Axelsen sends warning to rivals with dominant win

PETALING JAYA: Denmark’s world No. 1 Viktor Axelsen (pic) sent a warning to his challengers by successfully defending his Indonesia Open title after dominating China’s Zhao Junpeng in the final.

Axelsen only needed 38 minutes to wrap up the title with a 21-9, 21-10 win at Istora Senayan in Jakarta.

En route to the final, the Tokyo Olympics champion had got the better of homester Anthony Ginting and Malaysia’s top singles ace Lee Zii Jia in three games.

This was Axelsen’s second title in Jakarta in as many weeks following his triumph in the Indonesia Masters.

The Dane will now be eyeing the Malaysian Open (June 28-July 3) and Malaysian Masters (July 5-10) titles and the likes of Zii Jia need to up their game to stand any chance of toppling him.

In other finals, Taiwan’s world No. 2 Tai Tzu-ying captured her third title at the Indonesia Open following wins in 2016 and 2018 after she came back from a nail-biting opening game to beat China’s Wang Zhiyi 21-23, 21-6, 21-15 in exactly an hour.

China made up for Zhiyi and Junpeng’s defeats by grabbing both the men’s doubles and mixed doubles titles.

In the men’s doubles, Liu Yuchen-Ou Xuanyi won their first title as a pair when they edged South Korea’s Choi Sol-gyu-Kim Won-ho 21-17, 23-21.

In the mixed doubles, Indonesia Masters champions and world No. 2 Zheng Siwei-Huang Yaqiong continued their superb from by claiming a 21-14, 21-16 victory over Japan’s third ranked Yuta Watanabe-Arisa Higashino.

Japan had to be content with the women’s doubles title following Nami Matsuyama-Chiharu Shida’s energy-sapping 18-21, 21-14, 21-17 win over compatriots Yuki Fukushima-Sayaka Hirota in 75 minutes.