Another good day for me here in Orange County, California. I was priviledged enough to play our current national champion and Olympian and good friend Andrew Dabeka (Canada). The first game started very well for me where I was able to win the net and get behind many of Andrew’s short lifts. This allowed me to play alot of variation from the back which open the court for my smashes. With this tactic i was able to win the first set 21-7. The second set was a different story….Andrew was doing a very good job of trying to take the net as well as always being aggressive on my short serve. This paid off for him since he led all the way up to 17-13. From that point on I was the one taking the inatiative and slowly coming back. At 20-20 we both were playing a bit of nervous badminton….I put one in the net….on set point he served it in the net..on match point I blocked one in the net etc…..until finaly I was able to win the match 24-22.
I am very excited about my win and I am really looking forward to playing tomorrow opponent in the Semi Finals Hsuan Yi HSUEH from Chinese Taipei. I have never seen him play before but from what I have heard he has a big smash! So I have two options: either I take a deep base and get all his smashes back or I just don’t lift the shutttle:) We will see what happens.
In other news Carl Baxter of England beat Martin Bille Larsen (Denmark) in three exciting sets. In the third game it was down to the wire, they were going blow for blow until Baxter pulled away and took it 21-16 int the third. He is to meet Taufik Hidayat (Indonesia) who defeated David Snider (Canada). David had a very good second set with the number one seed losing 21-18 but having a very close call against him on match point.
My match will be playing around 6:40pm California time.
To follow the match please click on the link below.
U.S Open DRAW
