The Danish mixed double Julie Houmann and Anders Kristiansen is through to second round after beating 6th seeded Debby Susanto and Muhammad Rijal from Indonesia.
Anders Kristiansen and Julie Houmann couldn’t stop smiling after their win against a top Indonesia couple in Odense Idrætspark Tuesday, 21-15 21-15.
”Did we really keep them down with 15 points in each game?” Julie asked surprised and happiness in her voice after their great win.
And the answer is simple: Yes they did. The Indonesian couple Debby Susanto and Muhammad Rijal actually beat Christinna Pedersen and Joachim Fischer Nielsen at last year’s tournament, but this year it was time for Danish revenge.
“We play a really good match today and we controlled the match 100 %. When we play like this, we can make it really fare, so we just have to keep on going”, Julie Houmann says.
“We have played them once at Swiss Open, where we lost in two close games, so we knew we had the changes to win, if we played well”.
Focussing on playing not winning
Anders Kristiansen has actually been out with an injury in the right leg in the past weeks, so the two Danes haven’t had the best preparations for this tournament, as Kristiansen has not been able to practice as much as usually.
Before the match, they therefore decided to focus on their performance at the court and not the numbers on the scoreboard.
”It has been important for us to focus on how we play on the court and not the results. We have talked a lot about that before today’s match and it helped us. I hope we can bring this attitude with us to the next round”, Kristiansen says.
Friday the Danes are up against Hashimoto and Maeda from Japan.
Also Christinna Pedersen/Joachim Fischer Nielsen and Kamilla Rytter Juhl/Mads Pieler Kolding are through to second round in the mixed doubles. Read more about their matches here
See the results of Tuesdays matches here