KUALA LUMPUR: National squash aces S. Sivasangari and Ng Eain Yow stormed into the third round of the 2024 PSA World Championships in Cairo, Egypt with straight-set wins over their respective women’s and men’s opponents yesterday.
In the second-round matches held at the Palm Hills Club, women’s world number 13 Sivasangari cruised past American Caroline Fouts dari Amerika Syarikat 11-6, 11-7, 11-6 in just 24 minutes while national men’s number one Eain Yow breezed past Japan’s Ryunosuke Tsukue 11-1, 11-5, 11-9.
“Obviously, there were nerves and stuff, but I started well. I was confident of my game and happy to win in three (sets)... I’m happy with how I moved (compared to) my first match, which was a bit sluggish,” said Sivasangari, based on the tournament website.
Meanwhile, Eain Yow said: “Just happy to go through, it’s my first time in the third round. People might say ‘Oh, it’s a good second round’, but I know him (Tsukue), he had beaten me in the juniors before, it doesn’t matter what the actual ranking is, he knows in his head he can beat me.”
In tomorrow’s third round, Sivasangari will square off against Egypt’s world number three Hania El Hammamy at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation in Cairo.
This will be a repeat of their London Classic final last month, which saw the Malaysian clinch the title with an 11-9, 5-11, 13-11, 12-14, 11-8 win.
Eain Yow, however, faces a tougher test as he is set to face world number two Paul Coll of New Zealand for a place in the quarter-finals.
For the record, eight-time world champion Datuk Nicol Ann David was the last Malaysian to make the quarter-finals of the world championships in the 2017 edition in Manchester, United Kingdom.
Meanwhile, two other Malaysian representatives, Aira Azman and Muhammad Addeen Idrakie Bahtiar crashed out after losing their women’s and men’s second-round matches respectively.
