India Open GP Gold: Taufik Hidayat beats Alamsyah Yunus to enter into Men’s Singles semi-final
Indonesia’s former Olympic gold medallist and World Champion, Taufik Hidayat, is on the right track to end the current year in style as he has reserved his spot in the semi-final of the 2011 Syed Modi Memorial India Open GP Gold. He defeated his team-mate
Alamsyah Yunus in the quarter-final show down, in Lucknow, on Friday, December 23.
Taufik, who is World Number 12 at the moment, had to employ his extensive experience to overpower his younger compatriot and World Number 30, Yunus, in a superb fight that took 62 minutes of quality badminton. The higher ranked Indonesian emerged as the
winner of this thrilling match in three games.
Yunus played well in the opening half of the first game but lost his focus in the end and lost it with a decent margin. In the following game, he played wonderful badminton and won the set with a one-sided score. However, Taufik showed his elite skills in
the third game and took it with a remarkable difference.
In the opening set, Yunus played with precision and set up a reasonable lead. However, Taufik levelled the score and managed a small lead by reaching at 11-9 until the break. The higher ranked Indonesian continued his impressive performance by dominating
the game with a superb skill.
At this stage, Yunus changed his game and levelled the score by reaching at 16-16. Nevertheless, Taufik played an attacking game in the concluding phase and won the opening set with a 21-17 score on the board.
In the second game, Yunus played with aggression and managed to build pressure on his senior opponent. He controlled and dictated the pace of the game with his impressive skills. Taufik failed to play his usual game in this set and lost it with a one-sided
margin of 11-21.
In the final set, Taufik played on the highest level of the game and showed no mercy to his challenger. He dictated the pace of rallies and ended the set in a striking fashion with a remarkable score of 21-11. The end result of this quarter-final battle
was 21-17, 11-21 and 21-11.
In the semi-final of the tournament, Taufik will face Wong Wing Ki of Hong Kong who tamed Sameer Verma in the other quarter-final contest.
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