KUALA LUMPUR, March 1 — Asian players dominated the hard courts of the Royal Selangor Golf Club on the second day of the BMW Malaysian Open 2015 qualifying round.
Playing under hot and humid weather conditions, Wang Yafan of China took on the towering Nigina Abduraimova of Uzbekistan and after a hotly contested first set, Wang managed to take control in the second set to win the match in straight sets 6-4, 6-2.
“Playing Abduraimova was anything but easy, as her serve was very good. But then in the first set after the first three games, I noticed that her force was letting up, so I stepped up my game and pushed on after that, and it went very well for me”, said Wang.
In the other match, Xu Yi-Fan of China took on another towering Naomi Broady of Great Britain and after slightly more than an hour, disposed her in straight sets 7-5, 6-2.
Xu will be up against her fellow compatriot, World No 117 Duan Ying-Ying in the next round.
Meanwhile, Japan’s Junri Namigata took close to 90 minutes to beat Ukrainian Lyudmyla Kichenok in straight sets, 7-6, 6-0 and set up a date with World No 132 Luksika KumKhum of Thailand.
Following are the results of the second day of qualifying in the BMW Malaysian Open 2015 at the Royal Selangor Golf Club:
Elizaveta Kulichkova (RUS) bt Daria Gavrilova (RUS) 1-6, 6-3, 6-4;
Yanfan Wang (CHN) bt Nigina Abduraimova (UZB) 6-4, 6-2;
Yi-Fan Xu (CHN) bt Naomi Broady (GBR) 7-5, 6-2;
Magda Linette (POL) bt Fangzhou Liu (CHN) 6-2, 6-1;
Junri Namigata (JPN) bt Lyudmyla Kichenok (UKR) 7-6 (5), 6-0;
Yuliya Beygelzimer (UKR) bt Kai-Lin Zhang (CHN) 6-4, 7-6 (2) — Bernama
