Saarbrucken: The men’s singles World No. 8 Lee Zii Jia of Malaysia started off his HYLO Open second round against Nhat Nguyen of Ireland rather slow before turning it on and coming back to win on Thursday.
Lee had a rough start as he was trailing 5-9 at the beginning of the first set as Nguyen was aggressive and energetic while Lee was uncharacteristically sloppy. Lee then slowly resumed his dominating form and showed off his strong court coverage to basically smother his 21-year-old opponent with a 22-20 first set win.
Nguyen was visibly exhausted in the second set, and Lee wasted no time to soar past Nguyen 21-16 to set up a quarter-final meeting with World No. 18 Kantaphon Wangcharoen of Thailand on Friday.
In other men’s singles competition, Loh Kean Yew of Singapore extended his dominance at the HYLO Open to beat Toma Junior Popov of France 21-15, 11-21, 21-15. Loh will play Rasmus Gemke of Denmark next.
In mixed doubles, Malaysia’s World No. 49 Chen Tang Jie/Peck Yen Wei aced a tough test over the World No. 7 Marcus Ellis/Lauren Smith of England. The unseeded Malaysian pair dropped the first game 18-21 but took control of the next two games to win 21-11, 21-14.
“We are quite frustrated, that was not our best performance. I think we are capable of beating those guys, unfortunately, we couldn’t bring the level we needed to bring,” said Smith after the match.
“We tried to make it a small and contained game which actually isn’t our A-game, and they beat us quite a lot on server return,” added Smith.
“After several back-to-back tournaments, I am sure a lot of players are feeling tired,” said Ellis.
“It’s something badminton players have to deal with now as the tour is getting absolutely crazy. Unfortunately, you’re going to have tournaments where you don’t feel very good,” added Ellis.
“We are excited about going to Bali. We haven’t been to Asia since January, and it’s always good to play over there. We are going to try and qualify for the World Tour Finals as well and then World Championships,” Smith commented about the upcoming tournaments which will be held in Bali, Indonesia, and also the World Championships scheduled to take place in Huelva, Spain, from December 12 to December 19, 2021.
Malaysia’s two other mixed doubles pairs – Goh Soon Huat/Shevon Jemie Lai and Hoo Pang Ron/Cheah Yee See have crashed out of the tournament on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Tan Kian Meng/Tan Wee Kiong and Vivian Hoo/Lim Chiew Sien also suffered the second-round exit in men’s doubles and women’s doubles respectively.
