12th WUC Badminton: Individual Competitions started

GWANGJU – The individual competitions started on November 9^th. It was not a good day for SRI. All 15 players of SRI failed to go to the next round of the tournament. Hasitha Fernando, an advanced player from SRI, seemed to give hope to their miserably failed team by leading points in the match with Pieric Langlais Gagne from CAN, but he lost at last.

In the men’s singles, Shu Wada from JPN defeated Michal Rogalski from POL even after going into deuce set points in the first set. Shu Wada won the 2^nd set without much difficulty. Unlike Shu Wada, Michiharu Kido did not have much luck. He got the lead in the first set against Zongyao Song from CHN but the Great Wall was way too high for him, giving Song the ticket to the next round. 

In men’s doubles, Yaroslavtsev and Zarembovskiy from RUS played a very tight match against Philippe Charron and Pieric Langlais Gagne from CAN. The game lasted for 47minutes which is an unusually long time for a badminton game. The second set, especially, was a real cliffhanger with 28-26 score points. The pro players Kim Ki-jung and Lee Yong-dae from KOR performed a speedy match with Dilshad Kamaludheen and P.H Suraj from IND. They exchanged powerful smashing over the net and the crowd could not take their eyes off the court.

As for the women’s singles, Japanese player Saya Yamamoto played a perfect game against Liz Kobusinge from UGA. Hsiao-Huan Chen and Hsiao-Ma Pai representing TPE moved to the next round safely proving TPE to be one of the world’s badminton powerhouses.

The individual quarterfinals and the semifinals of the 12^th World University Badminton Championship took place today, November 10^th, 2012.

 

In the mixed doubles, the no.1 seed team Wojciech Szkudlarczyk and Agnieszka Wojtkowska (POL) played a very close match with JPN’s Tatsuya Watanabe and Erika Sanno, going into deuce in the first set by 23-21. Unfortunately, JPN lost the second game by 3 points with 21-18.

In the men’s singles, the no.1 seed Pablo Abian from ESP performed poorly in the second game against Kuei-chun Shin (TPE) scoring only 5 points while Shin made 21 points. But his victory in the first and third games saved him from losing the no.1 seed title.

The individual semi-finals were very interesting, indeed, worthy of the name. Especially the men’s doubles between KOR and GER was a thrilling one from start to finish. KOR and GER exchanged strong smashes one after another which got the spectators to their feet until the end of the game. GER won the first match by 21-19 and found their pace soon finishing their opponents off with 21-13 and 21-17 in the second and third sets.

In the women’s doubles between TPE and JPN, the match was very close like many other matches the athletes showed during the Championship continuing to the 3rd round. Their 2nd round went overtime and ended with 24-26 points. In the end, TPE won against JPN by 21-16, 24-26 and 21-19.

 

(Source: WUBC OC)

 

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