Nguyen Tien Minh continued his journey at the Japan Open Badminton Tournament by the second win over a young player from Malaysia – Daren Liew.
Tien Minh goes straight into the quarter-finals of Open Japan (pic)
This was the second time in a month Minh faced Liew. Last time, he defeated the Malaysian rival at the Vietnam Open in August. Last year he passed Liew in the tournament at his home.
But the victory did not come easily to Tien Minh in his match yesterday. He encountered strong resistance from Daren Liew.
In this battle, Liew had very effective smashes. He had up to 21 points from smashes while Tien Minh had only 13 points from smashes. The smash shots helped Liew to get balance in the second set with the close score 23-21.
But one of the biggest weaknesses of Liew is the ability to hit over the net – which is one of the strong points of Tien Minh. The Vietnamese player dragged Liew to the race over the net and made his Malaysian opponent lose a lot of points.
After putting effort in the second set, Liew was exhausted in the last set. He could not resolve Tien Minh’s methods anymore. The game ended after 3 sets (21-14, 21-23, 21-16) after 1 hour 12 minutes.
Tien Minh’s next opponent will be the one who trounced the No. 2 seed in the first round, Yun Hu. The Hong Kong player continued to show his impressive style when defeating Ueda Takuma (Japan) after two sets 21-12, 21-10 to move into the quarter-finals.
The round 2 of the men’s singles continued to have surprise when the No. 4 seed, also the strongest player of the host Japan – Sho Sasaki – who suddenly hung courts before Boonsak Ponsana (Thailand) with the score 21-12, 21 – 12.
