Candra, Halim lose at Korea Open
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Indonesian badminton doubles pair Candra Wijaya and Halim Haryanto suffered further setbacks in their hunt for an Olympics berth after stumbling in the opening round of the Korea Open in Choongju City, South Korea, on Wednesday.
Candra and Halim lost to home hopefuls Lee Dong-soo and Yoo Yong-sung 15-10, 15-11 in 38 minutes, the tournament's website said.
It was the second poor performance on the trot by the pair who had entered this year's season with a victory at the Copenhagen Masters.
Candra and Halim also crashed out in the first round at the All England tournament, losing to Nathan Robertson and Anthony Clark of England.
The defeats have dampened the pair's hopes for an Olympic qualification for the Athens Games in August.
Indonesia has three other men's doubles pairs who have made the next round.
Flandi Limpele and Eng Hian dispatched Huang Shih-Chung and Chien Yu-Hsun of Chinese Taipei 15-9, 15-5 in nearly 30 minutes. Meanwhile, Luluk Hadiyanto and Alven Yulianto brushed aside Kevin Han and Howard Bach of the United States 15-7, 15-13 in about the same amount of time.
Sigit Budiarto and Tri Kusharyanto took a little longer, needing about 45 minutes in their 15-9, 15-10 win over Danes Mathias Boe and Michael Lamp.
In the women's doubles, Eny Erlangga and Lilyana Natsir suffered a shock defeat to Germans Nicole Grether and Juliane Schenk, losing out 15-11, 15-10.
Jo Novita and Lita Nurlita came back from a set down to overcome Japanese Tomomi Matsuda and Aki Akao 13-15, 15-6, 15-9.
Indonesian players also got mixed results in the mixed doubles with Nova Widianto/Vita Marissa advancing and Anggun Nugroho/Eny Widowati dropping out.
Nova/Vita beat Kristof Hopp/Katrin Piotrowski of Germany 15- 12, 15-7 while Anggun/Eny appeared to be unable to hold steady against favorites Cheng Rui/Zhang Yawen in a 15-10, 8-15, 5-15 loss.
Meanwhile, Taufik Hidayat, the only Indonesian player in the men's singles, abandoned his bid early after he lost to Sergio Llopis of Spain on Monday.
Both players took a set each before Taufik withdrew because of injury trailing 8-0 in the third.