
Tokyo: Malaysia’s World No. 9 men’s doubles pair, Aaron Chia/Soh Wooi Yik put up a brilliant performance in their first Group D match at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics on Saturday to beat World No. 8 Choi Sol-Gyu/Seo Seung-Jae of Korea 24-22, 21-15.
Playing in their first Olympics, the young Malaysian pair looked determined as soon as they step on the court at the Musashino Forest Sport Plaza.
Facing the South Korean pair, Chia/Soh were aggressive in the frontcourt but the Korean pair was stubborn to not giving up easy points. Chia/Soh couldn’t convert on two game-point at 20-19, 21-20 before scoring three consecutive points to wrap up the first set 24-22.
The second set was also a see-saw battle between the two pairs. After the interval at 11-10, the Malaysian pair was able to widen the gap through series of strong attacks and won the second game 21-15.
Chia/Soh will take a day off on Sunday and will face World No. 2 Mohd Ashan and Hendra Setiawan of Indonesia on Monday.
Under the guidance of Denmark’s badminton legend, Mathias Boe, World No. 10 Satwiksairaj Rankireddy/Chirag Shetty of India pulled off the biggest upset in men’s doubles event on Saturday by beating World No. 3 Lee Yang/Wang Chi-lin of Taiwan 21-16, 16-21, 27-25 in their first Group A match.
Lee/Wang were in red-hot form early this year, as they swept all three back-to-back tournaments that were held in Thailand in January of 2021. They would need to defeat World No. 1 Marcus Fernaldi Gideon/Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo of Indonesia and World No. 18 Ben Lane/Sean Vendy of England in order to advance to the knockout stage.
Meanwhile, Gideon/Sukamuljo showed complete dominance in the first Group A match when they outlasted Lane/Vendy 21-15, 21-11 to set up a meeting with Rankireddy/Shetty on Sunday.