DENMARK’S Carsten Mogensen and Mathias Boe may be the top ranked men’s doubles pair in the world but even they want to avoid facing China in the quarter-finals of the Sudirman Cup.
China have had the perfect start to the tournament in Group A – having thrashed India and Indonesia by similar 5-0 scorelines.
“Right now, there’s one team playing better than us and that’s China. On paper, they look very strong … so, we don’t want to meet them just yet,” said Boe.
In their final Group D men’s doubles match yesterday, Mogensen-Boe were stretched to three games before eventually seeing off Japan’s Hiroyuki Endo-Kenichi Hayakawa 21-12, 16-21, 21-16 in 59 minutes.
“We definitely expected a tough match,” said Boe.
“We’ve played against them twice before but they played a lot of attacking shots this time which we weren’t prepared for.
“But we’re happy to win a point for Denmark.”
The Danes are without the retired Peter Gade and Tine Baun this time around.
However, Boe feels “that’s no reason to doubt out chances of advancing into the latter stages of the tournament”.
“I don’t think it’s a problem. We have strong doubles pairs in both the women’s (Kamilla Rytter Juhl-Christinna Pedersen) and mixed doubles (Joachim Nielsen Fischer-Christinna Pedersen) … and Jan (O Jorgensen) can play really well,” he said.
“The competition is a lot more unpredictable … even Malaysia struggled against Taiwan. Whoever we’re drawn with in the quarter-finals … we’re looking at a 50/50 chance.
“There are no easy opponents … we’ll have to take it one match at a time.”
Meanwhile, Denmark suffered a shock 3-2 loss to Japan – their first-ever defeat at the hands of the Japanese in Sudirman Cup history.
But the Danes are still through to the quarter-finals as group runners-up behind Japan.
