Balazs & Malliff Sink Singapore Seeds On Day Two

Hungarian Farkas Balazs and England's Katie Malliff have reached the quarter-finals of a PSA Squash Tour Gold event for the first time after respective upsets over No.6 seed Fares Dessouky and No.8 seed Tomato Ho on day two of the Vitagen Singapore Open.

Balazs scored one of the biggest wins of his career when he came back from 2/1 down to overcome the Egyptian world No.15 by a 6-11, 12-10, 6-11, 11-5, 12-10 scoreline after 75 minutes of action.

There were moments of serious quality from both players married with some scrappy passages of play, which saw traffic issues and discussions with the referee halt the flow of the match. Balazs overturned a match ball to earn his spot in the last eight, where he will play men's world No.1 and defending champion Ali Farag, who beat Hong Kong's Tsz Kwan Lau.

"I can't wait to go back to the hotel, order a beer and call my girlfriend," said world No.40 Balazs afterwards.

"I'm really happy because Dessouky has great movement and racket skills. He played really well today, but I tried to fight as hard as I could and play as many balls as possible. I'm happy to survive and move through to the next round.

"I'm just focusing on my tactics and I'm trying to move really well and play every ball. If he can attack the balls around the middle he can beat any player. I tried to get the ball behind him and make him run all over the court."

World No.33 Malliff will join Balazs in the last eight at the OCBC Arena after the English player defeated world No.26 Tomato Ho in four games in the women's event.

They had met just once previously on the PSA Squash Tour, with Ho winning on that occasion, but Malliff got her revenge today courtesy of an 11-3, 12-10, 8-11, 11-5 victory.

Malliff will go up against women's top seed Hania El Hammamy for a place in the last four, with El Hammamy overcoming Malaysia's Aira Azman.

"I thought it was a good game, it was a battle to see who could get in front and volley more," Malliff said afterwards.

"I think whoever got the ball to the back of the court was winning most of the rallies, so that's what I was trying to do. Especially on this court, it's particularly dead, so you've got to get it to the back.

"I'm really pleased, I've not got this far in a Gold event before. It's going to be a tough opponent whoever I play, I'm going to try and recover and I'm going to have a rest day, which is nice, so I'll be getting ready for the match on Friday."