Koo Kien Keat and Tan Boon Heong are through to the men’s doubles quarter-finals of the Olympics badminton competition.
They defeated Howard Bach and Tony Gunawan of the United States 21-12, 21-14 in 25 minutes to confirm their berth from Group D, with a match in hand.
They will play world number two Chung Jae-sung and Lee Yong-dae of South Korea tomorrow to determine the group winners.
The Malaysians had to wait for almost 40 minutes before their game started as the schedule was running late.
They made an explosive start to race to a 9-0 lead before conceding the first point and took just 11 minutes to wrap up the first game at 21-12.
The second game was more hotly contested with Gunawan and Howard fighting hard to force the rubber.
Once again, the Malaysians had the lead from the start. They took 14 minutes to win 21-14 for their third career victory over their opponents.
The last time the two pairs met was at the 2009 BWF World Championship when the Malaysians took three sets to beat the American duo.
Their only other meeting was also in 2009, at the Hong Kong Super Series, which was a straight games win for the Malaysians.
Kien Keat said they were looking forward to the quarter-finals.
“Our next match isn’t that crucial but we will still go all out to win it. We want to keep up the winning momentum so our confidence level stays high,” he said.
“It was a little easier today but then our game plan was to keep attacking.”
- THE STAR
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