Zhou Mi, the world No. 2 who had been hoping to gain revenge on All-England champion Tine Rasmussen for a loss in Malaysia two months ago, won’t get the chance after a startling defeat on Thursday.
The Hong Kong player led 19-15 in the final game against Wang Yihan, a rising 21-year-old from China, and even held a match point at 21-20 before going down 21-19, 18-21, 23-21 in a controversially dramatic finish in the second round of the All-England championships.
Zhou looked as if she might have reached her second match point when she struck a shot which landed so close to the baseline that the line judge began to indicate as though the shuttle had been in, before apparently changing his mind and swinging his arms wide.
PHOTO: AFP
Zhou drew the umpire’s attention to this, but the “out” decision stood, and Wang capitalized by clinching the match in the next rally.
Wang will next play Xie Xingfang, the sixth seed, who beat Adrianti Firdasari of Indonesia.
Later, Rasmussen carried the defense of her title into the quarter-finals with a 21-12, 21-13 win over Larisa Griga of the Ukraine, but elsewhere there were three other seeding upsets.
Nanna Brosolat, a qualifier who recently broke into the top 50 for the first time, scored the finest win of her career by beating Pi Hongyan, the world No. 4.
Xu Huaiwen — the eighth seed from Germany — playing her last All-England before retirement lost to Malaysia’s Wong Pei Xian, while Hong Kong’s Yip Pui-yin overcame Wang Lin, the seventh seed from China, by 21-15, 24-26, 21-19.
The only surprise in the men’s singles was the departure of Indonesian fifth seed Sony Dwi Kuncoro, who injured his back while practising and withdrew.
This allowed Ville Lang of Finland a walk-over into a quarter-final with Lee Chong Wei, the top-seeded Malaysian, who beat Marc Zwiebler of Germany 21-18, 21-16.
In the women’s doubles, No. 1 seeds Cheng Wen-hsing and Chien Yu-chin from Taiwan beat Japan’s Mizuki Fujii and Reika Kakiiwa 21-18, 21-16.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
RSS