BIRMINGHAM, March 17 (Xinhua) — Olympic champion Chen Yufei of China fought arduous to achieve the ladies’s singles semifinals on the All England Badminton Open right here on Friday.
Chen, 25, performed a seesaw match in opposition to Gregoria Mariska Tunjung within the Birmingham Arena. The fourth seed finally noticed off her Indonesian opponent 24-22 and 23-21 after 56 minutes.
“The match was as tough as what the scoreline showed,” stated Chen. “Maybe there were fewer rallies because of the wind, but it still had a high demand on my concentration.”
Chen will face Japanese Akane Yamaguchi because the defending champion and world No. 1 beat China’s Wang Zhiyi 21-19 and 21-12 earlier within the quarterfinals.
“She plays her shots at a very high speed during the rallies and she does quite well in both attack and defense,” stated Chen, who misplaced to Yamaguchi within the semifinals ultimately week’s German Open.
“I will put the result aside, and I would like to learn something from her by playing against her,” stated Chen. “But I will definitely try my best and restrain her performance.”
The ladies’s doubles prime seeds Chen Qingchen/Jia Yifan of China suffered a bitter loss to South Korea’s sixth seeds Kim So-yeong/Kong Hee-yong 19-21, 22-20 and 24-22.
“I made too many mistakes,” the 25-year-old Jia rued. “We had chances to win the second game and we tried to adjust when we were behind in the third game. But I made too many unforced errors, which was the main reason for our loss today.”
In the lads’s singles, China’s Shi Yuqi beat teammate Weng Hongyang 21-9, 21-16 to arrange a semifinal conflict with Malaysian fourth seed Lee Zii Jia.
The 2021 champion Lee eradicated seventh-seeded Japanese Kodai Naraoka 21-9, 10-21 and 21-13. The different semifinal shall be performed between Anders Antonsen of Denmark and China’s Li Shifeng.
China’s Zheng Siwei/Huang Yaqiong eased into the blended doubles semifinals by beating Japanese duo Yuki Kaneko/Misaki Matsutomo 21-13, 21-11. The Olympic runners-up Zheng and Huang will lock horns with Rehan Naufal Kusharjanto/Lisa Ayu Kusumawati of Indonesia on Saturday.
Both semifinals within the males’s doubles shall be performed between Chinese and Indonesian pairs.