Not surprisingly, Kento Momota reached the final of the BWF World Tour Finals on Saturday by defeating Wang Tzu Wei of Chinese Taipei 21-17, 21-12 in Guangzhou. In the other semi-final, Anthony Sinisuka Ginting of Indonesia once again proved his quality by defeating the home favourite and Olympic Champion Chen Long 21-15, 21-15.
In the first men's semi-final of the day, Ginting was up against crowd favourite Chen Long. Despite having lost his first game of the tournament, the Indonesian has shown great form and was firing on all cylinders in this match also.
What made Ginting even more effective was his cross-court smash. Whenever he got the opportunity to unleash it, he left the Olympic champion looking helpless. Chen was trying hard but he wasn't able to deal with the very impressive shot-making from his opponent.
The first game was wrapped up easily by Ginting and things only got better for him in the second game. Along with his dangerous smash, he also started playing good deceptive shots that were placed perfectly. Chen started committing errors also which ensured that the match was out of his grasp.
Kento Momota match was expected to be a one-sided affair and if one looks at the score-line, it does seem as if that was the case. However, in reality, Wang Tzu Wei fought much harder than he did in his first match of the tournament, against Momota.
Momota was playing his usual game of long rallies and being successful with them. There was the odd smash down the line which was very effective but otherwise it was the calm and patient point scoring that helped Momota.
Towards the end of the first game, Wang started to fight back and scored a few successive points. He seemed to take his game into the next level for those few moments. But Momota was always a class apart and finished off the game eventually.
In the second game, Momota continued to play a defensive game and didn't spend too much of his energy in winners. His solid defence meant that Wang had to constantly look for extraordinary shots and in the process, committed errors. The World Champion got to the finish line without much fuss.
So, it's Momota vs Ginting in the final. This should be an interesting contest because the Indonesian is one of the few players who seems to have the formula for defeating the mighty Japanese. It would be interesting to see how the two-time World Champion counters the challenge.
