Birmingham: Women’s singles No. 1 seed Tai Tzu Ying of Taiwan successfully halted Chinese youngster, Chen Yufei 21-15, 20-22, 21-13 in the All England semifinals held at the Birmingham Arena on Saturday.
Although Tai was able to claw back from 16-20 to level the score at 20-20 in the second set, Chen fended off Tai’s late surge and ultimately won the second set with 22-20 and forced a decider.
Tai was back to dominate the game once again by getting off to a quick 6-1 lead in the third set. After leading 11-6 at the interval, Tai was unstoppable to run away with 21-13 victory in third set.
The World No. 1 Taiwanese player will meet No. 2 seed Akane Yamaguchi in the final.
Yamaguchi had to fight tooth and nail for 79 minutes on Saturday before finally subduing the No. 4 seed PV Sindhu of India to 19-21, 21-19, 21-18 to claim the semi-final match.
In women’s doubles, No. 3 seeds Kamilla Rytter Juhl/Christinna Pedersen of Denmark prevented an all-Japanese women’s doubles final by swatting aside Japanese pair Mayu Matsumoto/Wakana Nagahara 21-15, 22-20 on Saturday.
Juhl/Pedersen will play the winner between No. 5 seeds Shiho Tanaka/Koharu Yonemoto and No. 4 seeds Yuki Fukushima/Sayaka Hirota of Japan for the women’s doubles crown on Sunday.
