu Si Si of China and No. 8 Jessie Rompies of Indonesia – all advanced to the quarters.
Damayanti smashed Chinese Liu Chang, 6-2, 6-2, Qiu walloped Australian Cassandra Barr, 6-3, 6-2, and Rompies blasted Korean Yoo Mi, 6-4, 6-2.
Chinese Taipei’s Juan Ting Fei outlasted Alisa Ogorodova of Uzbekistan, 6-1, 7-6 (3), while Korea’s Kang Seo Kyung needed an extra set to turn back Chinese Taipei’s Lin Yu Ting, 6-2, 2-6, 6-2, to likewise advance to the next round. – Joey Villar