Tien Minh defeats injured Sony Kuncoro in the quarter-final of Malaysia Open GP Gold
Vietnam’s Nguyen Tien Minh luckily defeated the injured Sony Dwi Kuncoro of Indonesia, in the Men’s Singles quarter-final of the 2011 Malaysia Open GP Gold, in Malaysia on Friday, May 6.
The third seed, Tien Minh emerged as the winner against the Indonesian, who defeated Zi Liang Derek Wong of Singapore in the round-of-16. In the semi-final battle, Tien Minh will take on either Bao Chunlai of China or the ninth seed, Lee Hyun Il of Korea.
Tien Minh started the first set quite aggressively and took only three minutes to take a 4-1 lead. Kuncoro was playing defensively against the quick opponent who was moving around the court with considerable ease. However, the Indonesian started to gear
up his speed and drew near to Tien Minh by reaching 4-5.
The Vietnamese made some errors that provided an opportunity to the opponent to take a two-point lead of 8-6. The match progressed slowly as both players were playing at the same level. Tien Minh levelled the lead 8-8. However, Kuncoro found momentum and
remained successful in building up an 11-8 lead in the first half.
Tien Minh played smart badminton and levelled the score by taking three consecutive points. However, the Indonesian became quicker at the net that helped him in building pressure on the opponent. Kuncoro reached 17-12 by playing a perfect game.
At this stage of the game, Kuncoro felt that his back injury creating problems for him. He slowed down his speed to avoid the intense pain. Tien Minh grabbed the opportunity and scored eight points in a row to make it a 20-17 lead. He finished the first
game in 19 minutes by a 21-18 margin.
In the second game, Kuncoro became quite slow in the start by putting his hands on his back. His injury continued to get worse and forced him to quit the match. Tien Minh was leading the second set by a 5-1 lead as Kuncoro left the match. The concluding
score of this 23-minute quarter-final was, 21-18 and 5-1.
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