First day in a new venue so everyone was a little nervous. Fortunately everything went as hoped. A lot of new players this year so many matches to watch. We had eight walkovers and three matches that didn’t take place. Not too many surprises in this qualification so the focus in this article is on the Belgian players. Unfortunately after a few first round wins only Jelske Snoeck made it to the main draw in women’s singles after a walkover and an easy win against Moroccan Raja Rochdy-Abbas.

Jelske has a tough first round tomorrow against fourth seeded Karin Schnaase from Germany. Last match of the day was the men’s doubles between Welshmen Daniel Van Hooijdonk/Jamie Van Hooijdonk and Belgian youngsters Jitse Van Hemelrijck/Klaas Maes. At last there was some atmosphere in the hall. Nerves were a little too high in the first set for our fellow-countrymen so they lost with 21-14. After a good coaching things went the right way and the second set was ours with 21-17. The third set was a nervous wrecking one and to our disappointment Klaas and Jitse lost with 22-20. Anyway, the Belgian team gained a lot of experience. Tomorrow is the start of the main draw with a lot of interesting matches.

In about 15 minutes the first players go on court and this year’s edition of the Yonex Belgian International will be underway. For the past 2 days, our team of volunteers has been very, very busy with getting everything ready. The hall, the tournament office, catering, match control, ….
This is what the hall looked like last night:

We wish all the best to best to all players and coaches!

The schedule for the first qualification-rounds on Thursday has been published, you can find it here.

The draw is now available on tournamentsoftware.com.
The seeding and the draw have been done according to the World Ranking dated 26/08/2010

-UPDATE- The M/Q Report was updated on 30 August. You can find the new version on the page below.

From now on you can follow the main/qualification on this page.

Because all unallocated hotel rooms have to be released to the hotels on the 15th of August, we can only recommend all players to send the accomodation form as soon as possible. The form can be downloaded under “documents” on this website.

On the final day the fans can win two flight tickets to the beautiful city of Barcelona. Sponsor Thomas Cook offers this very nice price to the winner of the Thomas Cook competition. Everybody present at the YBI 2010 on Sunday 12 September can participate and win this fantastic trip.

Players interested in playing the Yonex Belgian International 2010 can find the official tournament invitation here.
The entry form is also available, you can find it here