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Indonesian shuttlers finish second at Hong Kong Open 2019, bring home valuable lessons
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Lessons learned: The Indonesian men's doubles pair of (from left) Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan must acknowledge the superiority of their South Korean opponents, Choi Solgyu and Seo Seung Jae, after the final of the 2019 Hong Kong Open on Sunday. They lost 21-13, 13-21 and 12-21. (The Jakarta Post/Courtesy of PBSI)
T
hree Indonesian shuttlers – Anthony Sinisuka Ginting in the men’s singles category and the men’s doubles pair of Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan – all of whom reached Sunday’s finals at the 2019 Hong Kong Open, failed to secure gold medals and had to content themselves with runner-up positions.
Anthony, who had beaten Indonesian counterpart Jonatan Christie in the semis, lost to home star Lee Cheuk Yiu through a rubber match of 21-16, 10-21 and 20-22. The Indonesian shuttler had started the match with high confidence and maintained his dominance throughout the first game. Lee attempts to level the score proved futile in view of Anthony’s precision and agility in the first game.
However, it went downhill from there as Anthony failed to maintain the winning momentum and made numerous unforced errors when launching attacks. He quickly became predictable and thus had to concede the second game to his opponent. The third and final game was quite dramatic as Anthony got close to level the score when he was only a point behind at 21-20.
At that critical moment, Anthony’s attempt to launch the decisive strike was deemed a violation by the referee as the tip of his racket crossed the net. The referee then gave the ‘champion’ point to his opponent instead.
“Hugely annoyed by the decision, since I consider myself not to have committed any violation. However, this is sport, there is always a winner and a loser in a game. I must accept that,” he said as quoted by badmintonindonesia.org on Sunday.
On another arena, the men’s doubles pair of Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan had also been forced to concede defeat, namely to South Korea’s Choi Solgyu and Seo Seung Jae, following a rubber match ending 21-13, 13-21 and 12-21.
The pair of Ahsan and Hendra had wrapped up the first game in their favor, but the rest of the match was determined by endurance, and it appears the Koreans had more. Ahsan and Hendra’s attempt to garner more points was stopped just when they reached halfpoints.
“Our stamina was declining and apparently our attempts to gather more points were to no avail,” Ahsan said.
“We need to seriously work on our strength and endurance for the next tournament.”
That defeat aside, the Indonesian pair has actually displayed a promising trend, reaching the quarterfinals at the Fuzhou China Open 2019 now the finals at the Hong Kong Open.
They are now preparing for this year's final stage in Guangzhou, China, which forms the BWF World Tour Finals 2019 and is slated to be held in mid-December.
