Joelle King was taken down in the quarterfinals at the squash world champs in Manchester.
A day after the country's top men's player, Paul Coll, was ousted in the final eight, King also found the going tough at that stage of the tournament, as she succumbed to world No 3 Frenchwoman Camille Serme.
In her bid to make the final four for the first time, world No 8 King had little response to the class of Serme - a 13-time PSA title winner and who is out to become the first French woman to claim the world champs title - with the 29-year-old from Cambridge rolled 11-4, 11-6, 11-4 in 29 minutes.
Serme, 28, immediately established her attacking gameplan, racing to a 5-1 lead in the opening stages, tip-toeing round King, who at 1.76m is one of the tallest woman on the PSA World Tour.
READ MORE:
* Coll bows out in quarters
* Paul Coll moves through to quarterfinal stage
* Joelle King loses to tournament top seed in final
King had beaten Serme in a five-game battle at this year's US Open, and she began to test her opponent in the second game, exploiting all areas of the court. However, even after hitting a couple of tins, the Frenchwoman didn't falter, mounting a 9-6 lead and closing out the game.
She then didn't relent in the third, and after quickly establishing a five-point advantage she took the match in clinical fashion, hitting an irretrievable cross-court winner to secure her place in the semifinals.
For King, who had been in top form over the past few months, that was her first world champs quarterfinal since 2013, and her focus will now shift towards the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in April.
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