NAGOYA: Former world champion Loh Kean Yew navigated a tough opening tie on the Asian Video games, beating India’s Lakshya Sen within the males’s singles spherical of 32 on Saturday (Sep 26).
On the Ichinomiya Metropolis Municipal Gymnasium, the world quantity 13 beat world-ranked 14 Sen 21-12, 15-21, 21-14. Each gamers acquired a bye within the earlier spherical.
Loh defeated Sen at their final assembly earlier this 12 months, however had a 4-7 head-to-head document in opposition to his opponent going into Saturday’s match.
Sen, who clinched a bronze within the crew occasion, raced off to a 5-1 begin. However the deficit appeared to jolt the Singaporean into motion as he reeled off 10 consecutive factors to take a six level lead on the interval.
And the Singaporean seemed in imperious kind, with Sen having no reply to his trademark smashes and exact drop pictures.
Issues have been nearer within the second recreation as Sen took a slender one level lead going into the break. A extra aggressive method from the Indian coupled with quite a lot of errors from Loh took the match to a decider.
Issues swung the way in which of Loh early on within the third as he led 8-3 and held his nerve regardless of Sen getting back from 8-14 to 13-14.
The Singaporean shuttler will subsequent face Malaysia’s Justin Hoh or Bangladesh’s Gourab Singha in a while Saturday.
On the 2023 Hangzhou Video games, Loh misplaced to Malaysia’s Ng Tze Yong on the identical stage of the competitors.
Loh is amongst 4 badminton gamers representing Singapore on the Video games. Singapore’s high ladies’s singles participant Yeo Jia Min, and the boys’s doubles pair of Wesley Koh and Junsuke Kubo are set to function in a while Saturday.
Singapore’s solely Video games badminton medal has been the ladies’s crew bronze on the 2006 Doha Video games.