Imeh, Draper crash out of Dayak Championships

Nigeria’s Joseph Imeh’s hope of advancing to the quarterfinal of the ongoing Dayak Championship was extinguished yesterday with a 6-2, 6-1 loss to eight seed Brazilian Joao Sorgi.

Imeh had swept aside compatriot Emmanuel Audu in the first round and was aiming for what would have been his first quarterfinal ticket in the ITF World Tour event, but he found his South American opponent too hot, succumbing in straights sets in just under an hour.

Imeh’s exit was dwarfed by the elimination of three seeded players yesterday with British youngster Jack Draper headlining the surprise scorelines.

Draper, whose first visit to Nigeria saw him landed the Lagos Open title last October was beaten by Ukrainian Danylo Kalenichenko 6-4, 7-5. The duo of Zimbabwe’s Benjamin Lock and France’s Fabian Reboul also crashed out losing 7-6 (3), 6-3 and 6-2, 7-6 (3) to Peter Kobelt of the USA and Guy Iradukunda of Burundi respectively.

Top seed Maximilan Neuchrist of Austria was stretched by Jaimee Angele of France in a match that lasted almost three hours with a 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 scoreline but French fourth seed Tom Jomby was in great form as he defeated Junal Anand of India 6-3, 6-4.

France and Brazil will be having two representatives each in the quarterfinals following Gilbert Soares’ 6-4, 6-2 triumph over Dominik Pala of Czech Republic while Dan Added ended the fine run of Netherland’s Neils Lootsma, who had accounted for the elimination of second seed Sadio Doumbia, the Frenchman who won the Tombim Open on Sunday.