PETALING JAYA: Men’s singles shuttler Leong Jun Hao survived a tough battle against teammate Justin Hoh to reach the last eight of the Hong Kong Open.
World No. 23 Jun Hao was pushed hard by world No. 39 Justin and had to use all his experience to prevail 21-11, 15-21, 21-18 at the Hong Kong Coliseum in Kowloon yesterday.
It was surprisingly Jun Hao’s first win over Justin in international competitions after losing twice to the latter in the 2022 Malaysian International Challenge and 2023 Syed Modi International.
Jun Hao will play the winner of the match between China’s world No. 4 Li Shifeng and Japan’s world No. 19 Koki Watanabe.
Meanwhile, women’s doubles pair Teoh Mei Xing-Go Pei Kee showed great resilience to reach the quarter-finals less than two weeks after a poor performance in the World Championships.
Mei Xing-Pei Kee had come under fire after a tame loss to world No. 15 Bulgarian Stoeva sisters Gabriela and Stefani in the second round of the world meet.
The world No. 20 pair though refused to remain down for long and instead have rebounded strongly in their first outing since the disappointing exit by beating world No. 23 Hsu Ya-ching-Sung Yu-hsuan of Taiwan 21-19, 21-18 at the Hong Kong Coliseum in Kowloon yesterday.
The pair have now set-up an all-Malaysian match against world No. 2 Pearly Tan-M. Thinaah, who beat Indonesia’s Febriana Dwipuji-Meilysa Trias 21-18, 21-17 in the second round. Mei Xing was pleased to quickly regain her rhythm with Pei Kee and is eyeing further breakthroughs.
“In the beginning, we were still looking for our rhythm. As the match progressed, we got better. We hope to keep improving after this,” Mei Xing told the Badminton World Federation.
“In the world meet, we didn’t perform well. We made too many simple mistakes. In this tournament, we tried to get better and reduce our errors. We have broken into the top 20 in the world. Our biggest challenge is to beat more top 10 pairs.”
In the mixed doubles, Hoo Pang Ron-Cheng Su Yin toppled fellow Malaysians Goh Soon Huat-Shevon Lai Jemie 21-10, 14-21, 21-16 to set up a meeting against world No. 2 Feng Yanzhe-Huang Dongping of China next.
