Taiwan’s Olympic badminton doubles champions Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin yesterday beat Japan’s Keiichiro Matsui and Yoshinori Takeuchi 18-21, 21-12, 21-12 in their round-of-16 match at the Super 750 Indonesia Masters.
In the women’s singles, Taiwan’s Pai Yu-po was defeated 19-21, 21-19, 11-21 by Russia’s Evgeniya Kosetskaya.
Taiwanese badminton ace Chou Tien-chen sailed into the last 16 after dispatching France’s Thomas Rouxel 22-20, 21-17 in 46 minutes on Tuesday.
Photo: EPA-EFE
In the pair’s first-ever meeting, fourth seed Chou beat the unseeded world No. 38 Rouxel in a thrilling match at the Bali International Convention Center.
While Chou trailed for most of the first game, he found his form to level the scores at 14-14.
The game remained tight until Rouxel found match point at 20-19, only for Chou to shoot ahead and seal the game 22-20.
Chou displayed his dominance in the second game, reaching a comfortable lead of 15-8, before Rouxel reeled four consecutive points to narrow the gap.
However, Chou found match point at 20-15, with Rouxel saving the first and second before giving the game away 21-17.
Taiwanese world No. 11 Wang Tzu-wei crashed out in a first-round upset against World No. 30 Loh Kean Yew of Singapore on Tuesday.
Wang was defeated 21-17, 14-21, 15-21 in 1 hour, 6 minutes, extending 24-year-old Loh’s head-to-head record against Wang to 3-1.
Despite his ranking, Wang has only one victory against the Singaporean, which came during the quarter-finals of the 2015 Chinese Taipei Grand Prix.
Chou is to have an opportunity to enact some revenge for his compatriot when he comes up against Loh in the quarter-finals.
The Super 750 Indonesia Masters has a prize purse of US$600,000, and is the first stop in the three-tournament Indonesia Badminton Festival, which also includes the US$850,000 Super 1000 Indonesia Open from Tuesday to Sunday next week and the US$1.5 million BWF World Tour Finals that start on Dec. 1.
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