Badminton News: Japanese women’s singles badminton player Akane Yamaguchi won the Canada Open World Tour Super 500 title. Akane managed to beat Thailand’s representative Ratchanok Intanon.
The first seed has won in consecutive matches against former world champion, Intanon. Intanon who was the second seed was defeated with a score of 19-21 and 16-21, in a match which took place at the Markin MacPhail Center, Calgary, Canada on Monday (10/7) morning WIB.
After starting the match slowly as he trailed Intanon 0-1 early in the game, Akane reacted well to catch up to level the score at 4-4. Akane trailed by four more points after Intanon went on the offensive for 4-9 before world champions Japan turned the tide at the interval with a slim 11-10 advantage.
After the break, Akane’s game improved and continued to hold the lead over Intanon with 11-10 and 19-16 to win the opener.
Not wanting to repeat the same mistake, Akane immediately took control of the game, so she immediately won 3-2 early in the game. However, Intanon did not remain silent and managed to turn things around to close the interval with 9-11.
Intanon kept their lead after the break, up to 12-15. However, a series of errors by the Thai players sent Akane up an eight-game point streak to take a 19-15 lead to close out the win at 21-16.
With this victory, Akane Yamaguchi managed to widen the gap in her head-to-head record against Intanon with a score of 14-11 in 25 meetings in total since 2014.
Winning at the Canada Open earned Akane a prize of USD 15,750 or approximately Rs 236 million, while Intanon took home a prize of USD 7,980 or approximately Rs 120 million.
Tags: Akane Yamaguchi, ratchanok intanon, canada open 2023
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