Canterbury players won four of the major titles at the annual Otago Open in Dunedin at the weekend.
The outlier was Wellington North star Luke Falvey, who won the men’s singles as an unseeded player after a long layoff with injury.
Falvey was in dominant touch at the Otago Badminton Centre, dropping just one set, in an 18-21, 21-18, 21-16 win over No1 seed Avinash Shastri (Auckland) in the quarterfinals.
He won all other matches in straight sets, including the final against Alex Zhao (Canterbury). The other semifinalists were Otago's Aaryan Alexander and Canterbury’s Jeremiah Mainickam.
Classy Canterbury player Elly Li claimed the triple crown with wins in the women’s singles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles.
Li knocked out second seed Adithi Alexander (Wellington North) in the singles quarterfinals, and beat defending champion Claudia Smith (Southland) in the semifinals.
She had the crowd against her in the final, as she played long-serving Otago representative Lucy Thomsen, but she marched to a 21-13, 21-7 win.
Li, in her first year out of St Andrew’s College, teamed with fellow Cantabrian Michelle Foong to beat Adithi Alexander and Smith 21-16, 21-14 in the women’s doubles final.
It was a third straight runner-up finish for Alexander and Smith.
One of the games of the tournament had been in the semifinals when Li and Foong met Thomsen and Pingkan Polak, the Otago pair seeking a seventh consecutive title.
The Canterbury pair triumphed 21-15, 18-21, 21-11 in a three-set thriller.
Li teamed with fellow Cantabrian Alfred Wong to win the mixed doubles, beating Otago’s Thomsen and Josh Kellett 21-19, 21-12 in the final.
Thomson and Kellett had beaten Foong and William Chen 16-21, 21-19, 21-8 in the semifinals, while Li and Wong beat top seeds Aaryan Alexander and Smith in straight sets.
Canterbury pairing Chen and Zhao beat Kellett and Caleb Young (Southland) in the men’s doubles final.
