The Danish duo Joel Eipe/Rasmus Kjær, who beat fourth seeds Kim Astrup/Anders Skaarup Rasmussen yesterday, were facing Fabien Delrue/William Villeger from France in today’s quarterfinal.
Eipe has a World Junior Championships silver medal from 2015 with Frederik Søgaard and Delrue/Villeger won the 2018 European Junior Championships, but none of the four players had been in a Super 750 quarter final before, so to play for a spot in the semi final was a whole new level.
The Danes took the lead in the first game. After the interval the game was very close, and the two pairs switched to lead with one or two points. In the end, Eipe/Kjær won the first game 21-18.
A lot of pressure
Just as the first game, the second game was controlled by the Danes and they continued that all the way to the end before they could close it 21-18.
- We felt a lot more stressed. We did not use enough lifts to be ready in defence. They put a lot of pressure on us and then we made a lot of easy mistakes, Delrue said after the match.
In the semifinal Eipe/Kjær will face either French Christo and Toma Junior Popov or fifth seeds Marcus Ellis/Chris Langridge from England.