Jonatan Christie Increasingly Thirsty for Titles After Winning the 2023 French Open

Indonesian men's singles, Jonatan Christie. (Photo: Twitter @INABadminton)

JAKARTA - Indonesian men's singles, Jonatan Christie, emerged as champion at the 2023 French Open. The player who is familiarly called Jojo defeated China's representative, Li Shi Feng, in the final round which ended in a rubber game 16-21, 21-15, 21- 14, Sunday, October 29.

This victory made Jojo even more motivated in facing the next two events, Japan Masters and China Masters. He is increasingly thirsty to win other tournaments.

"This title will definitely increase my enthusiasm and motivation. Next there are the Japan Masters and China Masters, I want to focus there. Hopefully, I can advance to the BWF World Tour Finals," said Jojo.

The French Open is a new history for men's singles ranked 6th in the world. For the first time Jojo won the BWF Super 750 category tournament.

"Thank God, Praise God because this is my first title at the Super 750 level which I have been waiting for a long time. I have entered the final several times but have not been able to win," said Jonatan, quoted from Antara.

It was not easy for Jonathan to beat Li, who was ranked one position above him. In fact, he had to spend 80 minutes to climb the highest podium, as well as being Jonathan's fourth victory over Li in the entire record of meetings between the two players.

Moreover, in previous tournaments, Jonathan was unable to show his best abilities and had to be eliminated early.

This minor result even invited a lot of criticism from many fans who thought that the Jakarta-born athlete did not have a consistent quality of play.

The positive results he achieved had to be overcome by falling behind in the first game. Slowly but surely, Jojo improved his quality in the following two games.

"It wasn't easy, I was a little nervous at the start of the match. I made a lot of my own mistakes. In the second game I made improvements by playing more neatly and trying to make my opponent run a lot," he said.