by Wade Townsend

Maharu Yoshimura and Jin Ueda (JPN) staved off a comeback from India’s Sanil Shetty and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran in the quarterfinals of the Men’s Doubles at the Seamaster 2017 Australian Open.

The Japanese duo gott off to perfect start, going up 2-0. But Shetty and Gnanasekaran hit their stride, taking the third and fourth games to send the match in to a decider.

However, you would have thought new players took the court in the fifth game, which was a relatively one sided affair. The pair from Japan took that game 11-5 and booked a place in the semi-final.

On the neighbouring table Australia’s Xin Yan and Heming Hu bowed out in front of their home crowd, going down 3-0 (11-8, 11-5, 11-2) to no.1 seeds Jang Woojin and Park Ganghyeon (KOR).

With Australia’s campaign now over, National Coach Brett Clarke commented on the host nation’s performance at the event.

“We performed as expected and lost to good players. I think we can take some stuff away from it as we prepare for the Commonwealth Games. Our high performance program revolves around the games. So we can now go and think about what everyone needs to do to play a bit better for that event.” Brett Clarke, Australian National Coach

Head here for full results from the Men’s Doubles quarterfinals.

The semi-finals of the Men’s Doubles will be played at 15:45 local time. Be sure to catch the action live at tv.ittf.com.