(Reporter Kim Hyun-gi, Xports News) You cannot use a cow-killing knife to kill chickens.
The Korean women’s badminton team has taken the first step toward winning its first-ever Asian team championship. Women’s singles ace Ahn Se-young and women’s doubles stars Lee So-hee and Baek Hana completely defeated Singapore.
The women’s national team defeated Singapore 5-0 in the first match of Group Z of the women’s group stage held at the Kon Son Gymnasium in Qingdao, China on the 3rd (Korean time). The women’s national team will take a day off on the 4th and then play the final group match against Chinese Taipei on the 5th.
The Asian Men’s and Women’s Team Badminton Championships have been held every two years since they were first held in India in 2016.
The tournament format consists of 3 singles matches and 2 doubles matches, and the winner is determined in a best-of-5 match. The matches are played in the following order: singles~doubles~singles~doubles~singles. However, even if a team wins 3 games before the 5th game, 3 singles, all remaining games will be played.
The 11 countries participating in the women’s division, including Korea, will be divided into four groups and compete in the group stage. The top two countries from each group advance to the quarterfinals and decide the champion through a tournament.
The teams that place in the top 4 of this competition will advance to the Uber Cup (World Women’s Team Championship) to be held in Denmark in April.
The women’s national team will attempt to win its first ever championship in this tournament. Korea’s best performance so far is taking second place twice (2020, 2022) in the women’s division. In the previous competition, the 2024 competition, they won the 2022 Uber Cup and automatically qualified for the next Uber Cup, so they were unable to participate in the Asian Team Championship.
This time, Korea dispatched its elite members of the national team. Se-young Ahn, Ga-eun Kim, Ga-eun Park, Min-ji Kim (singles), Hee-yong Kong, Hye-jeong Kim, So-hee Lee, Hana Baek, Yeon-woo Lee, and Seo-jin Lee (doubles) went to China.
On the other hand, China and Japan will deploy 1.5 teams considering that it is an Uber Cup preliminary round. In the case of China, the three women’s singles players, Wang Zhiyi (world’s 2nd), Chen Yufei (world’s 3rd), and Han Yue (world’s 5th) were all missing. Women’s doubles world No. 1 pair Ryu Seong-su and Tan Jing will also not participate. It seems that China’s first-tier players are planning to participate in the German Open (Super 300) at the end of February, which is a rehearsal competition for the All England Open (Super 1000) in early March, rather than this tournament.
Japan is also missing women’s singles one-two punches such as Akane Yamaguchi (4th in the world) and Tomoka Miyazaki (9th in the world).
In such a situation, the women’s national team excluded Ahn Se-young, the undisputed world number one in women’s singles, and Lee So-hee and Baek Ha-na, winners of the Badminton World Federation (BWF) World Tour Finals at the end of last year, from the Singapore match.
Starting with Kim Ga-eun, ranked 17th in the women’s singles world rankings, competing in the 1st singles, Kim Hye-jeong and Gong Hee-yong (1st doubles), Park Ga-eun (2nd singles), Lee Seo-jin and Lee Yeon-woo (2nd doubles), and Kim Min-ji (3rd singles) appeared.
As expected, we won all 5 games.
In Korea, first singles Kim Ga-eun defeated Singapore women’s singles ace Yeo Jia-min (world No. 28) 2-0 (21-8 21-5) in 24 minutes, followed by Kim Hye-jung and Gong Hee-yong (world no. 5), Park Ga-eun (world no. 70), and Lee Seo-jin and Lee Yeon-woo winning 2-0 in succession.
Minji Kim (No. 75 in the world), who played the final singles match, lost the first game 17-21, then won the second or third game in a row, and achieved a 2-1 comeback victory, breaking the ‘perfect win’ of making 2-0 in all five games.
There was no reason for Ahn Se-young, Lee So-hee and Baek Hana to be sent into a match like this.
Ahn Se-young is expected to play against Taiwan at the earliest, or in the tournament to be held on the 6th or 8th.
Ahn Se-young has recently achieved 30 consecutive wins in women’s singles international competitions. After losing 0-2 to Yamaguchi in the final of the Korea Open held in Suwon at the end of September last year, she won a total of 30 consecutive wins at the Denmark Open and French Open (Super 750) in October, the Australian Open (Super 500) in November, the BWF World Tour Final in December, the Malaysia Open (Super 1000), and the India Open (Super 750) in January of this year (with a forfeit in the semifinals of the Malaysia Open against Chen Yufei). including) were recorded.
Ahn Se-young is expected to be able to get 3 to 4 more wins at the Asian Team Championships. If you were to pick a strong player from another country that Ahn Se-young could compete against in this tournament, it would be China’s 178cm tall striker Gao Fangjie (ranked 10th in the world).
Photo = Yonhap News
Reporter Kim Hyun-ki [email protected]
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