Pearly-Thinaah relieved to pass early test against tenacious Chinese pair

PETALING JAYA: Pearly Tan-M. Thinaah (pic) survived a scare before booking their spot in the second round of the Japan Open.

The national women’s doubles pair were pushed hard by China’s world No. 23 Liu Shengshu-Tan Ning in their opening match before narrowly prevailing 21-11, 9-21, 21-19 in 59 minutes at the Yoyogi Gymnasium in Tokyo yesterday.

Shengshu-Tan Ning had captured the Spain Masters and US Open titles this year and provided a good test for world No. 11 Pearly-Thinaah.

The latter were 4-9 and 9-15 behind in the third game but managed to claw their way back to beat the tenacious Chinese pair.

Pearly-Thinaah were relieved to come through the match with the win but were not satisfied with their performance.

“We played well in the first game but we are not happy with how we performed in the second and third games,” said Thinaah.

“But I know this is a process we have to go through and we have to learn from this.

“We will focus and try to do better in our next match.”

On overcoming the points deficit and winning the third game, Pearly said: “We didn’t think too much about the points.

“We just wanted to play our own game well.

“We are happy that we managed to come back and win.”

Pearly-Thinaah, who are playing in their second tournament after the former’s recovery from an elbow injury, will most likely face another Chinese pair in world No. 1 Chen Qingchen-Jia Yifan next.

Qingchen-Yifan are not expected to face many problems in winning their first-round match against Canada’s world No. 30 Catherine Choi-Josephine Wu today.

The Chinese pair, who captured the Korean Open recently, will be formidable opponents for the Malaysians.

Pearly-Thinaah have not managed to overcome Qingchen-Yifan in all their four meetings before this but did come close to breaking their duck in the second round of the Korean tourney before going down fighting 17-21, 21-17, 19-21.

Meanwhile, independent men’s doubles pair Ong Yew Sin-Teo Ee Yi also made it into the second round after beating Lucas Corvee-Ronan Labar of France 21-15, 21-18.

World No. 6 Yew Sin-Ee Yi will take on Taiwan’s reigning Olympic champions Lee Yang-Wang Chi-lin next for a place in the quarter-finals.