Call it Kento pop as Momota dances to his seventh title

PETALING JAYA: Japan’s badminton superstar Kento Momota continued his rich vein of form by winning the Fuzhou China Open for his seventh title of the season.

The 24-year-old world No. 1 beat Chou Tien-chen 21-13, 11-21, 21-16 for his second win in as many matches against the Taiwanese world No. 3 yesterday.

Momota had also defeated Tien-chen in the Denmark Open final last month.

The other five titles Momota netted out of the nine finals he featured in this year included the Vietnam Open, Indonesian Open, Japan Open, Asian Championships in Wuhan and World Championships in Nanjing.

He was also runner- up at the Malaysian Open and Victor China Open in a spectac- ular season that saw him complete a remarkable redemption after returning from his gambling ban in the middle of last year.

Momota will be gunning for more glory when he competes in the Hong Kong Open this week.

He will have two-time Olympic champion Lin Dan as his first-round opponent once more after beating him at the same stage in Fuzhou.

Meanwhile, Chen Yufei gave the China women’s singles department a huge lift by becoming the first player from the country to win a top-flight tournament in more than two years.

She powered to a convincing 21-10, 21-16 win over last year’s world champion Nozomi Okuhara of Japan.

He Bingjiao was the last Chinese women’s singles champion in the now-defunct Superseries circuit when she won the French Open in October 2016.