Tough fight: Pearly Tan (left) and M. Thinaah in action against South Korea’s Lee Yu-lim-Shin Seung-chan during the semi-final match. — IZZRAFIQ ALIAS/The Star
KUALA LUMPUR: Women’s doubles shuttlers Pearly Tan-M. Thinaah sees communication as the key for them to get back to their best form.
Pearly-Thinaah are pleased that they are communicating well on court despite seeing their run in the Malaysian Masters come to an end in the semi-finals.
The world No. 13 pair went down 16-21, 11-21 to South Korea’s world No. 26 Lee Yu-lim-Shin Seung-chan in the last four at the Axiata Arena in Bukit Jalil yesterday.
Although disappointed with the defeat, Pearly-Thinaah are keen to take the positives from their overall performance in the tournament.
“This is not the result we expected but we can see some positives from our combination,” said Pearly.
“We feel really excited to be back on court as we did not compete in tournaments for quite a long time.
“We are communicating a lot on the court now and discussing with each other when things go wrong. This is something good for us.
Thinaah said: “There’s only both of us on court and only both of us can let each other know our feelings and what’s going on when we are on court.
“We hope to keep this (our communication) going and also keep working on ourselves at the same time.”
Pearly-Thinaah also acknowledged that they lost to a better pair on the day.
“Our opponents pressured us with their shots and speed,” said Pearly.
“They were aggressive and made it difficult for us to place our shots. Strategy wise, we have to improve after this.”
The defeat meant that Pearly-Thinaah could not repeat their performance in last year’s edition of the tournament where they finished runners-up to another Korean pair, world No. 2 Baek Ha-na-Lee So-hee.
The former will next look to bounce back in the Singapore Open starting on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, young men’s doubles pair Yap Roy King-Wan Arif Wan Junaidi’s dream run in the tournament ended when they lost out 13-21, 19-21 to Denmark’s world No. 5 Kim Astrup-Anders Skaarup Rasmussen.
The world No. 47 pair, though, can hold their heads high after stunning Taiwan’s world No. 12 Lee Jhe-huei-Yang Po-hsun and another Danish pair, world No. 18 Rasmus Kjaer-Frederik Sogaard en route to the last four.
Roy King-Arif were also the only Malaysian men’s doubles pair to make it to the semi-finals.
“We are not satisfied with our performance today (yesterday) as we had a chance to win the second game but we made some mistakes and it cost us,” said Arif.
“Overall, we learned a lot from this tournament and we want to keep working on our weaknesses and remain consistent moving forward.”
Arif-Roy King will next compete in the Australian Open from June 11-16 in Sydney.
