Saarbrucken: After losing to Loh Kean Yew of Singapore in the first round of the French Open last week, Malaysia’s World No. 8 Lee Zii Jia almost suffered his second consecutive first-round exit in two weeks on Wednesday.
In the HYLO Open first-round encounter with World No. 52 Pablo Abian of Spain, Lee took the first game 21-11.
However, he squandered a 15-10, 19-17 lead in the second game allowing Abian to win the second game 23-21 and forcing the match into a decider.
The No. 2 seed Malaysian was leading pretty much the whole third-set but started making uncharacteristic mistakes such as hitting the shuttlecock out of bound, playing bad defense, a backhand return and a smash that found the net to give Abian the match-point. Lee held his nerve to level the score at 20-20 and saved another match-point when he dove to save a net shot from Abian at 20-21 and tied the score 21-21 before eking out a 24-22 tough third-set win when Abian’s smash towards Lee’s left-hand side was out of bound. The whole match lasted 54 minutes.
Lee will play Nhat Nguyen of Ireland next.
Meanwhile, Loh Kean Yew of Singapore pulled off a huge upset to down World No. 4 and the No. 1 seed Chou Tien Chen 21-18, 21-13 in 37 minutes to meet Toma Junior Popov of France in the second round.
The men’s doubles independent pair from Malaysia, Tan Kian Meng/Tan Wee Kiong also advanced to the second round by overcoming Takuto Inoue/Kenya Mitsuhashi of Japan 21-10, 21-15. They will take on World No. 2 Mohammad Ahsan/Hendra Setiawan on Thursday. Two other Malaysian men’s pairs – Ong Yew Sin/Teo Ee Yi, Goh V Shem/Low Juan Shen were defeated by Leo Rolly Carnando/Daniel Marthin of Indonesia and Lu Ching Yao/Yang Po Han of Taiwan in the first round respectively.
Two other Malaysian pairs – Chen Tang Jie/Peck Yen Wei and Vivian Hoo/Lim Chiew Sien were made to work in the mixed doubles and women’s doubles first-round before seeing off their respective opponents to cruise into the second round.
Chen/Peck will meet Marcus Ellis/Lauren Smith of England while Hoo/Lim will take on Puttita Supajirakul/Sapsiree Taerattanachai of Thailand on Thursday.
