FRENCH OPEN 2014 R32 – Jan and Tago out!

Jan O.  Jorgensen and Kenichi Tago, men’s singles finalists in the 2013 edition, both suffered early exits in the 1st round of the 2014 Yonex French Open Superseries.  Malaysia’s Goh V.  Shem and Tan Wee Kiong eventually defeated the recently crowned Denmark Open champions Zhang Nan and Fu Haifeng.

By Tarek Hafi, Badzine Correspondent live in Paris.  Photos: Badmintonphoto (live)

Despite an exhausting qualification round yesterday, playing two difficult matches in a day, the constantly improving Malaysian pair Goh V.  Shem and Tan Wee Kiong never seemed afraid of their opponents, regardless of the fact that the Chinese veterans had just won a Superseries Premier event.  After a tightly played first game, Goh and Tan were quickly outplayed by the newly formed Chinese pair, until both came back to their senses and again challenged Zhang Nan and Fu Haifeng.

“First of all, we prepared a lot for this match.  Because we know our opponents are very strong, we made sure to play our tactics and luckily it worked out for us,” confessed a delighted Tan Wee Kiong.

“It was pretty hard for us since we played the qualifying rounds.  Hopefully we will get more rest for tomorrow’s match,” added the Malaysian player.

Obviously, as Malaysian national players, both could have been affected by the recent earthquake which hit the badminton world this week created by reports in the Malaysian media that Lee Chong Wei had failed a doping test.

Still both players affirmed their whole support to the world number one: “Since the result came out, we fully supported Chong Wei.  We were in complete disbelief.  It was a shock.  Now we are waiting for the result and no matter what, we will be supporting him,” replied Tan in his post-match interview.

With all five past winners of the French Open Superseries either retired or absent, along with the world #2 and World Champion Chen Long, it then fell to 2013 edition men’s single winner Jan O. Jorgensen and his runner-up to take up the mantle of title favourites.

However, Jorgensen was also an early casualty of the day, falling against Chou Tien Chen.  Chou may be a player the Dane usually dominates on the circuit but sport is not an exact science and the Dane was never able to fully play his game against a solid Chou Tien Chen.

“It was all up to myself: my judgments, my mistakes.  He couldn’t even breathe at the end and I was perfectly fine but I just committed a hundred mistakes.  You can’t win any games at his level, if you make that many mistakes,” confessed the Dane, who had no problem dealing with his title holder status.

“I came on my own agenda.  Because I have been injured for so long, I just took it game by game but it wasn’t enough today,” analyzed the top Danish player who will now go back to Denmark, preparing for the end-of-year tournaments.  He will still make the journey to the China Open as the #3 in the Superseries rankings but there is still a chase pack of a dozen players who could make the road to the Superseries Finals interesting.

A few matches before, it was last year’s runner-up Kenichi Tago, who stumbled in the first round against an electric Parupalli Kashyap.  The Indian took only a bit more than half an hour to defeat the world #4, sending the Japanese player, who has won silver twice in this event, packing earlier than expected.

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