Great Britain's Heather Watson missed out on a place in the Thailand Open semi-finals as she bowed out to Chinese seventh seed Wang Xinyu in three sets.
The 30-year-old went down 6-3 6-7 6-4 in a closely-fought quarter-final lasting two hours and 40 minutes, having fought back in a topsy-turvy second set before a third-set sucker punch.
Quickly gaining the upper hand in the first set - which was briefly halted after a ball kid collapsed - Xinyu squandered two chances to break in the fifth game before finally doing so in the seventh.
Xinyu had missed a further four break points before establishing a 4-3 lead, and she held for 5-3 straight after as Watson missed two chances of her own to break back straight away.
The Briton was broken to love in the ninth game of the first set, but both Watson and Xinyu endured a woeful spate of service games in the second set, with a whopping eight breaks between them.
Watson roared back early in the second set to establish a 3-0 lead with a double break, but there would only be one hold - for Xinyu - in the seven games that followed.
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At 5-5, both players finally calmed things down with a pair of love holds before Watson came good in the tie-breaker, taking her second set point and forcing a decisive third set.
The world number 160 continued to hold her own on serve, with no breaks to be had in the first six games, but Xinyu finally ended Watson's resilient streak for a 4-3 lead before holding to move one game away from a place in the semis.
The Chinese 21-year-old was pegged back to 30-30 on serve in the 10th game before netting on her first match point, but she made no mistake on her second to advance to the final four.
"It was really tough, I'm just really happy that I kept fighting until the end, I think we both played our best tennis today. I'm really happy that I got this far," Xinyu said on the court.
Xinyu could face an all-Chinese semi-final with Lin Zhu, who now takes on Slovenia's Tamara Zidansek, before Ukrainian duo Lesia Tsurenko and Marta Kostyuk face Tatjana Maria and number one seed Bianca Andreescu respectively.
Ben Knapton
