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Shocked Marin faces Dubai exit
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CAROLINA Marin, the world champion, the BWF player of the year, and the favorite to win the Super Series finals for the first time, was pushed to the edge of the exit yesterday after a second surprising defeat in two days.
The Spaniard’s 9-21, 15-21 loss to the highly mobile Japanese player Nozomi Okuhara left Marin’s survival depending on Chinese Taipei’s Tai Tzu Ying achieving an improbable first win of the week against Saina Nehwal of India.
And yet Marin’s debut in the tour’s flagship event started satisfactorily two days ago with a tidy victory over Tai.
It went very oddly wrong, however, when she missed a game point in the first game on Thursday against Nehwal, her far-from-fit predecessor as No. 1 and slid to a defeat that sounded as though it was as unexpected to her opponent as to anyone else.
It soon became even worse yesterday against Okuhara, who took the lead straight away, dominated the first game, resisted Marin’s fightback from a four-point deficit to 11-11, and finished as confidently as if she had expected this outcome all along.
Okuhara claimed after the match that she expected to play even better. “I’m now going off to do more training.”
Marin was honest. “I didn’t prepare so well for my match with Saina,” she admitted. “And today I made far too many mistakes. I’m very disappointed.”
She also spoke about going home straight away to Spain at the end of a long hard season. But there was a wait of several hours before that probability, along with Nehwal’s fate, could be confirmed.
A few moments later Ratchanok Intanon joined Okuhara in the semifinals.
The former world champion from Thailand was able to create many more openings than Marin had, and enterprisingly squeezed out a 21-14, 21-19 win against Wang Shixian, the former world No. 1 from China.
The other Chinese player, Wang Yihan, the former world champion, had already qualified in this group, with two tough three-game wins, one of which was against her compatriot, the other Wang.
Defending men’s champion Chen Long, completed an unbeaten three-match sequence in his group with a 21-14, 21-17 win over Jan Jorgensen, the world No. 2 from Denmark. Both had already qualified for the semifinals.
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