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RI teams survive first test at Games
Indonesian beach volleyball aces Andy Ardiyansah and Koko Prasetyo Darkuncoro overcame their first test at the Asian Games after beating Yemen’s Adeeb Mahfoudh and Assar Mohammed in Pool C of the men’s preliminaries at the Town Gymnasium in Guangzhou on Tuesday
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ndonesian beach volleyball aces Andy Ardiyansah and Koko Prasetyo Darkuncoro overcame their first test at the Asian Games after beating Yemen’s Adeeb Mahfoudh and Assar Mohammed in Pool C
of the men’s preliminaries at the Town Gymnasium in Guangzhou on Tuesday.
The two-time Southeast Asian (SEA) Games champions got off to a slow start in the first, but closed it out set 24-22. They were more dominant in the second, sealing the match 21-12. “In the first match we were not in good shape as we on center court,” Koko commenting on difficulties in the first set, with the Yemenis leveling the score at 20-20, pushing the Indonesian coach to ask for a time-out.
“I told Andy we should focus on the match in order to get more points from blocks and defense,” Koko said. “The Yemeni players are taller than us and we’ve never played them before so we just played our own style.”
In the second set, Andy and Koko led early by six points but the Yemenis fought back and pushed the Indonesians to call for another time-out.
“We lifted our foot off the gas that time, but we said to each other ‘come on, wake up’ while in the time-out,” Andy said, adding that the Yemenis were good hitters.
The 2007 and 2008 Asian champions will next meet Japan’s Shinya Inoue and Yoshiumi Hasegawa on Thursday. Another Indonesian pair, Dian Putra Santosa and Ade Candra Rachmawan, also won their first preliminary match in pool H against South Korea’s Lee Gwangin and Ko Junyong 15-21, 21-15, 15-9.
“Our service game was riddled with error. It was too windy,” Dian said referring to their first set loss. In the 42-minute match in front of 1758 spectators, Dian and Ade made eight service faults while the Korean made only four. The wind speed was recorded at 9.7 kilometers per hour at the time of the match.
In the second set, the Indonesians won a surprising seven straight points to come from behind 14-15 and win the set 21-15.
“We just took it slow and had many blocks. I believed we could win at the time.” said Dian said.
Dian and Ade will next meet Oman’s Khalifa Al Jabri and Abdullah Al Alrajhi on Thursday.
—JP/Matheos Viktor Messakh
