Seven of the top eight seeds progressed to the quarter-finals of the Dutch Open Squash 2009 in Rotterdam's Victoria Club, but it was far from easy going for several of them.

Third seed Azlan Iskandar opened proceedings with a comfortable enough win over qualifier Steve Finitsis, and will meet young Englishman Tom Richards for a place in the semi-finals after Richards denied local wildcard Piedro Schweertman in four games. Iskandar was surprised at the pace of the match: "After watching the matches last night I was waiting for the ball to start dying, but it never did, it was so fast," he said. "That's a good start though, to get off in three in half an hour, I can look forward to the rest of the tournament now."

Richards started well against Schweertman, who took his time to get going but gave the Englishman a hard time of it in the third game. "You could see he got confident, he got a lot of balls back and hit some great shot, made it difficult for me which is what I expected," said Richards. "I'm glad to get through, now it's my training partner Azlan, we always hit together when we're in London, so it should be interesting."

There was further Dutch disappointment when last night's hero Dylan Bennett fell narrowly short against Davide Bianchetti, the seventh seed. After a slow start Bennett found his range and took the match to a decider, which the fiery Italian narrowly won. "I struggled in the first two, I just couldn't get it past him," said Bennett. "Tommy [Berden] kept telling me I had to find a way to get the ball deep, and I did that in the third and fourth, and he got frustrated. Overall I'm happy, considering where I was ten days ago it's a big improvement."

Bianchetti meets second seed Cameron Pilley who won an entertaining match against fellow Aussie Ryan Cuskelly. Although they lived close to each other in Australia they had strangely never played a serious match against each other before tonight.

In the top half of the draw local favourite and top seed Laurens Jan Anjema was in impressive form as he dispatched Swiss qualifier Nicolas Mueller. The pressure of being the home favourite doesn't seem to be affecting ‘LJ’: "I felt exactly the right level of nervousness," he said. "I was relaxed but knew it was important, it felt good and I hope I can keep that feeling for the rest of the week."

Anjema's quarter-final opponent is the only unseeded player left in the draw, after Germany's Simon Rosner upset fifth seed Joey Barrington. After a tough three and a half games that took exactly an hour the Englishman retired injured - cumulative rather than anything dramatic - with Rosner leading 2/1 and 7/5.

The top half of the draw is completed by England's Daryl Selby and USA number one Julian Illingworth, both of whom survived five game encounters. Selby needed all his determination to suppress the racket skills of New Zealand's Kashif Shuja, while Illingworth had to come from two games down to beat England's Chris Ryder. "I was annoyed losing the first game from so far up," said Selby. “But I have to give a lot of credit to Kashif, he played really well and put me under a lot of pressure. I was proud of myself mentally, of how I dug in though," he added.

Illingworth was similarly relieved to progress: "I'm happy to get through, this is the first time I've made the second round of a four or five star event, so it will be good to get a match against one of the top boys - probably Daryl, but I wouldn't be too disappointed if a qualifier upset him!"

25-Nov, Qualifying Finals:
Bennett boosts local interest at Dutch Open