High Five for Tien Minh in Down Under
News, Top News, world 8:38 PMVietnam’s Nguyen Tien Minh bagged his first title of the year when he beat Malaysia’s K. Yogendran to clinch the Australia Open men’s singles title in Melbourne on Sunday. Despite coming close in the Super Series, Tien Minh has never progressed to the final with semi-final appearances at the Malaysia Open in January and last month’s Indonesia Open being his best finish this year. Tien Minh, the World No 6, took 36 minutes in his 21-14, 21-11 win over the Malaysian and the title will be a major morale booster ahead of the World Championships in Paris next month. The Vietnamese failed to live up to expectations, especially after his strong performances in the season opening Korea Open and Malaysia Open Super Series’, in the Asian Championships in April after he suffered a third round loss to Malaysia’s Mohd Hafiz Hashim in New Delhi. However, he came charging back in the Indonesia Open Super Series where he lost to top seed lee Chong Wei in the semi-finals. Tien Minh’s rise in world badminton has been the talk of Vietnam as he was the first Vietnamese player to play in the Olympic Games and especially after recording famous wins over former Olympic and world champion Taufik Hidayat and current World No 1 Lee Chong Wei in Singapore last year. The BWF-YONEX World Championships will be played on 23-29 August at the Pierre De Coubertin Stadium in Paris, France. Yogendran, a quarter-finalist at the recent Malaysia Open GP Gold tournament in Johor Bahru, was nevertheless satisfied with his performance. “It has been a good outing for me the past few weeks and although I feel I could have played better, I am still happy with my performance.” In the women’s singles, Korea’s Seo Yoon Hee emerged victorious after her 22-20, 14-21, 21-19 win over Japan’s Minatsu Mitani. Korea took another two titles via the mixed doubles and women’s doubles thanks to the efforts from Cho Gun Woo-Kim Min Seo and Kim-Lee Kyung Won respectively. In the men’s doubles, Japan’s Hiroyuki Endo-Kenichi Hayakawa beat Korea’s Kang Woo Kyum-Park Tae Sang 21-15, 21-16 to lift the title.
Posted by Lucas Liau
on 8:38 PM.
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