Sayaka Sato beats Maja Tvrdy in an interesting Women’s Singles fight in Group H at London Olympics
Japan’s best shuttler Sayaka Sato found a good start as she proved her skills by beating Slovenia’s Maja Tvrdy in an interesting Women’s Singles battle in Group H at the 2012 London Olympics on Sunday, July 29, in England.
The in-form Sayaka, who is World Number 16 and 12th seed in Women’s Singles draw of the competition, employed all of her skills to get rid of her stubborn opponent and managed it after working extra hard.
Although it was a straight set contest but Sayaka had to work to her maximum potential to chuck out Maja in a wonderful contest that took top quality badminton from both sides. She won the battle with a tight margin.
The un-seeded Maja, on the other hand, played to her maximum limit as she put up superb show in both sets of the match but remained unlucky on both occasions and lost to her Japanese opponent in straight games with a close score on the board.
Both shuttlers grabbed the attention of huge crowd at Wembley Arena by playing tremendous badminton from opening rallies of first game as they kept the pace high and pushed each other to the limit.
They remained close until the end of opening half as no one could manage a reasonable gap until the mid-game interval.
After the one-minute break, Sayaka tried to take advantage by gearing up her speed in all corners but failed to create pressure on her rival.
The score reached at 20-20 when the higher ranked Japanese shuttler remained successful in taking two points in a row and ended up the set with a close score of 22-20.
In the second game, both shuttlers again did not spare any chance for each other to dominate the pace of rallies until the end of opening half.
However, Sayaka managed to take over the control of rallies in the second half and remained successful in taking the game with a close 21-18 score on the board.
The higher ranked Sayaka won this tough Women’s Singles fight in straight games with a decent margin of 22-20 and 21-18.
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