RI men's duo win All-England C'ship
RI men's duo win All-England C'ship
Agence France-Presse, Birmingham, England
Indonesian pair of Sigit Budiarto and Candra Wijaya won the men's doubles title at the All-England championships after dominating Lee Dong-soo/Yoo Yong-sung of South Korea in the final here on Sunday.
Sigit/Candra won 15-7, 15-5, which proved to be Indonesia's only victory at the tournament.
Meanwhile, Muhammad Hafiz Hashim caused one of the biggest shocks in the 104-year history of the tournament when he upset the top-seeded titleholder Chen Hong to win the men's singles title.
Hafiz's 17-14, 15-10 win made him the first Malaysian for 37 years and the first unseeded player for 15 to win the title, and ended Chinese hopes of equaling their own open era record of winning four of the five titles.
It completed what had already been a remarkable tournament for the 20-year-old from Kelantan, who had previously beaten two other seeds and now avenged his elder brother Muhammad Roslin Hashim's defeat in the semifinals the day before.
"This is a revenge for my brother's loss and my next target is to win he world championships," said Hafiz.
Malaysian coach Yap Kim Hock, a former All-England finalist, added: "The All-England means a tremendous amount to us. This is a huge thing for Malaysian badminton."
The last Malaysian to win the men's singles title was Tan Aik Huang in 1966. It followed Hafiz' achievement in winning the Commonwealth Games title in Manchester last August.
Hafiz achieved his success by playing as many of the rallies in mid-court and at the net as possible, thus increasingly nullifying Chen's spectacularly dangerous airborne attacks.
Hafiz was at least Chen's equal in the flat fast mid-court exchanges and also picked off winners at the net well. But even when forced to defense against Chen's steep smashes, Hafiz often did remarkable things, once producing a block from behind his back and once between his legs.
The key moments came after Hafiz had saved a third game point at 12-14, and pushed on to 14-14. That set up a surge of adrenalin which carried him on a run of six winning rallies and changed the course of the match. In the second game Hafiz moved ahead from 2-2 to 5-2 and after getting to 11-6 and 14-8 proved mentally strong enough to fight off mini-revivals from Chen which got the champion back to 8-11 and 10-14.
Earlier Zhang Jun and Gao Ling captured the mixed doubles title with a 11-6, 11-7 win over their compatriots Chen Qiqiu and Zhao Tingting. That enabled Zhang and Gao to complete a hat-trick of major titles, having already won the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000 and the world championships in Seville in 2001.
China was already certain of three All-England titles before the final day began, having provided all the finalists for the women's singles and doubles and the mixed doubles.