Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia’s World No. 10 men’s doubles pair – Ong Yew Sin/Teo Ee Yi have advanced to the second round of the 2022 Malaysia Open after defeating their fellow young compatriots Wan Arif Wan Junaidi/Muhammad Haikal 21-19, 21-13 in 30 minutes on Tuesday.
“They have the potential to go far. They just need more time to gain more experience. They are young and playing in front of the Malaysian fans was definitely exciting and a good thing for them,” said Teo after the match.
Ong/Teo is scheduled to face the 2020 Tokyo Olympic champions from Taiwan, Lee Yang/Wang Chi-Lin on Thursday.
Another independent men’s pair from Malaysia – Tan Kian Meng/Tan Wee Kiong followed the footsteps of Ong/Teo when they beat Danish pair, Jeppe Bay/Lasse Molhede 18-21, 21-15, 21-17 to set up a second-round encounter with Liu Yu Chen/Ou Xuan Yi who won the Indonesia Open two weeks ago.
Meanwhile, the World No. 12 Goh Sze Fei/Nur Izzuddin also came up on top against Japanese pair Keiichiro Matsui/Yoshinori Takuchi 21-12, 21-12 to meet World No. 8 Satwiksairaj Rankireddy/Chirag Shetty of India next.
In an all-Malaysian mixed doubles opener, the World No. 14 Goh Soon Huat/Shevon Jemie Lai pulled off an upset to beat their training partners and the World No. 9 Tan Kian Meng/Lai Pei Jing 21-18, 19-21, 21-18.
“For me, it’s kind of sad, because, we have to meet our teammates in the first round, and only one pair could emerge as the winner,” said Lai.
“We were hoping to have more Malaysian representatives advance to the next round, but we couldn’t change anything as we were drawn to face each other in the first round,” added Lai.
“We also felt strange about how BWF created the draw results. Because we are going to face Kian Meng/Pei Jing again in the first round of Malaysia Masters next week,” explained Lai.
The women’s doubles first round saw Low Yeen Yuan/Valeree Siow of Malaysia defeat Linda Efler/Isabel Lohau from German 17-21, 21-16, 21-19 in 1 hour 13 minutes. Low/Siow are set to play No. 1 seeds Chen Qing Chen/Jia Yi Fan of China in the second round.
