NEWS : Sairul ends Malaysia's campaign

[kwun]

New Straits Times » Sport

BADMINTON/Korea Open: Sairul ends Malaysia's campaign
K.M. Boopathy

Jan 29: MALAYSIA'S campaign in the US$250,000 (RM950,000) Korea Open Badminton Championships came to an end when Sairul Amar Ayub crashed out in the quarter-finals in Incheon yesterday.

Sairul, a former national player, could not contain favourite Peter Gade Christensen of Denmark and fell to a 15-11, 15-4 defeat in just 35 minutes.

Christensen will now meet local favourite Park Sung Hwan in the semi-finals. The 20-year-old Korean defeated Ng Wei of Hong Kong 15-13, 11-15, 15-10 in the last eight.

Second seed Kenneth Jonassen, the 2003 champion, also made it to the last four after beating Shoji Sato of Japan 15-1, 17-14.

The Dane plays Athens Olympics semi-finalist Boonsak Ponsana of Thailand today. Boonsak defeated Korean junior Ahn Hyun Suk 15-8, 15-3 in the quarter-finals.

RESULTS - (All q-finals) Men's singles: Peter Gade Christensen (Den) bt Sairul Amar Ayub (Mas) 15-11, 15-4; Kenneth Jonassen (Den) bt Shoji Sato (Jpn) 15-1, 17-14; Boonsak Ponsana (Tha) bt Ahn Hyun Suk (S Kor) 15-8, 15-3; Park Sung Hwan (S Kor) bt Ng Wei (HK) 15-13, 11-15, 15-10.

Doubles: Jung Jae Sung-Lee Jae Jin (S Kor) bt Mathias Boe-Carsten Mogensen (Den) 15-11, 15-6; Candra Wijaya-Sigit Budiarto (Ina) bt Albertus Susanto-Liu Kok Wa (HK) 15-5, 15-8; Guo Zhendong-Xie Zhongbo (Chn) bt Thomas Laybourn-Peter Steffensen (Den) 15-11, 15-7; Jens Eriksen-Martin Lundgaard Hansen (Den) bt Shuichi Sakamoto-Shintaro Ikeda (Jpn) 15-7, 15-3.

Women's singles: Jun Jae Youn (S Kor) bt Wang Rong (Chn) 11-6, 13-12; Pi Hongyan (Fra) bt Eriko Hirose (Jpn) 6-11, 11-8, 11-4; Wang Chen (HK) bt Seo Yoon Hee (S Kor) 11-2, 11-7.

 

[kwun]

[size=-1]The Star Online > Sports[/size]

Saturday January 29, 2005​

[size=+2]Shuttler Sairul runs out of steam in last eight[/size]

INCHEON: National discard Sairul Amar Ayob's gallant run came to end in the quarter-finals of the US$250,000 Korean Open badminton championships yesterday.

After a fighting show in the first game, the 25-year-old Sairul ran out of steam and went down 11-15, 4-15 to top seed Peter Gade-Christensen of Denmark.

Sairul's defeat marked the end of Malaysia's challenge in the Korean Open,

Except for Sairul, none of the other Malaysian players cleared the early rounds of the six-star tournament.

Malaysia's challenge also ended in the men's doubles (Mohd Fairuzizuan Mohd Tazari-Lin Woon Fui, Gan Teik Chai-Mohd Zakry Abdul Latif and Ong Soon Hock-Tan Bin Shen) and in the women's doubles (Chin Eei Hui-Wong Pei Tty, Ooi Sock Ai-Mooi Hing Yau and Fong Chew Yen-See Phui Leng).

Eei Hui-Pei Tty, ranked No. 8 in the world, certainly did not live up to their seeding in the first Open tournament for the year. The third seeded duo went down to Japanese Aki Akao-Tomomi Matsuda in the second round.

 

[Wai Shing]

Sairul seems to give trouble to a lot of top players, I thought he would take Peter to at least rubber set...was he too tired from fighting his compatriot Roslin the day before?

 

[event]

Sairul seems to give trouble to a lot of top players, I thought he would take Peter to at least rubber set...was he too tired from fighting his compatriot Roslin the day before?

He seemed to have lots of steam against Roslin in all 3 games. As I've heard, a 3-game match, even at the highest calibre, is nothing compared to the training these guys do daily so I doubt that was it. Roslin's skill and experience showed in the second game against Sairul but he was neither fit nor consistent enough to take the match. Gade, on the other hand, didn't lift the shuttle as much as Roslin did and so didn't get punished as much by Sairul's smash. He is just plain on his game. His smash is wicked. He is fit. He is deceptive when he needs to be, and in general, he has just been staying in control of these weaker players. I didn't see him do anything fancy against Park Sung-hwan yesterday. He just did everything right and won the game.

Sairul looked very determined against Roslin but against Gade, he lacked some focus, much like Hafiz did against Jonassen.

It was too bad to see the Malaysians get eliminated so early. There were some ardent supporters there backing some excellent players but I haven't seen Malaysians do well at all in the Korea Open. I think Wong Choong Han made the semis at the Asian Games in 2002 and Lee Tsuen-seng made the Open semis the same year but other than that, nothing.

 

[FEND.]

The title should be revamped though... It made it sound as if he threw the game away...

 

[event]

The title should be revamped though... It made it sound as if he threw the game away...

Is that the New Straits Times title? Maybe a Malaysian sports writer considered his loss a national letdown. He definitely didn't throw the game and the article doesn't say that, either. Simply put, Gade has beaten the best and on Friday, Sairul wasn't even at his personal best, let alone the world's.