Top seed Dudi Sela ensured that there would be two seeds in the quarter-finals of Happy Valley, after he defeated Dwayne Kelly 6-3, 6-1 in sixty-five minutes.
The Israeli highlighted the four-hundred place ranking gap by losing just six points on serve across the straight sets win. Kelly fought hard in the first set, but proved to be a clear second-best against a man with wins over David Ferrer and Andy Roddick to his name. Sela swept the second set for loss of just ten points on both his and Kelly’s serve. Sela, who is already confirmed as having made the main draw of the Australian Open avoiding the qualifying draw, has an excellent chance to make it all the way in this Challenger. Though he is the top seed and expected to do well, all but one other seed has already been knocked out. He faces Jan Satral in the next round, after the Czech defeated Canadian qualifier Peter Polansky, and then either Hiroki Moriya or Marton Fucsovics in the semi-finals provided he wins against Satral.
The only seed that Sela could meet is young American upstart Taylor Fritz, with that meeting only possible in the final due to the layout of the draw. The eighth seed will play Alex Bolt on Friday in one of the early quarter-finals with the winner due to face either Austrian youngster Dennis Novak, or local wildcard Andrew Whittington. Whittington is working hard to impress, as there are still two main draw wildcards for the Australian Open available, and these are typically reserved for home players, with the French and American agreement wildcard recipients already named.
Friday matches (picks in bold)
Taylor Fritz vs Alex Bolt
Dudi Sela vs Jan Satral
Hiroki Moriya vs Marton Fucsovics
Dennis Novak vs Andrew Whittington
