HONG KONG, Dec 21: Korea’s Cho Yoon-jeong ended Taiwanese wondergirl Hsieh Su-wei’s hopes of winning the 60,000-dollar Asian Championships on Friday with a comprehensive straight sets semi-final victory.

In the men’s draw, pre-tournament favourite Lee Hyung Taik of Korea marched into the semi-finals with an emphatic 6-1, 6-1 demolition of Japanese national champion Takahiro Terachi.

Cho’s 6-4, 6-2 triumph was extra sweet because the 22-year-old Korean number one had lost her previous meeting with Hsieh in the Pattaya WTA tournament in three tight sets.

The 15-year-old Hsieh opened strongly and appeared to be handling the cold blustery conditions well as she fired her usual array of powerful, flat groundstrokes to open up an early 4-1 lead.

But the speedy Cho fought back to 4-4 as she gamely chased down every ball, abandoning her usual baseline game to come in behind deep powerful approach shots to frustrate the inexperienced Hsieh, who has already won five straight ITF tournaments in her first year on the senior tour. Cho took the lead for the first time when a searing forehand from Hsieh narrowly missed the line to hand her another break, and she served out to take the first set 6-4.

The Korean raced to a 4-1 lead in the second set as Hsieh’s usually accurate groundstrokes began missing their mark.

Although the gritty Taiwanese teenager battled gamely to recover one of the breaks with a ferocious forehand, the Korean immediately broke back and sealed the match when a backhand from Hsieh sailed wide.

Meanwhile Asian number one Lee Hyung-taik strolled into the semi-finals where he will meet unseeded Taiwanese player Lu Yen-hsun who thrashed fourth seeded Vadim Kutsenko from Uzbekistan 6-1, 6-0.

The Korean, world ranked 99, set out his intentions early blasting a huge ace on the first point of the match against the fifth seeded Terachi, who seemed distracted throughout the brief 47 minute encounter.

The Japanese world number 194 lost nine straight games to move from 1-1 in the first set to 4-0 down in the second set, as he lashed the ball wildly to gift the Korean number one a string of easy points. One Terachi forehand landed in row seven of the grandstand.

Friday’s results:

Men’s singles (quarterfinals): Lee Hyung-taik (Kor x1) bt Takahiro Terachi (Jpn x6) 6-1, 6-1; Lu Yen-hsun (Tpe) bt Vadim Kutsenko (Uzb x4) 6-1, 6-0

Women’s singles (semifinals): Cho Yoon-jeong (Kor x3) bt Hsieh Su-wei (Tpe x5) 6-4, 6-2.—AFP