Gopi of India upsets Alan at All-England
Gopi of India upsets Alan at All-England
BIRMINGHAM, England (Agencies): The 1992 Olympic gold medalist Alan Budikusuma of Indonesia unexpectedly lost to young Indian shuttler Pullela Gopi Chand 15-2, 10-15, 15-3 at the All England Badminton Championship on Tuesday.
Alan, who recently married the 1992 Olympic gold medalist Susi Susanti, was pushed to the limit in the 69-minute match at the National Indoor Arena.
Alan won 15-2 in the first game but had problems overcoming the 23-year-old shuttler in the second game which he lost 10-15.
In the deciding game, Gopi hit long lobs which Alan often failed to return. Alan lost 3-15.
Gopi, who wants to follow in the footsteps of Prakash Padukone who won the All England 17 years ago, raised his hands in jubilation after the upset victory.
Lin Liwen of China, who caused one of the biggest upsets of last year's All England, produced another one within three hours of this year's championships beginning.
The Norwegian International champion from China narrowly defeated ninth-seeded Peter Gade Christensen, the Dane who won the Taipei Open in January by beating Olympic champion Poul-Erik Hoyer-Larsen 15-9, 6-15, 18-13.
It took Lin more than an hour and a quarter to win, coming back from 1-7 down in the final game and surviving a tense and lengthy exchange of serves at the end of the third game.
For six or seven changes the score remained 13-13, and when Lin got going again Gade risked attacking play.
Lin's best career win was against the top-seeded former world champion from Indonesia Joko Suprianto in the second round here in 1996, but his performance in beating the highly promising Gade in three fluctuating games was almost as good.
In contrast to Christensen, top-seeded Hoyer-Larsen successfully began his attempt to win his third successive All England title by beating Dutchman Gerben Bruystens 15-8, 15-2.
Another upset
Within an hour another Chinese player had caused an upset. This time it was Luo Yigang, the steadily rising, Asia Cup finalist who recently entered the world's top 20 for the first time.
Luo, wonderfully mobile with a great defense, frustrated the steep attacks of the tall fifth-seeded Dane, Thomas Stuer- Lauridsen, whom he beat 15-11, 15-11.
Stuer, who has won both the Danish and Korean Opens this season, was almost back to the form he enjoyed before suffering a serious ankle injury in the world semifinals in Lausanne two years ago.
But no matter how patiently he rallied and how much he tried to drag Luo about the court, he could never get his nose in front in a contest of protracted rallies lasting almost an hour.
At 13-11 in the second game Stuer tried a solid smash and risked a lunging kill at the net wide on the backhand, only to leave the court open for a blocked winner by the well-balanced Chinese player.
Another Indonesian, world champion Hariyanto Arbi, suffered a brief scare when he lost the first game to the young Korean Han Dong-sung. But Hariyanto sped up the rallies so successfully in the next two games that there was no doubt he would win. And he did 14-17, 15-5, 15-4.
Another of Hariyanto's highly successful compatriots, Ardy B. Wiranata, a former All-England finalist, went out in the first round.
This was hardly a surprise, because Ardy's opponent was the Olympic silver medalist from China, Dong Jiong, who missed a match point at 14-13 in the second game and then found himself 14-15 down before coming through to win 15-9, 18-15.
Meanwhile, Joko avoided any first day alarms, efficiently disposing of the teenaged Scottish Open champion from China Ji Xinpeng, earning the third seed a meeting with one of the most dangerous floaters in the draw, Peter Rasmussen, the Japan Open champion from Denmark.