PETALING JAYA: Men’s doubles shuttlers Goh Sze Fei-Nur Izzuddin Rumsani added another feather in their cap when they made it into the semi-finals in their first World Tour Finals.
And Sze Fei-Izzuddin did it in style when they played brilliantly to come out on top over Taiwan’s two-time Olympic champions Lee Yang-Wang Chi-lin 24-22, 21-12 in their last Group A match in Hangzhou yesterday.
And Sze Fei especially was thankful for another opportunity to play against Lee Yang, who played his last match.
The 29-year-old Lee Yang had announced his decision to retire from the sport earlier this year and combined with Chi-lin one last time in the Finals.
“We really appreciate our last chance to play against the legends. There’s so much for us to learn from them,” said Sze Fei.
“Lee Yang is one of my best friends and my idol and one of the legends.”
The world No. 7 pair Sze Fei-Izzuddin needed to win to progress to the last four after one win and a defeat in their earlier two group matches and handled the pressure well to come away with the victory in 42 minutes.
Sze Fei-Izzuddin started their debut campaign with a defeat to Denmark’s world No. 3 Kim Astrup-Anders Skaarup Rasmussen but bounced back to beat Taiwan’s world No. 10 Lee Jhe-huei Yang Po-hsuan to finish second in the group.
Izzuddin was pleased with the pair’s achievement but does not want to get carried away.
“I’m quite proud that we managed to qualify for semi-finals but we still have many things to improve and we need to stay focused,” said Izzuddin.
“We need to improve our consistency. We must try not to give away easy points.”
Sze Fei-Izzuddin have been in excellent form this year and captured the China, Japan and Arctic Opens in the second half of the year.
Meanwhile, in the women’s doubles, world No. 6 Pearly Tan-M. Thinaah ended their tournament without a win after going down fighting 9-21, 21-18, 18-21 to China’s world No. 1 Liu Shengshu-Tan Ning in 76 minutes in Group A.
Pearly-Thinaah also narrowly lost to Japan’s world No. 4 Nami Matsuyama-Chiharu Shida and India’s world No. 13 Treesa Jolly-Gayatri Gopichand.
