Japan Open 2008 - The Finals

Wanting to get a good location to cheer our Malaysian players, Chua-san and I arrived at the Stadium 5 minutes before 10:30am.. and we managed to get 2 rows of seats, totaling 11.. We had bought our tickets the day before, thus we saved 500yen but still paying a steep admission ticket price of 3,000yen..

Gradually, one fellow Malaysians after another arrived and soon, all the seats were taken.. Among them, two fellow Malaysians who had just arrived in Japan less than 2 weeks ago. Both ladies are from UM and will be attending Waseda University for a year as exchange-students.. Would most probably see them often in campus when school starts next week..

Before the actual matches, there are some exhibition matches between Japan players and the Japan junior players.. Taufik and one of the Indonesian men doubles pairs too were among those who played against these young stars.. The matches were just there to kill time.. We chatted among ourselves, trying to get to know each other better, barely paying any attention to the matches.. :p

At 12pm sharp, the first match of the day started. It was the mixed doubles match between 2 Indonesian pairs. Fifth seeded pair of Muhammad Rijal and Vita Marissa playing against first seeded Nova Widianto and Liliyana Natsir. The former are in blue shirts, the latter in orange shirts.

The lower seeded pair lost the first game but came back strongly in the 2nd to force the rubber set. They wanted the title more while the first seeded pair made lots of mistakes that gave away points unnecessarily.. It was a close rubber set with the fifth seeded pair winning it 21-19 to clinch the title..

Next was the women singles. It was between the 7th seeded Zhou Mi who beat the first seeded Lu Lan yesterday and the up-and-coming unseeded Chinese player, Wang Yihan.


Wang in yellow was in good form. As the game proceed, she became more confident and it showed in her play. She won the first game but lost the 2nd. Zhou banked on her experience to control the game, but in the end, age and luck wasn't on her side. For the 2nd time, the women singles crown went to an unseeded player, just like the previous year..

The 3rd match to be played was the men singles.. It was THE game that we all came to cheer for. Lee Chong Wei was to defend his title against Sony Kuncoro who is seeded No.2, after Lee, in this tournament..



The first game was quite close as Lee made a lot of mistakes. But the most unforgivable was the 2nd game. Lee seemed to be affected badly by several of the line calls and made several bad judgment calls himself. He seemed to be relying on Sony's shots being out than to gain the points himself.. All of us were stunned and shocked that he lost so easily in the 2nd game, 11-21.. Sony deserved to win as he was the better player on court..

Even though the next match was the men doubles which usually provided the best "entertainment" for badminton fans, with Lee's loss, all of us were zapped of our energy and enthusiasm.. The seeded Danes (Lars Paaske and Jonas Rasmussen) will clash with unseeded Indonesian pair (Muhammad Ahsan and Bona Septano).


The younger Indonesian pair was attacking ferociously with their jumping smashes. Yet the Danes defended very well and did some counter-attacks that earned them several points. It was a close 1st game which was won by the Danes. Then in the 2nd game, the Indonesians stormed back to take the match (21-15) into rubber set. It was a fast and furious game with the pairs trading smashes, drop shots and fast net-height pushes.. In the end, the Danes justified their No.2 seeding in this tournament and won the rubber set and the title with 21-13.

The last match was the women doubles. Judging from the performance of the two pairs, most of us agreed that the No.2 pair of Wong Pei Tty and Chin Eei Hui from Malaysia would have a tough time playing against the unseeded Chinese pair of Cheng Shu and Zhao Yunlei.




However, the Malaysian ladies, in yellow, proved that they have more fighting spirit than our No.1 men singles player.. They lost to the Chinese, who are much taller and slightly younger, with a slim margin of 19-21 in the first game. Seeing how they tired were the day before when they played their 2nd game against the Indonesian pair, all of us had resigned to the fact that the 2nd game would end fast.. How wrong we were!! They managed to trash the Chinese pair with a very encouraging score of 21-5!!

It was pretty hilarious at times when the rally was going on, with shouts of "kiri.kiri. kiri kosong!", "Tolong dia!" and "Sa (杀)!" from the crowd.. Most probably only Malaysians would understand those shouts.. :) With all these encouragements, the Malaysian pair gave a good fight in the rubber set, but alas, they lost, narrowly.. The score for the 3rd game was a very respectable 18-21..


Looking back to that day (21 Sept), I must say that I regretted paying 3000yen and spending my Sunday going to the event.. Lee was a huge disappointment.. All the finals matches went into rubber set, except his... All the finalists showed hunger for the title, except him.. But SYABAS to the ladies and keep up the fighting spirit!! Work on your stamina and you ladies might just be a serious contending pair in the next tournament!! Malaysia Boleh!!