MADRID: Wong Mew Choo, the 13th seeded Malaysian, got the World Badminton Championships off to a sensational start when she saved four match points in a row to survive the first round.
It looked like an early exit for Wong when she went 13-18 and then 16-20 down in the second game having lost the first to Yu-Chin-chien of Taipei in difficult drift-affected conditions.
But nerves appeared to affect the islander just when she was on the brink of a notable success and Wong hung on to take six points in a row and eventually the match by 18-21, 22-20, 21-10.
By the end it was hard to believe that Wong had been so edgy and below par for the first half of the contest, for after the psychological tipping point of the second game she was quickly 6-1 up in the third and sailing quickly into calmer waters. "It was my first game in the world champs so I was very nervous," Wong admitted. "I felt I didn't have any hope of winning towards the end of the second game.
"But I didn't have anything to lose so I tried my best and got the points. Maybe the Taiwan girl was trying to win so much that she started to make mistakes and it helped me."
Two other seeded players had a far less troubled start, Kaori Mori, the ninth seed from Japan, overcoming Anu Nieminen of Finland, with increasing authority, by 21-18, 21-11, and Yao Jie, the sixth-seeded China-raised former European champion from The Netherlands, scoring a well crafted win, by 21-16, 21-11 over Yu Hirayama of Japan.
(source: Gulf Daily)
