Gopichand goes down to Lee in Japan Open semis
Lee Hyun-Il of South Korea put an end to Pulella Gopichand's excellent run to reach the men's singles final at the Japan Open badminton tournament for a second year running on Saturday.
The fifth-seeded Korean, playing last year's All England champion from India for the first time, used his attacking smashes as the best weapon to score a 7-1, 7-4, 7-3 victory in
33 minutes.
The women's singles final will be an all-Chinese affair between defending champion Zhou Mi, top seed, and 1999 Malaysian Open champion Dai Yun.
Zhou amazingly won 15 rallies in a row from a 5-3 lead in
the first game to 5-0 in the third on her way to a lopsided
7-3, 7-0, 7-2 victory over her former teammate Wang Chen, who
now represents Hong Kong.
Fifth-seeded Dai pulled off her first win in many years
and only her second win overall against fellow Chinese Asian
champion Zhang Ning with a 1-7, 7-5, 7-0, 7-5 performance.
"I'm really glad that I made the final again," said Lee,
who will turn 22 in 11 days.
"It was very difficult for me to change my playing style
since the current seven-point format was introduced, because
it gives an advantage to those who play aggressively and I
lacked speed in my play. But I can take that advantage now as
I got used to the format.
"It was the first time that I played Gopichand today. It
was a bit easier than I had expected. I was able to play in my
favourite style, because he was playing slowly," added Lee.
Gopichand played five games in the last three matches
beating Indonesia's world champion Hendrawan, Korean Open
winner Lin Dan of China, and another Chinese, Wu Yunyong, and
he looked passive against the spirited Korean.
Gopichand could not show his excellent defence against
hard smashes off the Korean and soon found himself 0-5 down in
the opener and 0-4 down in the second game, falling an easy
victim to Lee's jump smashes.
Lee combined his smashes with disguised overhead drops to
run away from 3-3 all in the third game to finish off the
struggling Gopichand.
