Home hope Merrilees suffers an early exit at the Scottish Open
● Unseeded Indian springs a surprise against Glaswegian, leaving Gilmour to fly the flag for Scotland at Emirates Arena
Kieran Merrilees, the No 11 seed, suffered a shock exit on the opening day of the Scottish Open Grand Prix at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow.
The main home hope in the men’s singles, the long time Scottish No.1 was seemingly in control in the first game against India’s Karan Rajan Rajarajan, but the advantage simply crumbled away in a 19-21, 15-21 defeat.
Having led 11-7 at the interval, and then 17-14, it suddenly all went awry for the Glaswegian. His unseeded opponent drew level at 18-all and then won three of the next four points.
Merrilees took the opening point in the second game, but fell 2-3 behind and never gave any real inkling of making the much hoped for recovery.
Prestwick’s Ben Torrance did force his match to a third game. He lost the first 15-21 but saved a couple of match points against Switzerland’s Christian Kirchmayr before drawing level by taking the second 22-20. He lost the decider 12-21.
So the focus now fixes even morefirmlyonkirstygilmour. On two occasions, the Scot has come very close to winning the Scottish Open women’s singles and she’s hoping this is the year to top the podium. 0 Kirsty Gilmour: Top seed in the Scottish Open Grand Prix.
For the first time, the 24-year-old is the top seed and she is due to meet Spain’s Beatriz Caorrales in Sunday afternoon’s final. Her opening match today is against France’s Delphine Lansac.
A year ago, Gilmour was recovering from knee surgery and worked behind the scenes as a Scottish Open Ambassador. She enjoyed the role, but will feel much more at home back on court. Still on her way back from her post-olympic operation, Gilmour surpassed expectations by making it to the last eight of the Total BWF World Championships at the Emirates Arena in August.
But, last month, she suffered an illness scare the Yonex Danish Open.
“I played a match and then spent four days being sick,” she explained. “It was awful. I ended up being pushed through the airport in a wheelchair.
“But, overall, it’s been a great year. I am thoroughly enjoying workingwiththenewscottish coach, Tat Meng Wong, and we’ve worked on a lot of new things. I’m in a pretty good place at the moment.”
Looking ahead, Christmas will be celebrated early because she has been seconded into a team for the third Premier Badminton League in India.
“I’ll be flying out on 20 December and it runs through to January,” explained the Commonwealth Games silver medallist. “So Christmas will have to be before I go.”
Next year, which will including a third Commonwealth Games appearance, promises to be an exciting one for the talented Scot. The perfect end to 2017 would be to win the Scottish Open title.
Glasgow’s 17-year-old twins, Matthew and Christopher Grimley, did well to make it through two rounds of the men’s singles qualifying. Matthew then put up a spirited performance against England’s Sam Parsons, but lost 15-21, 20-22.
In the last match of the night to go on court, Christopher ended Scottish interest in the men’s singles when he lost 17-21, 14-21 to Ukraine’s Artern Pochtarov. An 8-4 win over Czech Republic in yesterday morning’s seventh session of round-robin play gave Scotland’s Eve Muirhead and her team a place in tomorrow’s semi-finals at Le Gruyere European Curling Championships, here in St Gallen, Switzerland.
Scotland opened strongly when Muirhead hit out a Czech stone in the first end to open the scoring with three points. The Scots then scored two shots in each of the third and eighth ends, and a single steal in the fourth end which was enough to give them an 8-4 win.
They now go into the last four alongside unbeaten Sweden and hosts Switzerland.
Muirhead said: “Since we dropped the first game to Sweden we’ve built a lot of momentum. We played really well in this game, the girls are playing great. We’re in a good flow and