WORLDS 2013 R16 – Taiwan topples top seeds

Third round action at the Wang Lao Ji BWF World Badminton Championships saw men’s doubles top seeds Ko Sung Hyun / Lee Yong Dae stunned by a hungry Lee Shen Mu / Tsai Chia Hsin from Chinese Taipei.

By Don Hearn and Renee Yang, Badzine Correspondents live in Guangzhou.  Photos: Badmintonphoto (live)

Coming into the World Badminton Championships, three nations were represented by four men’s doubles pairs each but it was Korea who were walking tall with the world’s #1 pair at the head of their trio of hopefuls.

Day 4 unfolded with the most unexpected developments, however, as top seeds Ko Sung Hyun and Lee Yong Dae (pictured below) could not find a way past Chinese Taipei’s Lee Sheng Mu / Tsai Chia Hsin (pictured left).  The Koreans dominated the first game but allowed the Taiwan pair to even the match, then they clawed back from 16-20 down in the decider only to fall one point short of sending into extra points.

“We worked so hard to prepare for the World Championships and we had high expectations,” said Lee Yong Dae after the loss.  “We knew we were up against a tough team and we tried hard to beat them but in the end we were too impatient and we weren’t able to win it.  This is a real disappointment.”

“When we were trailing in the third game, we felt our shots had to be very precise and we started to feel the pressure and that’s when we started to make too many errors,” said Ko Sung Hyun.

“We knew that we had a lot of support from the fans in China and we appreciate how much they cheer for us,” said Lee Yong Dae.  “We are really disappointed that we weren’t able to produce a result to match that.

“If we get another opportunity to play such a big event in China again, we will definitely try our hardest to perform better.”

Lee and Tsai had plenty to celebrate as they prepare for the quarter-finals but they were very honest in their post-match interview.

“We just kept an ordinary mind to face the match, as we’d lost so many times before, and we have nothing to lose,” said Lee Sheng Mu.  “Of course, we were aware of the gap between us and them before the match.  We did not expect to beat them, we just wanted to play our best form – to fight until the point of exhaustion – and it seems they had huge pressure and became nervous in the match.

“Especially in the 2^nd game, when we widened the gap of score, they made a lot of inexplicable errors, and that was not the normal form of Ko/Lee.

“We did not prepare special tactics for the Korean pair,” added Tsai.  “We just tried to avoid lifting the shuttle, to restrict their attacking, and played a lot of drives. And it worked very well.  They made a lot of mistakes.

“When we got to match point in the deciding game, we made two errors due to pressure, and we just calmed down and waited for our opponents to make mistakes, and we won.

“When we beat them in game 2, we felt that Ko Sung Hyun was somewhat nervous and that he was afraid to hit the shuttle, so we kept attacking Ko.”

Later in the evening, Liu Xiaolong / Qiu Zihan, the pair that beat Ko/Lee in two high profile finals this year, also faced the upset music as their were taken care of by Indonesia’s Angga Pratama / Ryan Agung Saputra (pictured right).  Indonesia is thus the only nation with two men’s doubles pairs still in action.  At the same time, China’s 4-time champions Cai Yun and Fu Haifeng once again became their country’s only remaining hopes in the discipline as just minutes before Liu/Qiu, Chai Biao and Zhang Nan fell to Olympic silver medallists Boe/Mogensen, also in straight games.

Click here for complete Round of 16 results