A very nice weather outside, very good atmosphere and a very strong competition can characterize this year's Hungarian Junior Open in the tiny Hungarian city, Pécs. It was quite obvious even before the first rally of the BE Junior Circuit tournament were played that – due to the visa problems and consequently the withdrawal of the whole Indian team – the Korean shuttler will dominate the events.

So there was no surprise in the women's singles as all the berths in the quarter final have been grabbed by them, first seeded Kim Hyo Min bagged not only this title but she won also the special award given for the most promising player of the tournament. Kim was playing in all the three tournament's finals.

In the women'd doubles, Ukranian, Turkish and French pairs were hoping to outplay their Korean opponents in the quarter-finals but neither of them could book a place for the semis. The final has been won by Kim Hyo Min/So Yeon Han in two straight games.

There were a lot of European hopes to achieve good results in the men's singles as the 1st and 2nd seeded players didn’t belong to the Korean team. 2nd seeded Austrian youngster Matthias Almer and unseeded Turkish Sinan Zorlu were very close to demolish the „all-Korean semi final”, but both of them lost three games. In the final, the 5th seeded Jeon Hyuk Jin took the gold medal by winning in three games against Heo Kwang Hee.

Although in the quarter-finals of the mixed doubles category there were 6 Korean pairs, the remaining Europeans made a very good job. The French pair just lost from set points against a Korean pair meanwhile the Danish duo has beaten their 2nd Korean opponent in the best 8 pairs in one of the most thrilling game of the tournament. They failed to book the berth for the final but which event has been won very easily by first seeded Bae Kwon Joung / Kim Ji Won.

The usually most attractive event (MD) gave the best matches and the biggest joy for the audience. The Danish couple Mathias Christiansen/David Daugaard have shown all of their talents to the grateful audience and marched through the final where they outplayed Bae Kwon Young/Ryu Soo Hwan 21-18, 21-18 in order to receive their deserved gold medals.

All the results of the Hungarian Open can be seen HERE

Article by Jozsef Csorba and photo by Gergely Patko