News BWF WORLD SUPER SERIES - DENMARK OPEN 2009: Tine wins, heartbreak for Kamilla-Lena

“Almost 100 %”. That’s what the Tine hinted after her semi-final win at the Denmark Open, in reference to her performance.

Apparently, she seemed to have gained that little extra during the night – unless it’s just all about being a champion on key matches. Whatever it was, Tine Rasmussen, seeded second after a year with ups and downs, beat the top seed from China, Wang Yihan, 21/18, 19/21, 21/14.

Both players had had different ways of preparing this Denmark Open. For Tine, it was all about coming back from a series of injuries, which had prevented her to shine in the World Championships, first, after an amazing start to 2009.

Wang Yihan, on her end, was the one sent to Denmark by China after all, even if the latter – as all her compatriots, had just come out of the National Games, a very important event in China – the second biggest sport event after the Olympics.

Wang participated in both the team and Individual event and in spite of an early exit, had not been in the best shape before flying to Copenhagen. It was good enough to pass all tests until the final – talent and class made the trick – but not when facing one of China’s top opponents in the name of Tine Rasmussen.

Wang just ran out of steam while Tine could run on. It seemed for a while, at the beginning of the third game that the Chinese had the upper hand, but the Dane saw that she was breathing heavily and started controlling the rallies, making her run the four corners.

Eventually, Wang just lost it when at 12/13, she made few unforced errors in a row to allow Tine to take a big lead at 18/12 and eventually win the title.

“I knew I had it into me today, but I also knew I had to play close to perfection against Wang Yihan in order to win. I had played good and bad this week so I didn’t know what to expect but coming on court, I had felt that I had already been succeeding in my comeback, so it was all about giving my best. It worked and it’s really a great feeling to win here for the first time on home ground,” she said.

Few minutes earlier, Denmark had had a bad start with Lena Frier and Kamilla Rytter Juhl falling over on the last step and having to settle for silver in the women’s doubles. Pan Pan and Zhang Yawen, in spite of Pan’s lack of experience in such finals, made it through with a bit more constistency, even if the Danes had clearly understood that the main target was to be Pan Pan.

It is not an easy task to do to rule out a player and Zhang did put all her weight in the match at key times, for an epic three-game battle, won 22/20 – 18/21 – 21/12.

“They are a tough pair to play even if they’re new partners, but we also played quite well in the first two games. It’s a shame we couldn’t keep it up in the third,” said Kamilla. It was however a sad way for this duo to stop their career together, on a defeat, even if Lena was taking it in a rather positive note.

“I think we’ve done a lot of good matches together and we’ll have plenty to look back to. Today, we tried our best and it didn’t work yet it was close and it was far from being a victory. It’s still a good way to end a career for both of us,” said Lena, who, after 9 years of partnership with Kamilla, is yet to make it official whether she will keep on going with another partner while Kamilla will focus only on her mixed doubles partnership with Thomas Laybourn.

Joachim Fischer Nielsen and Christinna Pedersen surely enjoyed their final against England’s Donna Kellogg and Anthony Clark in spite of a thrilling ending and some suspenseful moment. Had they lost this match, they would have been very frustrated as they had let go with no less than seven match points in the second game.

But they kept their composure and showed they’d learned lessons from the past, when they led all the way through the third game to clinch the match after a final 1hour and 22 minutes of play and a score of 21/16 – 25/27 – 21/17.

The match between Mathias Boe-Carsten Mogensen and Koo Kien Keat-Tan Boon Heong was a succession of hard fought battle and exhibition match. And it was the Malaysians, finally, who got the edge, avenging their loss of the All England this year, when Boe and Mogensen had gotten one of their best performance with a 21/7 – 21/17 defeat.

For Kien Keat, it was his third title in Denmark after his victory in 2005 with Chan Chong Ming and in 2007 with Tan Boon Heong.

For Simon Santoso, the victory came as an anti climax for the last final of the day. It may have been because most of the Danish fans had left the stadium since no more Danes were involved, or because the first four finals had taken much more time than expected. Or simply because Marc Zwiebler was no match for him today.

Posted by Lucas Liau on 12:27 PM. Filed under News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0