Final Four in Yokohama: Chuqin, Harimoto, Moregard and Jha

(by Steve Hopkins)

Kanak JHA spread excitement through the building with his upset victory in the first of the four quarterfinals for men on Sunday. Jha served beautifully, and his consistent rallies and shot-making asked him the better player in the game, because he surprised Dang Qiu with three straight victories. Qiu then fought back in the next two games and built early leads to see the lead evaporate. In the fourth match, Dang Qiu led 7-4, just to find himself at 9-9 (a competition he won 11-9). And in the fifth match, Dang Qiu led 9-5 before JHA brought the match 10-10. This time it was Kanak JHA that two in a row ran away to shock Dang Qiu and the rest of the draw.

The next match was a 4-1 victory of Wang Chuqin over Shunsuke Togami and much more predictable result with world no. 2 progress. The higher seed also won both Sunday evening matches. Truls Morgard won 4-1 over a Jaehyun and he is now going further to Wang Chuqin. And Harimoto followed Xiang Peng twice before surpassing the 22-year-old Chinese player with 4-2. Harimoto will now be very preferred in his game on Monday morning against Kanak Jha – of course Kanak has played the majority of this tournament as the underdog and that has worked well for him so far.

Monday the last day in Yokohama with semi -final matches and the final is planned for Monday evening.

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