Failed To Reach The 2023 Japan Open Final, Gregoria Shifts Focus To World Championships

Indonesian women's singles, Gregoria Mariska Tunjung. (Photo: Twitter @INABadminton)

JAKARTA - Indonesian women's singles, Gregoria Mariska Tunjung, failed to advance to the final of the Japan Open 2023. Gregoria lost in the semifinals to Chinese representative He Bing Jiao in a rubber game 21-13, 19-21, 9-21, Saturday, 29 July.

After this failure, Gregoria shifted his focus to the 2023 Badminton World Championships. The event is scheduled to take place in Denmark on August 21-27.

"After this I will immediately focus on the World Championships. There are several weeks to add everything that is still lacking, and the time is quite long for preparation," said Gregoria.

Regarding his match against He Bing Jiao, the eighth-ranked women's single admitted that he had not released his best performance, especially in the third game.

"In the first and second games, you could say it was quite good, but in the third game there were a lot of records. The focus and speed have decreased considerably while the opponent is even superior in terms of speed, patience and tightness of play," said Gregoria, as quoted from a written statement released by PBSI via Antara.

"When I was 17-15 ahead in the second game I made a lot of mistakes myself, so it was followed by 17-20, I should have been able to be like yesterday, playing safer, not in a hurry to turn it off."

"Today, I feel less patient, I want to be deadly quickly, even though the opponent has anticipated it. When I catch up to 19-20, my service is stuck, this should not happen again," he continued.

With these results, Indonesia only has one representative, namely Jonatan Christie's men's singles in the Japan Open final after he defeated India's Lakhsya Sen through a rubber game 21-15, 13-21, 21-16.

In the final round, Jonathan will face world number one men's singles Viktor Axelsen (Denmark) who has defeated the host representatives of Kodai Naraoka 21-11, 21-11.

Previously, the men's doubles Fajar Alfian/Muhammad Rian Ardianto fell in the hands of Taiwanese representatives Lee Yang/Wang Chi Lin in two straight games 19-21, 10-21.