Men’s and women’s world number ones Kento Momota and Tai Tzu Ying had to work hard but booked their respective berths in the finals of the All England badminton championship in Birmingham on Saturday.
Momota, chasing his first All England title, defeated Hong Kong’s Ng Ka Long Angus 21-19, 21-11 while two-time defending champion Tai Tzu got the better of Japan’s Akane Yamaguchi 21-13, 10-21, 21-8 in 47 minutes.
Twenty four-year-old Momota was stretched in the opening game as Ng tried to match him during the long rallies but was completely dominant in the second. he will now face former world champion Viktor Axelsen, who knocked out China’s Shi Yuqi 22-20, 13-21, 21-9 in the other semi-final.
“I think my facial expressions pretty much described how I felt! During the second game I made a few bad judgements, Shi Yuqi played really well and I decided to spare my energy a little bit,” said Axelsen, who had lost in the quarterfinals three times in a row since 2015.
“Luckily it turned out to be a good decision as I played quite well in the third game, so right now I’m just really happy and looking forward to the game tomorrow,” he added.
Since losing to Lin Dan here in 2017 Axelsen has since been a world number one and world champion, but he’s not fixated on becoming the first Dane to win the men’s singles at the All England Open since Peter Gade in 1999.
“I think no matter what tournament you play there’s always these statistics and history and whatever, you can spend however many hours thinking about it,” he said.
“It’s turned out pretty OK. It’s obviously going to be a really tough match but we’ll see what happens.”
Tai Tzu to face Chen Yufei
While both the men are looking for their first All England title, Tai Tzu looks primed to complete a hat-trick at the BWF World Tour Super 1000 tournament despite dropping her only game of the tournament so far.
The Chinese Taipei shuttler had raced through the opening game but suddenly suffered a lapse in concentration in the second, raising hopes of a possible upset from Yamaguchi. But Tai Tzu simply bulldozed her opponent in the decider and will now face China’s Chen Yufei in the final.
Yufei, who defeated former world champion Nozomi Okuhara 21-17, 21-11 in the other semi-final, hasn’t beaten Tai Tzu in their 11 previous meetings and it would be interesting to see whether the Chinese can break that trend and deny the world number one in Arena Birmingham.
(With inputs from AFP)
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