Taiwan’s Chou Tien-chen (???) and Tai Tzu-ying (???) finished with bronze medals at the BWF Badminton World Championships in Tokyo after losing their semifinal clashes on Saturday.
Chou, currently ranked fourth in the world, lost to world No. 1 Viktor Axelsen 21-15, 21-17 in a men’s singles semifinal in 52 minutes.
Axelsen was heavily favored, having won five titles this season and holding a 15-2 career record against his Taiwanese opponent, and he showed why throughout the first game, using his 1.94-meter height to pound overhead winners with regularity.
The 32-year-old Chou rebounded in the second game, playing shorter, angled shots that forced the Dane to move around while avoiding as much as possible the lobs that often came back as winners.
Despite a lull in the middle of the game in which Axelsen rolled off six straight points, the strategy helped Chou rally to take a 16-14 lead.
But he would win only one point the rest of the way as Axelsen stepped up the pressure, and he finally fell in what was a determined challenge.
Later in the day, world No. 2 Tai Tzu-ying (???) saw her bid for her first World Championships gold medal thwarted by China’s Chen Yufei (???), who also beat Tai in the final of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 to dash the Taiwanese star’s hopes of winning her first Olympic gold medal.
The world No. 4 Chen topped Tai in their women’s singles semifinals 15-21, 21-14, 21-18 in 81 minutes after Tai had seemed well positioned to win in the first game and a half.
The Taiwanese sped off to a 12-3 lead in the opening game, playing flawlessly while Chen looked a step slow in unsuccessfully lunging for short shots.
Though Chen pressed Tai after that, the Taiwanese veteran held on, and while Tai stumbled out of the game in the second game, some of the marvelous shot-making and error-free play returned to put her up 12-9.
But the defending Olympic champion suddenly returned to the form that gave her the gold medal, parrying anything Tai threw at her while playing more aggressively and smashing away winners beyond her Taiwanese opponent’s reach.
Tai lost 12 of the game’s final 14 points, and was clearly in trouble when she went down 11-4 in the deciding game. Chen was playing at an extremely high level, rarely missing a shot, and Tai grew increasingly impatient, causing errors to creep into her game.
Tai could get no closer than five points after that and eventually trailed 20-12, but with Tai facing eight match points, the precision and concentration that had abandoned her suddenly returned, forcing Chen into more difficult positions.
The world No. 2 rolled off five straight points and then pulled to within 20-18 when Chen very narrowly missed what would have been a match-clinching crosscourt smash.
But on the next point, Tai returned the favor, putting a potential winner just wide and sending Chen into the women’s singles finals on Sunday.
Tai’s best result at a World Championships was a silver medal last year, after never having medaled at the event previously despite an illustrious career in which she has held the world No. 1 ranking for a record 213 weeks.
Prior to Saturday’s match, Tai had lost her last two encounters against Chen, both of them in Malaysia in late June and early July. She last defeated Chen in a tournament in Indonesia in mid-June.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel