Hong Kong: 22-year-old youngster and World No. 14 men’s singles player made history on Sunday by becoming the first male player from Hong Kong to win the Hong Kong Open men’s singles title since its inauguration in 1982.
Before Ng completed a hard-fought win against the dark-horse contender Sameer Verma of India prior to Sunday’s final, Verma actually held a 2-0 career head-to-head advantage against Ng. Ng admitted that he did think about his two past defeats by Verma before final, at the World and Asian Junior Championships in 2012 prior to Sunday’s final.
“After knowing that I will play Verma in the final, I was worried that it might be the same result again. But I started to stay focused once the match started,” said Ng.
This time, the former world junior doubles champion Angus Ng Ka-long managed to reverse the losing streak he had against his Indian rival. With the support of around 6000 roaring crowd at the Coliseum in Hung Hom, Ng prevailed in three sets after dropping the second, dispatching Verma 21-14, 10-21, 21-11 in 50 minutes.
“The indoor winds was a little bit tricky today. After the match was at a set apiece, I started to play more aggressively and it worked,” said Ng after the match.
Ng’s next target would be the Dubai Superseries Finals after he had already qualified for the tournament that will be held in Dubai next month.
In the men’s doubles final, unseeded Takeshi Kamura/Keigo Sonoda of Japan were in hyper-attacking mode, outperforming their higher ranked opponents No. 4 seeds Mathias Boe/Carsten Mogensen when the Japanese pair emerged victorious 21-19, 21-19 in 47 minutes.
The Hong Kong Open offered US$400,000 in total prize money.
