VICTOR Korea Open 2010 - Sweet revenge for Lee-Jung, Chong Wei

Posted by Lucas Liau News 3:41 PM

Malaysia's Lee Chong Wei also dethroned Peter Gade to capture the men's singles title but China, once again, took the lion's share of titles, winning three of the five titles at stake.

She had scalped top seed Tine Rasmussen and the experienced Yao Jie from the Netherlands enroute to the final, but China's Wang Shixian finally stopped 18-year-old Sung Ji Hyun in straight games to give China the first title of the day.

The first game started on a disastrous note for the Korean as she could not cope with the precision and strong attacking game from Wang and bowed 21-10. However, Sung made a strong rally in the second game and took the fight to her Chinese opponent and stayed in the hunt to force the match into a third game.

Wang, on other hand, recovered sufficiently from the blip to nail the second game 25-23 much to the disappointment of the local fans.

Restless, the fans were given a big boost when the men's doubles pair of Lee Yong Dae and Jung Jae Sung came onto court - taking on arch rivals Cai Yun-Fu Haifeng of China.

Against the memory of a remarkable match at the World Championships final last August, expectations were high of another top class performance from both pairs - and the fans were not disappointed.

In fact, the fans were appeased greatly as Yong Dae-Jae Sung beat the Chinese in three games to atone for their loss in Hyderabad.

Yong Dae, once again, was commanding at the net, and supported ably by Jae Sung from the back with steep smashes, the Koreans were always a step in front of the Chinese.

Aided by several unforced errors from Cai Yun and Fu Haifeng at some crucial stages, the Koreans wrapped up the match in 68 minutes to win 21-11, 14-21, 21-18.

World No 1 Lee Chong Wei also ended Peter Gade's gallant run in just 34 minutes after the Dane could hardly raise his game to the standards he showed in his quarter-final and semi-final triumphs.

In his last two matches, Gade averaged some 70 minutes on court for each match but the strain of playing of so many tough matches back to back seemed to finally catch up on the 33-year old as the Dane never looked comfortable in his match against Chong Wei and promptly lost 21-11, 21-12.

Chong Wei, on the other end, regained some measure of revenge as he lost to Gade, at the same stage, in Seoul last year. But more importantly, the win set the tone for Chong Wei for the expected showdown against triple world champion Lin Dan of China in next week's Malaysia Open Super Series in Kuala Lumpur.

Tao Jiaming-Zhang Yawen's, who scored emphatic wins over Olympic champions Lee Yong Dae-Lee Hyung Won and world champions Thomas Laybourn-Kamilla Rytter Juhl in the tournament, run were finally brought to a stop by compatriots He Hanbin-Yu Yang 21-15, 21-16 in all China final while the women's doubles title went to Cheng Shu-Zhao Yunlei who beat Japan's Mizuki Fujii-Reika Kaiiwa 21-16, 21-15.