MANILA, Philippines – Eighth seed Truong Thi Yen and Nguyen Thi Mai of Vietnam shut the door on the Philippines’ Johanna Carpio and Nerissa Bautista, 2-0, in their round-of-16 encounter Friday at the 2010 AVC Beach Volleyball Championships in Haikou, China.
Truong and Nguyen outclassed Carpio and Bautista in 29 minutes of action at the Haikou Holiday Beach, 21-16, 21-15, to edge the No. 21 Filipinas for a berth in the quarterfinals against top seed and Olympic bronze medalists Xue Chen and Zhang Xi of host China.
Carpio and Bautista, who competed in an Asian Tour leg and the Asian tilt in China in a bid to earn points for next year’s tour, wound up at joint ninth with seven others.
The Filipinas actually started their campaign in the $100,000 tournament by foiling No. 12 Do Thi Hau and Ngo Vo Thanh Loan of Vietnam, 21-13, in the round-robin preliminaries, where matches were reduced to one set due to the approaching super typhoon.
They later dropped a 12-21 setback to No. 5 Kou Naihan-Huimin Chang of Chinese Taipei but eventually got one of Pool E’s two tickets to the knockout Round of 16 stage by virtue of a higher point scoring ratio than Do and Ngo.
Meanwhile, top Chinese women’s bets Xue and Zhang stamped their class on RP’s tormentors Troung and Nguyen, 21-10, 21-11, to lead the march of semifinalists.
Xue and Zhang will meet No. 4 Yupa Phokongploy and Kamoltip Kulna of Thailand, who scored a 21-16, 21-14 win over Kou and Huimin.
The other semis pairing will pit No. 6 Tatyana Mashkova and Irina Tsimbalova of Kazakhstan versus No. 7 Shinako Tanaka and Sayaka Mizoe of Japan. The Kazakhs duo eked out a 22-20, 21-12 win over No. 3 Usa Tenpaksee and Jarunee Sannok of Thailand while Japan advanced at the expense of Ying Huang and Yuan Yue of China who got sidetracked by injury.