ALL-ENGLAND: GADE SURVIVES FIRST ROUND SCARE

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March 11, 1998 (NEW SHUTTLENWS) - Peter Gade-Christensen of Denmark, the top seeded men's singles player at the All-England Open badminton championships being played this week in Birmingham, survived a stiff challenge from China's young player Zhu Feng in a first-round match yesterday to move on in the tournament. Gade had easily won the opening game and was comfortably ahead in the second game 10-6 when he started to commit many errors, mostly on smashes going out of bounds or into the net. The errors allowed Zhu to make up ground on the Dane and to win the set 15-10.

Gade's poor play continued early in the decider and he fell behind 2-5 before he managed to stitch enough of his game together again and catch up to the Chinese player. Gade though still had to struggle but did pull out the win 15-10.

In mixed doubles, second-seeds Jens Eriksen and Marlene Thomsen from Denmark were upset by Michael Keck of Germany and Erica van den Heuvel of Netherlands.

Partial results from yesterday:

Men's Singles
First round
P Gade-Christensen (Denmark) beat Zhu Feng (China) 15-8, 10-15, 15-10; H Arbi (Indonesia) beat S Pandya (England) 15-8, 15-3; H Hendrawan (Indonesia) beat R Doling (England) 11-15, 15-10, 15-6; I Wijaya (Indonesia) beat B Flockhart (Scotland) 15-8, 15-7; Choong Hann Wong (Malaysia) beat A Vitikko (Finland) 15-5, 15-12; D Palyama (Netherlands) beat J Leung (Wales) 15-3, 15-10; Fung Permadi (Taiwan) beat C Davies (Wales) 15-6, 15-1; J van Dijk (Netherlands) beat G Lewis (Wales) 15-8, 15-8; A Wiranata (Indonesia) beat K Masuda (Japan) 10-15, 15-13, 15-0; I Saman (Malaysia) beat S Lengagne (France) 15-4, 15-7; D Hall (England) beat S Ratti (India) 15-12, 15-4; J Wong (Malaysia) beat F Machida (Japan) 15-6, 15-6; A S Gupta (India) beat R Nock (England) 15-17, 15-1, 15-1; Sun Jun (China) beat Kai Chuen Tam (Hong Kong) 15-1, 15-2; K Tatranov (Ukraine) beat J R Anderson (Norway) 6-15, 15-12, 18-15; K Fangel (Denmark) beat J van Soerland (Netherlands) 15-9, 15-7; M Constable (England) beat K Jonassen (Denmark) 15-8, 15-13; P Janum (Denmark) beat T Weistra (Netherlands) 4-15, 15-4, 15-2; Yigang Luo (China) beat T Ohtsuka (Japan) 15-2 15-9; P Gopichand (India) beat B Santoso (Indonesia) 15-10, 12-15, 15-10; R Sidek (Malaysia) beat S Pukhov (Russia) 15-6, 15-0; R Hashim (Malaysia) beat C Haughton (England) 15-13, 10-15, 15-7; N C Kaldau (Denmark) beat Kwok Wa Liu (Hong Kong) 15-11, 17-14.

Women's Singles
First round
K Morgan (Wales) beat T Hallam (England) 11-6, 11-8; Zhang Ning (China) beat M Pawandgadkar (India) 11-1, 11-3; Meiluawati (Indonesia) beat Zeng Yaqiong (China) 12-11, 11-5; N Choudhary (India) beat R Pantaney (England) 12-10, 11-0; Y Mizui (Japan) beat J Muggeridge (England) 11-7, 11-3; Lee Joo-Hyun (Korea) beat J Wilmott (England) 11-0, 11-1; S Itoh (Japan) beat Lee Yin Yin (Malaysia) 12-9, 11-4; M Pedersen (Denmark) beat G Martin (Scotland) 11-1, 11-1; T Ida (Japan) beat B Beenhakker (Netherlands) 11-1, 11-5; Pei Pei Law (Malaysia) beat Z Abdullah (Singapore) 11-6, 3-11, 11-6; K Solmundson (Canada) beat C Sorensen (Denmark) 7-11, 11-10, 11-8; M Tanaka (Japan) bt J Meulendijks (Netherlands) 11-6, 11-5; R Robertson (New Zealand) beat D Julien (Canada) 6-11, 11-6, 12-11.

(aplayer/dsimmons)