Hong Kong: Top seed Chen Long who was knocked out by Marc Zwiebler of Germany in the second round of China Open last week, notched an opening-round victory in Hong Kong Open after defeating India’s Ajay Jayaram 21-13,21-7 in just 34 minutes.
The unseeded Chong Wei Feng of Malaysia who is known as a player who always play well in the first round only to follow with a poor showing in second round, eased past 8th seed Tian Houwei of China 21-15, 21-8 on Wednesday. It remains to be seen whether he’ll able to race past Takuma Ueda of Japan on Thursday.
Meanwhile, second seed Jan O Jorgensen saw off Marc Zwiebler with 21-17, 11-21, 21-11 and his Danish compatriot Viktor Axelsen granted the fourth seed Kenichi Tago to a 21-15, 23-21 first-round loss.
However, third seed Tommy Sugiarto of Indonesia was sent packing losing to home shuttler Wei Nan 21-15, 15-21, 19-21 in a tightly contested encounter that lasted an hour and a minute.
Last week’s China Superseries champion Kidambi Srikanth continued his impressive form to emerge as a winner over the French Superseries winner Chinese Taipei’s Chou Tien-chen in an 18-21, 22-20, 21-16 victory that took 76 minutes.
Wednesday was a tough day for the Malaysian team, as it suffered a huge blow to its five doubles pairs with Amelia Alicia Anscelly-Fie Cho Soong (women’s doubles), Vivian Kah Mun Hoo-Woon Khe Wei (women’s doubles), Hoon Thien How-Tan Boon Heong (men’s doubles), Chan Peng Soon-Ng Hui Lin (mixed doubles), and Tan Aik Quan-Lai Pei Jing (mixed doubles) all crashed out of the tournament. World No. 34 Lim Yin Loo-Lee Meng Yean was the only bright spot on an otherwise disappointing day for the Malaysian’s doubles department when they saved 2 match points to come from behind for a 16-21, 21-14, 23-21 win against Jwala Gutta-Ashwini Ponnappa of India.
