Kirsty Gilmour felt she was rewarded for the way she had prepared as much as for the way she managed to stay calm under pressure as she found a way to get through her singles quarter-final at the Scottish Open Grand Prix last night.

Up against Natalia Rohde, an opponent she had beaten in straight sets in both their previous meetings, the 24-year-old looked she might be set to suffer another painful defeat at the hands of a Danish opponent, her defeat in the final of this event two years ago to Line Kjaersfeldt having been arguably the toughest of her career because she was expected to win her home event.

This time around she started slowly, but after recovering from 10-6 down in the opening game to claim an 11-10 lead at the break, she continued to dominate, winning 15 of 17 points in taking it 21-12. Far from discouraged, however, the 22-year-old from Copenhagen to establish and maintain the upper hand in the second set, winning it 21-16 before then establishing a menacing 12-6 lead in the decider.

However the Scot rallied at that point, levelling the match at 14-14 and while they traded points until 19-19 she held her nerve to take the next two and the match, explaining afterwards: “Even at 6-12 down every time you play a rally it’s 50/50 every time and that was what was in my head.”

While the rankings showed that world no.21 Gilmour should never have been in that position against a woman ranked 19 places lower, she took satisfaction from having done her homework and the work she has been doing in training to allow her to maintain her form, as well as how she handled the pressure.

“I was ready because Natalia is a tricky, tricky player. She’s tall and awkward to play against. That’s the first time we’ve played for a few years and her agility was a lot better today. She’s clearly worked on that.,” she said

“She can be up and down, but today she was chipping things back that I was throwing at her and she was hitting her own really good quality shots, so I had to deal with that and I did.

“I remained relatively calm, not 100 per cent of the time but a lot of the time, trying to alter my gameplan, because it didn’t end up exactly as it started. I had to make some adaptations in there because she’s improved a lot. But I’m happy with the way I did that and I pride myself on tight situations.

“When it gets to that 19 all I’ve been there many a time and I would like to think my stats from there are quite good. My fitness came through, but that really did push me. I’m glad that was the second match of the day, but we don’t train twice a day for no reason.”

Gilmour now faces Holland’s Soraya De Visch Eijbergen who recovered from losing the first game of her quarter-final with Bulgaria’s fourth seed Linda Zetchiri, to take the next two 21-12, 21-16.

Further afield it was a good day for Scotland’s youngsters as they out-performed their seeding to claim a bronze medal at the European Under-17 Team Championship in Prague.

Having won all of their pool matches the fifth seeds found themselves up against higher ranked France in the quarter-finals where Rachel Andrew and Adam Pringle got them off to a strong start, beating Kenji Lovang and Juliette Moinard 9-21 21-19 21-14. Joshua Apiliga then claimed a comfortable 21-10-21-12 victory over Clement Allain before Rachel Sugden beat Ainoa Desmons 22-20 21-13. They subsequently lost their semi-final to Denmark and now turn their attention to the individual events.