TheStar SINGAPORE: World Championship bound Wong Choong Hann suffered another body blow when he fell by the wayside in only the second round of the Aviva Singapore Open badminton championships at the Singapore Indoor Stadium here last night. The newly-married Malaysian simply had no power in his game against Indonesian-born Singaporean Ronald Susilo and fell 3-15, 9-15 on a day when two other candidates for Los Angeles – Muhd Hafiz Hashim and Lee Chong Wei – proved to be fiery in the chilly stadium to march into the third round. Chong Wei, runner-up to Kenneth Jonassen last year, made short work of Denmark’s Peter Nikkelsen in the second round, winning 15-7, 15-1. In the first round, he stopped China’s junior world champion Chen Jin with a crafty 15-7, 15-10 win. Also through to the third round were Kuan Beng Hong who beat Taiwan’s Liao Sheng-shiun 15-10, 15-6. His third round opponent is China’s Bao Chunlai. Choong Hann lasted only 40 minutes on the court. He hardly posed a threat to Ronald in the first game. In the second, the Malaysian tried gamely to make a comeback and led 9-6. But this soon disappeared when he surrendered his service and there was no looking back for Ronald with the crowd fully behind him. While Choong Hann was a disappointment, Hafiz gave an impressive performance in his second round 15-7, 15-11 win over Chinese qualifier Gong Weijie. Hafiz, who is still bothered by a tooth problem, will now take on Hong Kong’s Ng Wei for a place in the quarter-finals. “I have never played Ng Wei before but I am quite happy with my form. I used the first two matches to test the courts. My target is the quarter-finals where I am expected to play China’s Lin Dan. If I can beat Lin Dan, then I can look beyond the semi-finals,” said Hafiz who lost to eventual champion Kenneth Jonassen in the semi-finals last year. “Lin Dan is a complete player who has everything. But I am shaping up well and hope to achieve what I have planned in Singapore. So far so good and I am quite pleased.” Choong Hann took his defeat to Ronald as a “blessing in disguise”. “Ronald managed to control the baseline and put me under pressure. He also managed to play to the environment. I am disappointed with my own game. I will have to work on certain things in my preparations for the world meet. “I came close to winning the world title in 2003 but lost. Now that I have been given another chance I would not like to let it go to waste. My defeat in Singapore is certainly not a damper in my preparations for the World Championships,” said Choong Hann who lost to China’s Xia Xuanze in the final of the 2003 World Championships. Fourth seeded Chong Wei had this to say: “The conditions here are comfortable and I am okay with the way things are going. But I have a very tough group. I have Chen Hong and Bao Chunlai.”
