Christensen wins dream match against Arbi
Christensen wins dream match against Arbi
TOKYO (AFP): Peter Gade Christensen emerged victorious in his "dream" match against Indonesian star Hariyanto Arbi yesterday to secure a final berth at the Yonex Japan Open badminton tournament.
The top-seeded Dane was one game and 0-2 down when he started hitting a series of effective short serves to chalk up point after point and shift the momentum in his favor to win 4-15, 15- 2, 15-6.
In the men's singles final today, Christensen will take on Luo Yigang of China, who beat Atlanta Olympic bronze medalist Rashid Sidek of Malaysia 15-17, 15-7, 15-4.
"First of all, I'm very happy that I could beat Arbi today, because I have never met him before and I have admired his style of play since when I was 15 years old," said a jubilant Christensen after the 57-minute match.
"So I guess what was wrong in the beginning was, I had too much respect and I was not playing my game. His attack was very good and I wasn't able to do something creative."
"But in the second game, I began starting with some short serves and getting my game into play. It worked very well," added Christensen.
Arbi, the champion here in 1993 and 1995, was quicker than Christensen at the net, winning some clean points with his attacks in the first game.
But Christensen's short serves surprisingly caused numerous errors in Arbi's service return, which often landed in the net, and the 21-year-old Dane won 15 points in a row to tie the contest at one game all.
Christensen again overcame a 0-5 deficit in the decider and he never looked back once he took the lead. The final place was his when Arbi hit a smash into the net.
"I hit many winners from the net in the first game, but I couldn't attack at all afterwards because of his short strokes," lamented Arbi.
China's Luo missed three games points at 14-8, 14-11 and 14-13 before losing a three-point setting in the opener, but showed clever court coverage to move Sidek round and tire him out in a tough 77-minute battle.
"I just played on the offensive and lost the first game. So I tried to make him tired because he has been aging and hit a good combination of drops and clears (high shots). It worked really well," said Luo, 21.
It will be a re-match between Luo and Christensen, following the Dane's two-game win at the Grand Prix Final last month.
In the all-Chinese women's singles semifinals, world champion Ye Zhaoying lived up to her pre-tournament promise by scoring a convincing 11-1, 11-9 victory over world number six Dai Yun in just 20 minutes.
Seeking to regain the title she won in 1993 and 1996, Ye will take on second seed Gong Zhichao, who defeated Wang Chen 11-3, 11-5.