Sho Sasaki confidently enters into the Men’s Singles quarter-final at the Vietnam Open Grand Prix
Japan’s ace shuttler, Sho Sasaki, who has been playing tremendous badminton for the last six months, continued his impressive run at the 2011 Vietnam Open Grand Prix as he booked a berth in the Men’s Singles quarter-final after crushing Indonesia’s Sony
Dwi Kuncoro in the pre-quarter-final battle on Thursday, August 25.
The second seed, Sasaki, who is having a wonderful world ranking of Number 9 in the Men’s Singles category, played with a great touch of aggression and precision in the match against Kuncoro, who remained away from the arena for almost six months due to
an injury. The Indonesian could not play well against the Japanese as he has not fully recovered from the injury.
The second seeded Japanese got an advantage in the form of the slow movement of his opponent in the court and wasted no time in finishing the match by taking a court time of 40 minutes. Sasaki’s perfect play earned him an upper hand over Kuncoro throughout
the whole match, which ended in straight sets with the victory of the Japanese.
In the first game, both shuttlers played aggressive badminton in the starting points to get a comfortable lead but the score remained close until the break when the Japanese was ahead with a margin of 11-8. After the break, Sasaki played a powerful game
with his jump smashes coupled with superb drives which helped him in winning the set with a margin of 21-15, in 23 minutes.
In the second set of this contest, Kuncoro tried to play an attacking game but failed to find the flow as he was not feeling comfortable in his movement in all areas of the court. His slow movement helped the Japanese to dominate the rallies without much
effort.
The second seeded Japanese played top-class badminton by playing aggressively and finished off the set with a big margin of 21-10, in 17 minutes. This round-of-16 match ended in 40 minutes and the Japanese shuttler emerged as the winner with a 21-15 and
21-10 margin.
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