Odense: The world’s top men’s pairs fell one by one at the 2021 Denmark Open on Thursday.
Indonesia’s World No. 1 men’s pair was ousted by compatriots, World No. 41 Muhammad Shohibul Fikri/Bagas Maulanain in the second round. Fikri/Maulanain came from 4-9 in the decider to eventually win their first encounter with the World No. 1 pair 17-21, 21-17, 23-21. Fikri/Maulanain will play World No. 11 Kim Astrup/Anders Skaarup Rasmussen of Denmark on Friday.
The Tokyo Olympic gold medallists -Lee Yang/Wang Chi-Lin also crashed out in the Denmark Open second round, to Japan’s World No. 15 Takuro Hoki/Yugo Kobayashi, who survived the strong come from behind attempts by the Taiwanese pair and eliminated Lee/Wang 21-19, 21-17. Hoki/Kobayashi will take on teammates, World No. 27 Akira Koga/Taichi Saito next.
Meanwhile, Koga/Saito also pulled off an upset on Thursday to down World No. 8 Aaron Chia/Soh Wooi Yik of Malaysia 21-19, 21-13.
Even though their higher-ranked teammates were sent packing, Malaysia’s World No. 26 Goh Sze Fei/Nur Izzuddin also created an upset by themselves on Thursday to beat World No. 10 Satwiksairaj Rankireddy/Chirag Shetty of India 14-21, 21-15, 21-15. Goh/Izzuddin will meet Indonesia’s World No. 7 Fajar Alfian/Muhammad Rian Ardianto in the quarter-finals.
Compared to men’s doubles, the men’s singles event was relatively calm on Thursday with the only upset coming from World No. 28 Sameer Verma of India outlasted Denmark’s World No. 3 and also the No. 3 seed Anders Antonsen 21-14, 21-18 in 50 minutes.
Other top men’s singles players including the No. 1 seed Kento Momota, No. 2 seed Viktor Axelsen, and No. 4 seed Chou Tien Chen all advanced to the quarter-finals.
In an interesting second-round match-up between Malaysia’s World No. 8 Lee Zii Jia and World No. 35 Daren Liew, Lee picked up an easy victory against Liew by winning 21-11, 21-14 to play Viktor Axelsen on Friday.
The 2021 Denmark Open is a BWF World Tour Super 1000 event, it offers total prize money of USD $850,000.
