by Simon Daish
Dimitrios Stamou was one of the Greek players to suffer elimination in qualification, losing out to Serbia’s Pero Tepic in straight games (11-4, 11-4, 11-7, 11-5) while there was an extremely painful departure for Ioannis Diamanis, who recovered from three games down to force a decider only for his opponent Oleksii Horbanenko to squeeze over the line (13-11, 11-5, 11-3, 9-11, 9-11, 9-11, 11-7).
However, there was one result for Greece to celebrate with Michail Diamantopoulos sealing his spot in the next round thanks to a six games victory over Aleksandar Rikaloski (11-5, 8-11, 11-6, 7-11, 12-10, 11-7), setting up a meeting with Slovak competitor Daniel Orac in the process.
Hungary’s Oliver Both experienced little trouble in his qualification match with Jonas Promberger of Austria (11-6, 11-7, 13-11, 11-8) but the same can’t be said for Tugay Yilmaz with the Turkish player holding off a serious comeback bid from Italy’s Marco Cappuccio (11-4, 11-5, 11-7, 14-16, 8-11, 8-11, 11-9).
The Junior Boys’ Singles event will continue on Saturday 21st July as the main draw officially gets underway from 10.30am (local time).