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SINGAPORE: Loh Kean Yew qualified for his first KFF Singapore Badminton Open final after beating Japan\u2019s Koki Watanabe in the men\u2019s singles semi-finals on Saturday (May 30).<\/p>\n
At the Singapore Indoor Stadium, the world No 14 and crowd favourite took the win 21-15, 15-21, 21-9. This is his third career victory over his world number 19 opponent in six meetings.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old will next face France\u2019s Alex Lanier in Sunday\u2019s final. Lanier, ranked ninth in the world, beat Indonesia’s Alwi Farhan 21-14, 21-11.<\/p>\n
Loh has won one of his last three career meetings against Lanier, with his sole victory at last year’s Singapore Open.<\/p>\n
The Singaporean took some time to get going in his quarter-final clash with Chinese Taipei\u2019s Chi Yu-jen, but showed no signs of rust as he raced to a 11-6 interval lead against Watanabe.<\/p>\n
But his Japanese opponent was not out of it as he narrowed the deficit to just three points at 14-11. But a successful challenge for Loh at 16-12, and a smash off the net cord late on would set him on his way to take the first game in 20 minutes.<\/p>\n
Things were closer at the start of the second game, and Loh had to come back from 7-9 down to lead 11-9 at the break. Watanabe, however, mounted a comeback, taking the lead at 14-13 and not looking back.<\/p>\n
Down 0-3 in the decider, Loh showcased immense mental strength as he stormed back to a 11-5 interval lead. He would then see off the contest to the delight of the partisan home crowd.<\/p>\n
Prior to Saturday, Loh\u2019s best finish at his home tournament was a last-four appearance in 2022 where he lost to Anthony Ginting.<\/p>\n
Loh had to dig deep to book his semi-final spot this edition.<\/p>\n
He eked out wins over India\u2019s Srikanth Kidambi and then H S Prannoy in the round-of-16, before beating Chi. All three matches went to a decider.<\/p>\n
The former world champion is Singapore\u2019s sole representative in the tournament after first-round exits for Jason Teh, Yeo Jia Min and the men\u2019s doubles pair of Wesley Koh\u00a0and Junsuke Kubo.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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SINGAPORE: Loh Kean Yew qualified for his first KFF Singapore Badminton Open final after beating Japan\u2019s Koki Watanabe in the men\u2019s singles semi-finals on Saturday…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--gg1RmAUt--\/c_crop,h_900,w_1600,x_0,y_0\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2026\/05\/30\/loh_kean_yew_sgp_29_may_2.jpeg?itok=s2jwF4-2","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10590,8758,5019,667,5422,12473,5818,14502,3103,22,23795,12474],"class_list":["post-56654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-advances","tag-badminton","tag-beats","tag-final","tag-japans","tag-kean","tag-loh","tag-maiden","tag-open","tag-singapore","tag-watanabe","tag-yew","wpcat-2-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}