Key takeaways
- Dennehy lost her women’s singles semi-final to Kaitlyn Christian and her mixed doubles semi-final, alongside Len Yang, to Danni-Elle Townsend and Joey Wild.
- Dennehy and Townsend reached the women’s doubles final together. Townsend will also face Jessie Irvine in the mixed doubles final after opposing her in women’s doubles.
- Noe Khlif, Gabriel Tardio, Irvine and Townsend each reached two Championship Sunday finals.
The short answer: Sahra Dennehy’s triple-crown bid at the Kuala Lumpur Cup ended in the semi-finals. Kaitlyn Christian beat her in women’s singles and Danni-Elle Townsend and Joey Wild beat her and Len Yang in mixed. She reached the women’s doubles final with Townsend. Noe Khlif, Gabriel Tardio, Jessie Irvine and Townsend each reached two finals.
Sahra Dennehy began the Kuala Lumpur Cup semi-finals with three possible routes to gold. Kaitlyn Christian closed one and Danni-Elle Townsend helped close another. Townsend also helped Dennehy reach the women’s doubles final, leaving their partnership as the part of her triple-crown pursuit that survived Saturday.
Sahra Dennehy reached Saturday with three chances to get to the Kuala Lumpur Cup finals. She left with one, earned alongside a player who had also helped take another away.
Top seed Kaitlyn Christian beat Dennehy in the women’s singles semi-final. Dennehy and Len Yang then fell to Danni-Elle Townsend and Joey Wild in mixed doubles. Dennehy and Townsend, however, came through together in women’s doubles and will return for that title match on Sunday.
The outline sounds complicated because the day was. Dennehy’s triple-crown bid ended, but her tournament did not. Townsend was both the partner with whom she secured a final and an opponent who denied her a second one. The two Australians must now play together again after opposing one another with a place in a different final at stake.
Saturday also gave four players two matches apiece on Championship Sunday. Noe Khlif reached the men’s singles final and joined Gabriel Tardio in the men’s doubles final. Tardio made the mixed doubles final with Jessie Irvine. Irvine and Townsend will meet on opposite sides of the net in both women’s doubles and mixed doubles. The tour’s semi-final report confirms the final line-up.
What remained of Dennehy’s three-title attempt
Dennehy had good reason to believe she could carry three draws into Sunday. At the Beijing Open in June, she reached every final, won women’s singles and women’s doubles, then lost the mixed doubles title match. WPM examined that history before Saturday’s semi-finals. Kuala Lumpur offered another attempt at a clean sweep, though reaching three semi-finals was only the beginning of the work.
Christian stopped it in singles. The mixed doubles defeat came with its own turn in the story. Yang had stood across the net when Dennehy’s Beijing triple crown slipped away. He was beside her in Kuala Lumpur, but this time Townsend and Wild took the final place.
Khlif makes his first asian tournament a two-final week
Noe Khlif has reached the last match of two draws on his first PPA Tour Asia appearance. His singles semi-final against Harrison Brown ended 11-7, 11-0. Brown had survived three deciding-game matches earlier in the week before reaching the last four, but Khlif gave him no route back in the second game.
There was much less certainty at the beginning of Khlif’s men’s doubles campaign. He and Tardio, the top seeds, fell 10-0 behind in the deciding game of their opening match and stood one point from elimination. WPM reported their escape earlier in the tournament. They have since reached the final against Augustus Ge and Len Yang.
Shimabukuro beats Wong again
Tama Shimabukuro will meet Khlif in the men’s singles final after beating Hong Kit Wong 11-7, 11-8. The 15-year-old had beaten Wong 11-9, 11-9 in the Macao Open final in May to claim his first PPA Tour Asia singles title.
Wong therefore arrived at Saturday’s meeting knowing exactly how close their previous contest had been. Shimabukuro won again. It is a useful result to set beside the attention his age attracts: he has followed a title-match win over Wong with another victory over him at the final stages of a separate event.
Sunday brings a different opponent and a fresh contest. Saturday established that Shimabukuro could repeat a difficult result against someone who had already taken him close.
Two meetings for Irvine and Townsend
Jessie Irvine and Townsend will face one another twice on Sunday. Irvine partners Alix Truong against Townsend and Dennehy for the women’s doubles title. Irvine then joins Tardio against Townsend and Joey Wild in mixed doubles.
Christian will meet Brooke Buckner in women’s singles. They played a close final in Hanoi earlier this year, which Christian won 7-11, 14-12, 11-9 after saving match points in the second game and recovering from 9-4 down in the third. Ge and Yang complete the men’s doubles final opposite Tardio and Khlif. Yang has won the two most recent men’s doubles gold medals on PPA Tour Asia, so that match carries a streak as well as a title.
Further reading
- Sahra Dennehy Has Three Semi-Finals and Nowhere to Hide — WPM’s account of the Beijing history and the three routes she carried into Saturday.
- Ten Points From Disaster: Tardio and Khlif Survive as Kuala Lumpur Bites Back — how the men’s doubles finalists nearly left in their opening match.
- PPA Tour Asia’s semi-final report — confirmed finalists and the published semi-final scores.
