DENMARK OPEN 2014 QF – Asian Games champions toppled

Fu Haifeng and Zhang Nan avenged their team-mates’ defeat in the 2014 Yonex Denmark Open Superseries Premier, defeating the 2^nd seeds and current Asian Games champions Ahsan and Setiawan in three.

By Eddie Smith.  Photos: Yohan Nonotte for Badmintonphoto (live)

Fu Haifeng and Zhang Nan (pictured above) beat the former World Champions to set up a semi-final clash against the current World Champions.  While Fu and Zhang were thwarted in their effort to win in straight games – as Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan made a late second game surge to force a decider – Ko Sung Hyun and Shin Baek Cheol of Korea actually found themselves having to save a match point in the  second game before they finally defeated their own Chinese opponents of Liu Xiaolong and Qiu Zihan to book their place in the semi-finals tomorrow.

The second semi-final could well be one of the best matches of the week as world #1 Lee Yong Dae and Yoo Yeon Seong take on the 3^rd seeded Boe and Mogensen of Denmark. For the Danes, the difficulty has increased with every match this week and they will look to turn around the score line from the last time these pairs met, which was in Denmark at the semi-final stage of the World Championships – with their only other meeting before the Worlds taking place at this exact stage last year at the Denmark Open, with the Koreans also winning that match in two games.

There was little success elsewhere for Denmark today, with Christinna Pedersen (pictured with Kamilla Rytter Juhl) losing both quarter-final matches in lengthy, three-game encounters. Only Ma Jin of China could potentially claim two titles this week now, with she and her young partner Tang Yuanting (pictured below with Ma Jin) recording an impressive victory over Tian Qing and Zhao Yunlei in the women’s doubles, denying them a continuation of their incredible streak that comprised the last two Superseries events, plus the World Championships and Asian Games titles.

Ma Jin, coupled that with a straight-game victory in the mixed doubles with Xu Chen to book her place in two semi-finals tomorrow.  U.S. Open runners-up Maneepong Jongjit / Sapsiree Taerattanachai put up stiff resistance but couldn’t topple the world #3 pair.

Top seeded Bao Yixin and Tang Jinhua were among the biggest casualties today. They lost out to the Japanese pair of Reika Kakiiwa and Miyuki Maeda in two games. Their reward for victory is an all-Japanese semi-final against Matsutomo and Takahashi, with the head to head strongly against Kakiiwa and Maeda, as the elder pair have won just a single game in the process of losing in their only three matches against their world #3 team-mates, which includes a loss in their home Superseries in June of this year.

Click here for complete quarter-final results