Chan Peng Soon, Goh Liu Ying become finalist of Mixed Doubles event – China Open Update
Mixed Doubles partnership Chan Peng Soon-Goh Liu Ying of Malaysia is yielding impressive results as both shuttlers led the country to final round of Li Ning China Open on Saturday, November 17, 2012.
They delivered a stunner against the higher ranked Indonesian team Tontowi Ahmad-Liliyana Natsir in the semi-final round and locked the honour in a splendid manner.
The Malaysian duo ruled the court in this 36-minute encounter and emerged as victor with an impressive result of 21-19 and 21-14.
Peng Soon and Liu Ying, who hold the fifth spot in tournament ranking, tipped the scale in their favour by claiming the opening match point and then capitalised this initial lead to transform it into a straight-set win.
In first set of the match, they prevailed in the establishing rallies and piled up a mountainous figure of 8 in no time.
They did not drop their pace and doubled their lead just before the interval. This early advantage helped them in later part of the game as Tontowi-Liliyana failed to come out of this deficit.
The third seeded Indonesian pair showed some spark in third quarter of the set but it was not enough to counter-balance the situation.
Meanwhile, Peng Soon and Liu Ying played with great conviction and reinstated their dominance when it mattered.
They pushed their competitors in all areas of the court and wrapped this segment of showdown with a tight yet decisive margin of 21-19.
The Malaysian players showed elevated craft in the following game and trounced their challengers with a gutsy performance.
This time they did not repeat previous mistakes and maintained an upper hand all the way to game point situation.
Tontowi and Liliyana, who were one of the frontrunners in this Super Series, proved all the predictions wrong by crashing out in a woeful manner.
They lost control over game straight away in the beginning and could not make amends until last shot was played.
First sign of trouble came when they allowed the opposing team to place a decent figure of 11. Their back-to-back mistakes doubled the impact and Tontowi-Liliyana lost this battle with 14-21 score.
Now the victorious pair Peng Soon-Liu Ying is expected to meet World Number one duo Xu Chen-Ma Jin in the title match.
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