Guangzhou: Indonesia’s Anthony Sinisuka Ginting enjoyed a great deal of luck playing his final Group B match at the 2019 BWF World Tour Finals in Guangzhou on Friday, when the World No. 8 player barely break a sweat after leading 13-6, as his opponent, Viktor Axelsen of Denmark had to retire from the match due to a hamstring injury.
“Yes, maybe I was lucky, but these situations were really out of my expectation,” said Ginting.
Based on the BWF’s “General Competition Regulations”, section 16.2.5 stated “If illness, injury, disqualification or other unavoidable hindrance prevents a Player / pair completing all the group matches, all the results of that Player / pair shall be deleted. Retiring during a match shall be considered to be not completing all group matches.”
Therefore, all points related to Axelsen at the World Tour Finals would be automatically deleted. This made Ginting, Chen Long, Chou Tien Chen to tie in Group B standings with 2 wins and 1 loss. However, Ginting topped Group B after Friday’s match because he earned +1 game differences after playing rubber against Chou in the first match, while Chen Long’s game difference was zero because he lost straight game to Ginting and won two straight games over Chou.
Due to the BWF calculation formula, Chou was eliminated from the semi-final and Ginting will face Chen on Saturday.
“For the next match, I want to try to play like yesterday, and also want to enjoy the game as well as doing my best on the court. Of course, I am going to study and learn strategies I want to use on the court and focus on just playing well,” added Ginting.
In another men’s singles semi-final, the World No. 1 Kento Momota powered past World No. 6 Jonatan Christie 21-14, 21-14 to revved into the last four.
Even though Wang Tzu Wei lost his last Group A match to Anders Antonsen 21-23, 21-12, 12-21, his game differences were better than both Jonatan Christie and Anders Antonsen, therefore, he managed to enter the semi-final and will next face Momota whom defeated him in their first Group A match that took place on Wednesday.
Below are the draws for the semi-finals of 2019 BWF World Tour Finals:
Men’s Singles:
Chen Long vs. Anthony Sinisuka Ginting
Kento Momota vs. Wang Tzu Wei
Men’s Doubles:
Hiroyuki Endo/Yuta Watanabe vs. Marcus Fernaldi Gideon/Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo
Mohammad Ahsan/Hendra Setiawan vs. Lee Yang/Wang Chi-lin
Mixed Doubles:
Zheng Si Wei/Huang Ya Qiong vs. Yuta Watanabe/Arisa Higashino
Wang Yi Lyu/Huang Dong Ping vs. Dechapol Puavaranukroh/Sapsiree Taerattanachai
Women’s Singles:
Tai Tzu Ying vs. Nozomi Okuhara
Chen Yu Fei vs. Akane Yamaguchi
Women’s Doubles:
Chen Qing Chen/Jia Yi Fan vs. Lee So Hee/Shin Seung Chan
Yuki Fukushima/Sayaka Hirota vs. Mayu Matsumoto/Wakana Nagahara
