Dao Phuc An sealed a famous victory over world number nine Wiktor Zielinski as a Vietnamese qualifier defeated a member of the world’s elite for the second successive day at the Hanoi Open Championship.
Following Lo Van Xuan’s behemoth win over World Championship runner-up Eklent Kaci on Tuesday, Dao pulled off a 9-7 win over Poland’s Zielinski in the opening round of the tournament.
Dao was unable to emulate his opening round display and unfortunately endured a 9-4 loss at the hands of Nguyen Cong Thanh, while Zielinski bounced back on the one-loss side to keep his campaign alive.
Elsewhere, Eklent Kaci recovered well from 3-1 down to beat Nguyen The Hien in the second losers’ round, while Vietnamese number two Nguyen Anh Tuan, Aloysius Yapp and Tyler Styer also advanced on the one-loss side.
Fortunes were less favourable for Americans Nicholas De Leon and Sam Henderson, who were the stand-out names to exit, going down to Paolo Gallito and Assis Tadique respectively, while Vietnam’s Do The Kien was the biggest name to suffer back-to-back defeats.
Shane van Boening, Ko Pin-Yi and Vietnamese number one Duong Quoc Hoang advanced into winners’ qualification with relative ease, as did Seattle Open winner Georgi Georgiev who thrashed Abdullah Al Muntaser 9-2 in an impressive win.
European Open champion Mickey Krause needed to come through a hill-hill battle against Filipino Raymund Faraon, while Skyler Woodward was also tested to the hilt in a 9-7 win over Taiwan’s Liu Chien-Hung.
The final 64 will be confirmed following Thursday’s action from Hanoi as 64 players contest their winners’ qualification matches and others continue their campaigns on the one-loss side.
