Rafael Rallies Through In Belo Horizonte

Fourth seed Rafael Alarcon successfully led home hopes through to the quarter-finals of the BH Open after beating Englishman Reuben Phillips in the opening round of the PSA World Tour Challenger 10 squash event at Academia Winner Squash[b/] in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

But the experienced Brazilian number one, ranked 71 in the world, needed four games to overcome 20-year-Phillips, playing for the first time in Brazil, 11-5, 8-11, 11-8, 11-8 in 48 minutes to set up his quarter-final clash with Frenchman Geoffrey Demont.

The unseeded 21-year-old from Aix-en-Provence took over an hour to see off Martin Mosnik of Slovenia 11-5, 11-9, 1-11, 7-11, 11-1.

The top two seeds survived contrasting straight games wins to earn their anticipated places in the last eight.

US favourite Julian Illingworth defeated Manoel Pereira - but took 61 minutes to get the better of the Brazilian ranked more than 140 places lower 13-11, 11-7, 11-7.

In much less than half the time, second-seeded Englishman Adrian Waller despatched local qualifier Josimar Silva 11-4, 11-3, 11-3.

Quarter-final line-up:
[1] Julian Illingworth (USA) v Vinicius Rodrigues (BRA)
[3] Charles Sharpes (ENG) v [Q] Joe Chapman (IVB)
[4] Rafael Alarcon (BRA) v Geoffrey Demont (FRA)
[2] Adrian Waller (ENG) v Adam Murrills (ENG)

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