It was another three game-thriller for the Danish pair Niclas Nøhr and Sara Thygesen when they today went on court to face China’s He Jiting and Du Yue.
Nøhr and Thygesen have recently re-started their partnership after a longer period where Nøhr was off-court with a long-term injury. The two have been fighting their way back into the top of European and world rankings ever since October 2017, at Denmark Open.
On Saturday, they took a step further in that direction as they have now reached the final at YONEX German Open, a Super 300 BWF tournament.
In the beginning of the week, they stated to Badminton Europe that they still need more matches together to find back to the high level they had before, and for now, they know that at their best level they can beat everyone, but at their lowest they can easily lose to anyone as well.
- Our opponents today are really, really good. We lost back in January in India, to this pair, also a close match with I think 16 or maybe 17 in the third as well, so, we are pretty close and it’s the small things that makes us the winners today. But I think we kept it cool in the third set and I am really happy that closed it with 17, Nøhr told Badminton Europe.
Up and down, again
The Danes were facing the same problems as yesterday, where they lost their game plan and had to fight their way back after getting behind in the score. But luckily that did not get them down today either. Once again, with extraordinary nerve and power, the Danish mixed doubles won 21-19, 19-21, 21-17.
- I think it is more mentally, because we have a game plan and because this pair is so good it’s always hard to keep focus on the game plan all the time, so there will be these small periods where we are falling a little bit out, Thygesen explained and continued;
- I think we managed to make these periods really small so they didn’t get like 10 points in a row.
- We know that the pair we are going to be up against in the final are really good as well, so we have to keep focusing on our own game plan and hopefully that’s enough to get a victory, Nøhr said about their match-by-match-approach.
The opponents in the mixed doubles final will be Goh Soon Huat and Lai Shevon Jemie. The order of play is yet to be published at the time of this article being published.