New Zealand’s Shaunna Li reclaimed her women’s singles title at the VICTOR Oceania Badminton Championships beating defending champion Tiffany Ho in a sensational final. The New Zealand left-hander overcame her Australian rival 23-25 10-21 21-18 in just over an hour, making up for her loss in the mixed doubles final earlier in the day.
Honours on the day were evenly split, as the first match of the day saw the New Zealand/Australia combination of Vincent Tao/Gronya Somerville winning the mixed doubles over Edward Lau/Shaunna Li in a close final game, 21-19 14-21 21-18.
“We needed to drill back into our game plan because it got away from us a little bit,” Somerville told Badminton Oceania. “We knew what we had to do, we just had to action it going into the third. We were focused on staying disciplined in the game plan and playing the way we needed to.”
Dylan Soedjasa and Adam Jeffrey
Men’s doubles saw home hopefuls Adam Jeffrey/Dylan Soedjasa beat Australia’s Huaidong Tang/Frederick Zhao 21-13 21-10.
“We had the team event to start with and losing to Australia made us more motivated to push harder,” said Soedjasa. “Last year we were runners-up so in the last year we’ve tried to train harder and come back stronger. We’ve definitely stepped up our level and we are happy we could execute today in the final.”
Angela Yu and Gronya Somerville
Somerville returned for the women’s doubles with Angela Yu, and she comfortably completed her double, with the second seeds proving too strong for younger compatriots Mimi Ngo/Maureen Clarissa Wijaya, 21-10 21-12.
Edward Lau was due to play Jack Yu for the men’s singles crown, but was unable to take the court, and the Yu family had their second title of the day.
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