Basel: Hendra Setiawan/Mohammad Ahsan have achieved a 100% success rate in World Championships final as they were able to win the World title in all three final appearances, at the 2013, 2015 World Championship, and on Sunday, where the World No. 2 Indonesian pair overcame World No. 13 Takuro Hoki/Yugo Kobayashi of Japan 25-23, 9-21, 21-15 to win their third World Championships in Basel, Switzerland.
“I never thought we could win our third world title. The most important thing for us was to fight through every matches, without thinking too much about the end results. There are a lot of good pairs in men’s doubles, we were just trying to play our best,” said Ahsan after the match.
“I would like to dedicate this title for all Indonesian people who just celebrated our independence day,” added Ahsan. Indonesia celebrated its 74th Independence Day on August 17, 2019.
Hendra Setiawan who had given himself a big birthday gift (he was born on August 25, 1984) for winning the world title, said the victory was a big boost of confidence for him and his partner.
“This was our second meeting against the Japanese pair. This time, they have improved a lot,” added Setiawan.
“I didn’t expect that in 2019 I could still win the All England and the World Championships. Hopefully this will be a strong motivation to push us going forward,” added Setiawan.
In 2013, it was the first time Setiawan/Ahsan took part in the World championships. They defeated Mathias Boe/Carsten Mogensen of Denmark to win the title in Guangzhou, China, and won another world title in 2015 by outlasting Liu Xiaolong/Qiu Zihan of China in front of home crowd in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The men’s singles final saw Denmark’s World No. 9 Anders Antonsen was utterly outclassed by Japan’s World No. 1 Kento Momota, who produced a phenomenal display to down Antonsen 21-9, 21-3.
Antonsen was off to quick start in the first set with aggressive attacks to lead at 6-3. Momota kept his calm to slowly regain the lead at 11-7 into the interval. The Dane seemed to be very impatient and was trying to kill the shots and score points quickly after the interval, however, Momota’s strong defense was perfectly suited to counter the attacks from Antonsen as he picked up the first set 21-9.
The 22-year-old Dane looked like a “lost soul” out on the badminton court as if he had forgotten completely on how to play badminton in the second set where he was rendered completely helpless by the depth, speed and angle of Momota’s shots flying at him. Momota ultimately able to defense his world title in one of the most one-sided final ever in the World Championship’ history.
Meanwhile, No. 1 seeds Zheng Siwei/Huang Yaqiong totally overwhelmed No. 4 seeds Dechapol Puavaranukroh/Sapsiree Taerattanachai of Thailand 21-8, 21-12 to win their second consecutive world championships mixed doubles crown in just 35 minutes.
