Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Top seeds open Super Series badminton Finals with wins

Taipei, Jan. 5 (CNA) Top singles seeds Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia and Wang Shixian of China opened the Badminton World Federation (BWF) Super Series Finals 2010 in Taipei with easy wins Wednesday in the preliminary round competition.

World men's singles No. 1 Lee beat Vietnam's Nguyen Tien Minh 21-12, 21-17 and world women's singles No. 2 Wang cruised to a 21-14, 21-6 victory over Yao Jie of the Netherlands on the first day of the tourney, the climax of the 12-leg Super Series circuit which invited top eight players/pairs in the world to compete.

Taiwan's "golden pair" of Chien Yu-chin and Cheng Wen-hsing defeated Greysia Polii and Mailiana Jauhari of Indonesia 21-13, 21-15 in women's doubles. Taiwan's male duo, Fang Chien-min and Wu Sheng-mu, fell 21-16, 21-17 in their first men's doubles match to Jung Jae-sung and Lee Yong-dae from South Korea.

In other games of the day, Thailand's Boonsak Ponsana beat Indonesia's Taufit Hidayat 21-18, 18-21, 21-7 and Danish veteran Peter Gade had a hard-fought 21-11, 18-21, 21-16 win over compatriot Jan Jorgensen in the men's singles.

Eight players/pairs in each of the five categories -- men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles, women's doubles and mixed doubles -- are split into two groups in the round robin preliminary round, with the top two finishers in each group advancing to a cross-over semifinal round.

The third edition of the season-end tournament is being held Jan. 5-9 in Taipei with a total prize money of US$500,000. (By Chris Wang) enditem/jc