Tokyo: The World No. 7 mixed doubles pair, Chan Peng Soon/Goh Liu Ying of Malaysia couldn’t break their losing streak to the World No. 13 Tang Chun Man/Tse Ying Suet of Hong Kong, suffering a tough three-set defeat to the Hong Kong pair in the first Group D match at the Tokyo Olympics on Saturday.
The match took place at Musashino Forest Sport Plaza saw Chan/Goh, who were also the silver medalist of the Rio 2016 Olympics, went down to Tang/Tse 18-21, 21-10, 16-21. It was Chan/Goh’s fifth consecutive defeat to Tang/Tse since the quarter-finals of the 2018 PERODUA Malaysia Masters. Chan/Goh only recorded one win in their six meetings, with the only victory came from the round of 32 at the 2016 YONEX Chinese Taipei Open.
Chan/Goh were mostly behind in the first game, but they fought back to level the score at 18-18. However, they started to commit careless mistakes and lost 3 points in a row, thus losing the first game 18-21.
The Malaysian pair were quick and aggressive to establish a handsome 12 to 2 lead in the second set by winning the game 21-10. Chan/Goh looked exhausted in the third set, after 12-12, they were moving slow and lost focus at the end of the third set by committing a lot of uncharacteristic mistakes to eventually go down 16-21.
After suffering a huge collapse in the semi-final of 2021 All England against Yuki Kaneko/Misaki Matsutomo, when they were leading 16-4 in the second set, but eventually losing to the Japanese pair 14-21, 20-22, Chan/Goh’s stamina was better in Tokyo, but didn’t seem strong enough to help them win the matches.
In order to advance to the knockout stage, Chan/Goh have no choice but to defeat World No. 15 German pair Mark Lamsfuss/Isabel Herttrich on Sunday and to beat World No. 3 Wang Yi Lyu/Huang Dong Ping of China on Monday.
Meanwhile, Malaysia’s women’s doubles pair – Chow Mei Kuan/Lee Meng Yean went down to the Indonesian pair, Greysia Polii/Apriyani Rahayu 14-21, 17-21 in their first group stage match.
The World No. 11 Chow/Lee face a tricky road to advance to the knockout rounds as they have to meet World No. 1 pair from Japan, Sayaka Hirota/Yuki Fukushima, and World No. 14 pair from England, Chloe Birch/Lauren Smith who were also selected into the Group A.
Only the top two pairs in each group of the doubles events would qualify for the knockout rounds.
