Nguyen Tien Minh powers his way into Men’s Singles quarter-final of the US Open Grand Prix Gold 2011
Nguyen Tien Minh, the ace shuttler of Vietnam, powered his way into the Men’s Singles quarter-final after winning his round-of-16 contest against India’s P Kashyap in the US Open Grand Prix Gold 2011, at Orange, California, on Wednesday, July 13.
The third seed, Tien Minh, played at his best against Kashyap, who is the top seed in India’s Men’s Singles national rankings and also the 12th seed in the US Open. The Vietnamese played terrific badminton for 39 minutes to beat the Indian in
straight-sets.
Tien Minh, who is occupying Ninth place in the world rankings, opened his campaign against the Indian in a positive manner. However, Kashyap remained equal to his higher ranked opponent in the first-half, where Tien Minh was just ahead of the Indian at 11-10.
After the one-minute break, Tien Minh geared up his speed and injected more power in his strokes to dominate the game. Kashyap matched the speed of his rival until the concluding phase of the game, where the Vietnamese played some extraordinary strokes and
won the set by a three-point margin of 21-18, in 23 minutes.
The second set of this round-of-16 match was the display of the highest standard skills of Tien Minh, who was flying in the court. He was playing attacking badminton to maintain his control over the game, which worked well and he managed to take a wonderful
advantage of 11-5 in the set.
Kashyap was visibly playing a slow game, which created trouble for him as Tien Minh was picking the bird very early by moving fast in the court. The jump smashes with deceptive pushes and net strokes of the Vietnamese earned him many points to win the second
game with a one-sided margin of 21-10, by taking 16 minutes. The concluding result of this 39-minute contest was 21-18 and 21-10.
In the quarter-final, Tien Minh will be up against fifth seed, Bao Chunlai of China, who defeated Keigo Sonoda of Japan in straight games in the pre-quarter-final match of the tournament.
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