TOYOTA Thailand Open: Indonesians Crash to French Pair
It had slipped them last week, but that wasn’t about to happen this time. Thom Gicquel and Delphine Delrue came away not the least bit surprised by their victory over second seeds Praveen Jordan and Melati Daeva…
· DEV SUKUMAR
It had slipped them last week, but that wasn’t about to happen this time. Thom Gicquel and Delphine Delrue came away not the least bit surprised by their victory over second seeds Praveen Jordan and Melati Daeva Oktavianti, despite falling to them at the YONEX Thailand Open last week.
“Others might be surprised, but not us,” stated Delrue, after the French duo beat the Indonesians 14-21 21-9 21-13. Having upstaged Jordan and Oktavianti once before – at the Indonesia Masters 2020 – the French proved that that result was no one-off performance.
After a quick first game win, the Indonesians’ frustration started to show as Gicquel and Delrue matched them shot for shot at the front court and gave little away. There were few shuttles in the air for Jordan to smash down, and with the French keeping things tight, errors came in a flow from the other side. Delrue countered everything that Oktavianti could conjure at the net, and provided enough openings for Gicquel to exploit.