Tough fight: Pearly Tan-M. Thinaah in action during the women’s doubles semi-final match against China’s Jia Yifan-Zhang Shuxian. — AFP
PETALING JAYA: Women’s doubles shuttlers Pearly Tan-M. Thinaah believe they need to be faster to change strategies during matches if they hope to win the biggest titles.
Yesterday, Pearly-Thinaah’s hopes of reaching back-to-back finals were dashed after they went down 14-21, 17-21 to home pair Jia Yifan-Zhang Shuxian in the China Open last four at the Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium in Changzhou.
The world No. 3 pair had finished runners-up to another Chinese duo, world No. 1 Liu Shengshu-Tan Ning in the Japan Open in Tokyo last week and were aiming to get another shot at a title but could not raise their game against world No. 7 Yifan-Shuxian and lost in just 38 minutes.
Pearly-Thinaah have found the pair tough to beat in the past, only coming out on top once in their past four meetings and again could not find a solution to overcome their rivals.
The duo, who were left disappointed after the defeat, felt that Yifan-Shuxian handled the tricky court conditions better and they needed to learn from this.
“The Chinese pair’s strategy worked well today (yesterday). They controlled the shuttle well despite the draught on court,” said Pearly in a post-match interview with the Badminton World Federation (BWF).
“In the second game, we tried to implement a new strategy when playing against the draught.
“We did well towards the end but it was too late. We have to learn from this and we hope to change our game play quicker next time.”
Despite the defeat, it has still been a positive outing for Pearly-Thinaah as it was only the second time that the pair have progressed into the last four in a World Tour Super 1000 competition after their breakthrough in the Indonesian Open in Jakarta last month where they reached the final before losing narrowly to Shengshu-Tan Ning.
While happy with their overall improvement, Pearly-Thinaah know that they still have work to do to win the biggest titles.
With the World Championships coming up next for them from Aug 25-31 in Paris, the pair are keen to become sharper in time for the showpiece event.
“Over these past two weeks, the momentum that we have going into the court is something that we are really looking forward to and we are really happy about,” said Thinaah.
“There’s a lot of positive lessons for us no matter win or lose, we got a lot of experience from these two tournaments.
“But there’s still things to improve for both of us.
“We hope to go back, work on these and get better for the World Championships.”
