Current world no. 1 Chen Qingchen and Jia Yiafan punctuated their dominance in the SMART Badminton Asia Championships 2022’s women’s doubles tournament with a solid 21-11, 21-15 win over Japan’s Rin Iwanaga and Kie Nakanishi, for their second straight Asian title, Sunday at the Muntinlupa Sports Complex in Muntinlupa City.
Chen and Jia gained 12,000 points for BWF World Rankings to pull away from their lofty standings atop the leaderboard, while Iwanaga and Nakanishi received 10,200. The other semifinalists in China’s Du Yue and Li Minwei and Japan’s Yuki Fukushima and Sayaka Hirota bagged 8,400 points for each pair.
The reigning world champions peppered the young Japanese pair in that opening set, but the latter found some momentum in the second game.
Iwanaga and Nakanishi got aggressive on offense in the second frame and forced Chen and Jia to errors to get to as close as six three times, the last of which is at 13-19.
The Chinese top guns then regained their groove to end the match with two straight points.
The tournament is made possible by SMART, MVP Sports Foundation, Li-Ning, Cignal, TV5, One Sports, Robinson’s Land, Premium Megastructure Inc., Philippine Badminton Association, Badminton Asia, the Philippine Olympic Committee, the Philippine Sports Commission, and Muntinlupa Mayor Fresnedi and the City of Muntinlupa.
