Barcelona: The World No. 6 Viktor Axelsen of Denmark gave World No. 69 Loh Kean Yew of Singapore a reality check as the Dane needed only 31 minutes to see off Loh 21-13, 21-10 in the quarter-finals of Barcelona Spain Masters on Friday.
Loh has been riding high on the momentum from his win against two-time Olympic Champion Lin Dan in the Thailand Masters final earlier this year. However, the loss to Axelsen has revealed a lot of his weaknesses that he still has a long way to go before becoming a badminton superstar himself.
Axelsen will take on qualifier Ren Pengbo from China on Saturday. The other men’s singles semi-final will be between No. 3 seed Anders Antonsen of Denmark and Zhao Junpeng of China.
Malaysia’s challenge at 2019 Barcelona Spain Masters has ended after the only two pairs left standing, Goh Sze Fei/Nur Izzuddin (men’s doubles), Chow Mei Kuan/Lee Meng Yean (women’s doubles) were sent packing by their respective opponents in the quarter-finals on Friday.
Despite a spirited fight, the unseeded Goh/Izzuddin lost to No. 3 seeds Mathias Boe/Carsten Mogensen of Denmark 20-22, 21-18, 19-21 in 78 minutes.
Boe/Mogensen will meet No. 5 seeds Lee Yang/Wang Chi-Lin of Taiwan in the last four.
The No. 4 seeds Chow/Lee also showed tremendous resilience before going down to No. 6 seeds Kim So Yeong/Kong Hee Yong of Korea 6-21, 21-19, 12-21 in 61 minutes.
Kim/Kong will face No. 1 seeds Gabriela Stoeva/Stefani Stoeva of Bulgaria next.
