Sung Hwan Park ends winning run of Taufik Hidayat in the quarter-final of the Indian Super Series
Korea’s Sung Hwan Park ended the winning run of Indonesia’s Taufik Hidayat by beating him in the Men’s Singles quarter-final of the Indian Open Super Series 2011, at New Delhi, on Friday, April 29.
Sung Hwan had to work for 46 minutes to beat the former World and Olympic Champion, Taufik, who defeated P Kashyap of India, in the pre-quarterfinal. In the semi-final, the Korean will take on the third seed, Peter Hoeg Gade of Denmark, who proved his worth
against Takuma Ueda, in the round-of-16.
Sung Hwan is playing superb badminton as he did not lose a singles set to any opponent in all of his matches. He opened his campaign against Taufik, who was the second seed in this event. In the first half of the set, both shuttlers demonstrated top class
badminton by playing at the maximum speed. They were driving rallies with superb control and their execution of strokes was perfect. It was the Korean who managed to take a small lead of 11-10, at the end of the first part of the opening set.
After the break, Taufik worked really hard to break the flow of the Korean, who was playing positively. Sung Hwan kept the pace of the drives high and remained composed throughout the set. He stretched his lead over Taufik by reaching 17-13. The Indonesian
tried every skill he had but remained unsuccessful to level the score. The Korean finished up the first set in 22 minutes by a 21-17 margin.
The start of the second set was even more thrilling as compared to the previous set. Both players were playing an extremely attacking game with powerful smashes coupled with strong pushes. The score progressed closely until 9-9, when Sung Hwan took a two-point
lead of 11-9.
In the second part of the game, Taufik changed his tactics to stop the aggressive run of the Korean, but failed as he made some unforced errors at the crucial stage of the game. Sung Hwan clinched the second set with a decent margin of 21-17, in 24 minutes.
The ending score of this top quality match was, 21-17 and 21-17.
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