Asuncions advance to mixed doubles quarters

Kennie and Kennevic Asuncion smashed through Japan’s Jun Takemura and Yasuyo Imabeppu’s defenses and fashioned out a morale-boosting 21-12, 21-19 victory yesterday to barge into the quarterfinal round of the mixed doubles in the $120,000 Bingo Bonanza Philippine Open Badminton Championships presented by PLDT Business Solutions at the Philsports Arena.

Drawing inspiration from the local crowd, the top Filipino brother-sister tandem dished out a superb game all throughout with Kennie coming through with big winners en route to the victory that lined them up against an Indon pair that stunned a fifth ranked Thai side.

The win also came like a whiff of fresh air for Kennevic, who earlier bowed to sixth seed Chan Yan Kit of Hong Kong in the men’s singles event of this tournament sponsored by Bingo Bonanza, JVC (PHILS.), PLDT and Smart.

The Asuncions face Indons Puri Setyo and Lili Wang, who eked out a 21-15, 18-21, 21-17 win over Nattapon Naktong and Duang Anong Arunkesorn of Thailand in today’s quarterfinal round of this four-star tournament, the first IBF-ranked event to be held here.

"Hopefully, we’ll sustain our play and win more games," said Kennie, whose mixed doubles ranking with his younger brother dipped from 22nd last year to 69th in the current IBF world rankings due to lack of international competitions.

Earlier, Asuncion dished out some brilliant shots but proved erratic at times, dropping a closely-fought match to Chan, ranked 35th in the world.

"I had my chances but I couldn’t get the feel of my shots, maybe because of lack of tournaments," said Asuncion, who has only played two international tournaments — the Manila Southeast Asian Games and the Asian Badminton Championships in Malaysia — in the last 10 months.

Trailing, 9-15, Asuncion caught Chan by surprise with perfect drop shots to storm back to 18-19 to the delight of the predominant Filipino crowd. But a pair of errors slowed down the Filipino bet and enabled the Chinese ace to claim the opening set.