Fuzhou: China’s women’s singles No. 4 seed Chen Yufei played fearlessly in the China Open final on Sunday, and was delighted finally to conquer No. 7 seed Nozomi Okuhara of Japan in their fourth career meeting 21-10, 21-16 to win her first ever BWF World Tour Super 750 title.
Chen Yufei started off aggressively, racing to a quick 4-1, 8-3 lead and took firm control match by not allowing Okuhara any chance of counterattacks to win the first set 21-10.
The 20-year-old Chinese player continued her aggressive tactics in the second set and surged to the 10-6 lead. Okuhara fought back to level at 12-12, before Chen seized the opportunity to see off the Japanese player 21-16.
“I beat two strong players, Carolina Marin in the semi-final and Okuhara in the final, whom I never won over before. It’s really confidence boosters for me,” said Chen.
In the mixed doubles final, home shuttlers and World Champions Zheng Siwei/Huang Yaqiong collected their ninth mixed doubles crown of the season and their seventh straight win against their fellow teammate No. 2 seeds Wang Yilyu/Huang Dongping 21-15, 11-21, 21-19.
Wang/Huang had a chance to reach the match point when they were leading at 19-18, however, at the end of that rally, Wang dived to the left baseline but failed to return a shot from Zheng Siwei that was obviously out of bound. That mistake proved costly as they went on to lose to the No. 1 seeds.
“We lost too many times, that affected our confidence to beat them” said Wang.
“We need to overcome this and we’re very close in beating them today and will try to find a way to beat them in the future,” added Wang.
The women’s doubles final saw seventh-seeded Lee So Hee/Shin Seung Chan of Korea had to fight tooth and nail to overcome the fifth seeds Mayu Matsumoto/Wakana Nagahara Japan 23-21, 21-18.
