MD - Day 4 : Mignons in, Daddies out

Mohammad AHSAN and Hendra SETIAWAN (Indonesia) will unfortunately not be at the semifinal meeting. They have been kicked out by KO Sung Hyun and SHIN Baekcheol (Korea). The Korean will face Aaron CHIA and SOH Wooi Yik to try to reach the final. Later tonight, the Mignons played strong to join their country fellows Fajar ALFIAN and Muhammad Rian ADRIANTO in semifinals tomorrow.

Korean performance !

Among the three Indonesian pairs, it is the seeded number 2 Mohammad AHSAN and Hendra SETIAWAN (world number 2, Indonesia) who played first. In their way stood KO Sung Hyun and SHIN Baekcheol (world no 25, Korea). It was a really tough match all along, a real battle ! The 32 and 34 years old Korean players started well but the Indonesian experience brought them back. The 14/14 point won by the Daddies after an impressive defense from SETIAWAN and another one behind the back from AHSAN brought the Indonesians the confidence they needed to win the opening game : 21/16. The next game was as tight as the first one but the world number 25 kept their blood cold to win it 21/19. They kept pushing in the final set until they had a comfortable advantage : 11/7 at the interval. They even increased it and finally won their tickets for the next round : 21/13. This was a great performance from the 2019 Yonex US Open champions : “We lost the first set pretty easily because we were not focused. But in the 2 other sets, we have been able to push ourselves to the maximum and therefore we won the match. ”

They will be opposed to Aaron CHIA and SOH Wooi Yik (world no 8, Malaysia). Indeed, the seeded number 4 were facing the seeded number 5 Satwiksairaj RANKIREDDY and Chirag SHETTY (world number 10, India). The match lasted more than an hour and the Malaysian finally got their tickets to the semis : 18/21 21/18 21/17.

The Mignons in control

Marcus Fernaldi GIDEON and Kevein Sanjaya SUKAMULJO (world no 1, Indonesia) were not trapped by ONG Tew Sin and TEO Ee Yi (world no 15, Malaysia). The Mignons did great in the first set that they gained 21/13 in less than 10 minutes. They Malaysians that never won against the best team in the world in 4 matches played a strong second game pushing the defending champions to 20/20. However, the Mignons succeeded scoreing the next 2 points and qualified to the next round.

A next round in which they will face their country fellows Fajar ALFIAN and Muhammad Rian ADRIANTO who defeated Takuro HOKI and Yugo KOBAYASHI (world no 16, Japan). This was actually the last match of the day, the Japanese took the best start and were leading set 1 all along until 19/19. They had 2 opportunities to take the set but the Indonesians defended well and outscored them 23/21. With a great confidence, they led the next set from the beginning until the end to be at the semifinals appointment. After the game, the Japanese wisely told us that “This type of players are very common in badminton. We are used to them, either you win or you lose. It was just a missed opportunity in the first set”. The Indonesians were happy to play the world number 1 in the next round : “Thank god we won that match ! The first set was very difficult for us. We were glad we did not give up and stayed focus. For tomorrow, it is true that we already know them, we play with them, we train with them. Our main goal is to take a good rest to be focused on them tomorrow.”