Kuala Lumpur
The 21-17, 23-21 scoreline, in a high-quality match that lasted 71 utterly absorbing and fascinating minutes, revealed how the awesomely consistent Malaysian veteran husbanded his resources cannily to finish the match by the short route. Both played the final half-dozen points at blinding pace, each trying to outhit the other. Had the duel gone to a decider, Lee would have been hard put to it, to last the full distance.
Nevertheless, one has to admire the levels of Lee’s physical fitness, hunger and competitive spirit at an age when most players would be looking towards easing off from the rigours of the gymnasium and identifying a suitable date for hanging up their racquets. Retirement be damned; Lee has his sights set firmly on the 2020 Olympics, to be held on Momota’s home turf in Tokyo. Having bagged silver at the last three Olympics in Beijing, London and Rio, the Malaysian is keen on one final fling to upgrade to the yellow metal.
It was heart-warming to watch the veteran absorbing just about everything that the younger man threw at him, and staying obdurately in the rallies without showing the least signs of fatigue or slowing down. The rallies were long and intense since it was far from easy for either man to pierce his rival’s defence, and both played the net with elan, either counter-dribbling or clearing the shuttle deep.
In his efforts to wrest the initiative, Lee was often forced to go for outrageous shots, like the crosscourt smash from the deep forehand baseline corner, or the fast crosscourt drop, hit with a smash action. He got points galore with this weapon, perhaps the only one to which Momota failed to find a counter. If there was one area where Lee could be faulted, it was in judging the lines, especially on his deep forehand sideline, where the shuttle obstinately drifted in, time and time again.
As for the Japanese southpaw, who had knocked out Indonesia’s World No 10 Anthony Sinisuka Ginting, South Korea’s No 2 seed Son Wan Ho, Taiwan’s Chou Tien Chen, ranked sixth, and India’s Kidambi Srikanth, seeded No 4, in his earlier outings, he really did nothing wrong throughout the match, except conceding a 13-6 lead in the second game through a lapse in concentration. But he was not only able to reel in the slack, but also barged ahead and held two game-points, one of which Lee saved with a lucky netcord.
The men’s singles title clash, which brought the curtain down on the first of four World Tour tournaments on the South East Asian circuit, was fittingly the most exciting, and the most well contested of the five finals to be decided on the day. Three of the other four title clashes turned out to be damp squibs; and only the mixed doubles, which opened the afternoon’s proceedings, provided some entertainment, although it was fought between two pairs from the same country.
The fourth-seeded combination of Zheng Siwei and Huang Yaqiong were just a shade better than their compatriots, Wang Yilyu and Huang Dongping; and bagged the crown with a 21-19, 21-18 triumph. The top-ranked Indonesian pairing of Tontowi Ahmad and Lilyana Natsir had been dumped out of the tournament at the quarter-final stage by the husband-wife combination of Chris and Gabrielle Adcock, who themselves came to grief in the penultimate reckoning at the hands of Zheng and Huang Yaqiong.
The women’s singles final, as expected, proved disappointing, with no one able to stem the unrelenting march of top-seeded World No 1, Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei. Eighth-seeded He Bingjiao of China, despite being seen in her best form in the past two years, failed to convert a 20-17 advantage in the opening stanza into a one-game lead, and capitulated meekly in the second when Tai stepped on the gas.
The final five points of the first game in defending champion Tai’s account were only the precursor of an almost unending sequence of 17 points against a solitary ace by Bingjiao. When the Taiwanese powered to a 12-1 lead in the second, it was all over, bar the shouting. Even though Tai perversely took her foot off the accelerator, she had sufficient cushion to end up a 22-20, 21-11 winner, for her second Malaysia Open title from three successive finals.
The women’s doubles proved to be redemption of sorts for the Olympic champions and former World No 1 duo of Ayaka Takahashi and Misaki Matsutomo, who appeared to have fallen on evil days in the second half of 2017. Appearing to be back at their best, the Japanese twosome, seeded fifth, trampled all over the top-ranked pairing of Chen Qingchen and Jia Yifan at 21-12, 21-12, for their second World Tour title of the year. Jia was the weakest of the four, and it must be said that the mercurial Chen also had an off-day.
With two Japanese combinations facing off against one another in the men’s doubles final, there was muted interest in the result. In an event which witnessed upsets galore from the opening round itself, the sixth-seeded duo of Takeshi Kamura and Keigo Sonoda scored a totally one-sided 21-8, 21-10 victory over fellow-countrymen, Hiroyuki Endo and Yuka Watanabe. The unseeded combination had a distinctly bad day at the office, and capitulated without the semblance of a fight.
The action now moves to Jakarta, where the $1.25 million Indonesia Open, the richest tournament on the South East Asian circuit, takes off from 3 July. Considering the munificent prize money on offer, as also the diktat of the BWF that the top 15 players must participate in a minimum number of tournaments in a year, the entire badminton elite is expected to throw its collective hat into the ring.
