Taipei, Nov. 25 (CNA) Olympic men’s doubles gold-medalists and third seeds Lee Yang (李洋) and Wang Chi-lin (王齊麟) were among several Taiwanese players who exited the Indonesia Open Thursday after the pair suffered a straight-set defeat to Malaysia’s world No. 19 pair Goh Sze Fei and Nur Izzuddin.

Lee and Wang lost to Goh and Izzuddin 15-21, 21-23 in their second-round men’s doubles match, which only lasted 37 minutes. It is the first time the two teams have ever played each other in a competitive match.

In the opening set, Goh and Izzuddin secured a comfortable 11-6 lead at the mid-game interval before powering ahead to win the set 21-15.

The two pairs then tied 15 times in the second set to reach 21-21, but the team from Malaysia shot ahead by winning two points and the match. Ranked No. 3 in the world, Lee and Wang have bagged two Thailand Open titles, the BWF World Tour Finals 2020 in January, and Olympic gold in July.

Fourth-seeded Chou Tien-chen (周天成) was knocked out of contention in the second round of the men’s singles competition by unseeded Kenta Nishimoto of Japan in three sets, 21-18, 15-21, 11-21. The match took one hour and 16 minutes to be completed.

Despite the stunning win by Nishimoto, Chou still holds an 8-2 head-to-head advantage over the Japanese.

The World No. 4 and 2019 Indonesia Open men’s singles title holder Chou has yet to win any championships this year.

World No. 11 Wang Tzu-wei (王子維) also crashed out of the tournament at the same stage after falling to third-seeded Anders Antonsen of Denmark 21-18, 13-21, 14-21 in one hour and 22 minutes.

Wang and Antonsen have now split their head-to-head record 3-3.

The prestigious Indonesia Open, held from Nov. 23-28 in Bali, has a total purse of US$850,000, and is the second stop in the three-tournament “Indonesia Badminton Festival 2021.”

The festival also includes the Indonesia Masters, which was held Nov. 16-21, and finishes with the BWF World Tour Finals, which starts on Dec. 1.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel