Challenger Tour Round-Up: Top Seeds Start Well in Malaysia; Molinaro & Hylland Win in Five

ACE Challenger 6K 2nd Leg 2024 

Top seeds Wai Yhann Au Yeong and Mohammad Syafiq Kamal made strong starts to their quests for glory at the ACE Challenger 6K 2nd Leg, both winning their round-two encounters 3-0. 

Singapore’s Yeong was opening play on court one, and needed less than half an hour to see off compatriot Lim Jee Nee, albeit with two of the three games going to tiebreaks. 

Home favourite Syafiq Kamal then followed suit by cruising past Wee Ming Hock in the next match, setting up a quarter-final clash with Mohamed Gohar. 

Gohar – the brother of women’s World Champion Nouran – knocked out the in-form Joachim Chuah 3-1, ending the young Malaysian’s run of reaching four straight semi-finals. 

In the bottom half of the women’s draw, Egyptian teenagers Habiba Hani and Barb Sameh are set for a mouthwatering quarter-final matchup, after winning late in the day in round two. 

The two players were both in action in the day’s penultimate match, with 19-year-old Hani dominating Zoe Foo 3-0 on court two, while 16-year-old Sameh overcame a second-game wobble to get past seventh seed Goh Zhi Xuan on court one. 

Victorian Open 2024 

Fourth seed Dylan Molinaro held off a dramatic fightback from fellow Australian Benjamin Ratcliffe to reach the Victorian Open quarter-finals. 

Molinaro and Ratcliffe are both Victorian natives, with Ratcliffe actually ranked 25 places higher than his opponent, despite Molinaro being the seeded player. 

But it was Molinaro who took control with a two-game lead, closing out the second on a tiebreak after dominating game one 11-4. 

Ratcliffe responded well by winning the third 11-6, and then somehow clung on to keep himself alive in the fourth, eventually winning a lengthy tiebreak 16-14. 

Molinaro, though, regained his composure to stave off the charge, clinching game five 11-6 to set up another all-Australian clash with seventh seed Tate Norris. 

There were two five-game duels in the women’s draw too, with Madeleine Hylland and Urwashi Joshi coming through to win. 

Norway’s Hylland – a finalist in three of her last four events – needed to come from behind to beat third seed Min-gyeong Heo, overturning a 2-1 deficit to win in 37 minutes, while sixth seed Joshi had an even more dramatic day on court. 

Like Hylland, the Indian player found herself 2-1 down, but unlike the Norwegian, she did not have it all her own way having forced a game five, going all the way to a tiebreak which she ultimately won 12-10. 

Hylland and Joshi will now face off for a place in the semi-finals, knowing that second seed Sarah Cardwell would be waiting should she get past Jihyun Lee. 

2nd Cay Open 2024 

The top six seeds will all be in the hat for round two at the 2nd Cay Open, after a relatively one-sided opening day in Sao Paolo. 

The all-Brazilian draw only features 15 players, meaning top seed Diego Gobbi was given a bye through to round two, but the players seeded two to six all won in round one, with third seed Gustavo Pizatto and sixth seed Yuri Pollak particularly impressive. 

Second seed Rhuan Sousa was the only one not to win 3-0, needing four games to see off Vitor Magnani, but he did at least progress, unlike seventh seed Junior Christovam and eighth seed Bruno Nicoletti. 

45-year-old Christovam went down 3-1 to Gabriel Pederiva, while Nicoletti lost in straight games to Lucas Araújo. 

You can stay up to date with all the results on the Challenger Tour here.