Mexican ‘standoff’ for archers
THE national men’s recurve team reached the bronze medal playoff at the World Cup in Salt Lake City, Utah where they face Mexico tomorrow.
The trio of Khairul Anuar Mohamad, Haziq Kamaruddin and Akmal Nor Hasrin upset 2016 Rio Olympics team silver medallists the United States in the first round on Thursday before reaching the semi-finals by beating Britain, both in tie-breaks.
Russia denied Malaysia a place in the final with a 5-1 win which set up the bronze medal match against Mexico, who lost to Taiwan in a tie-break in the other semi-final.
Malaysia last won a World Cup medal in the men’s recurve team event in 2013 when the trio of Khairul, Haziq and Atiq Bazil Bakri lost to Mexico in the final in Medellin, Colombia.
In the first round, Malaysia edged the US 28-27 in the tiebreak after winning the fourth set 54-53 to level the match at 4-4.
Britain were on the verge of eliminating Malaysia in the quarter-finals but the national archers won the fourth set 53-51 to force the tie-break which Malaysia won 28-23.
But there was no stopping Russia who capitalised on Malaysia’s poor second and third sets to win 54-54, 58-53, 52-50.
In the individual event, only Akmal survived the first two rounds after beating Canada’s Brandon Xuereb 6-4 and Crispin Duenas 6-2 to set up a meeting with fifth seed David Pasqualucci of Italy.
Khairul, who had a first round bye, was ousted by Kazakhstan’s Denis Gankin 6-2 in the second round while Haziq beat Luxembourg’s Pit Klein 7-3 before going down 6-2 to Brazil’s Marcelo Costa.
Ikram Joni’s place in the Kuala Lumpur Sea Games squad looks tenuous after a 6-0 defeat to Sanzhar Mussayev of Kazakhstan in the first round, managing no more than 25 points in any of his three sets. Devinder Singh