JAKARTA, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- China clawed back from a sluggish start to overcome Chinese Taipei 3-1 and book a final berth in badminton men's team final of the 18th Asian Games here on Tuesday.
In playing his first international major tournament as top singles player, Shi Yuqi fell to Chou Tienchen 21-13, 21-19.
Shi suffered a string of errors from 11-11 midway through the first game, and could not whittle down his deficit afterwards.
The World Championships runner-up was also short of smashing precision in the latter half of the second game, only to let the set slide away and see China 1-0 down.
"Top singles players need to build momentum early for the team, but it was not the case for me. I felt too much pressure today," said Shi.
After conceding the first game 21-19 to Chen Hungling and Wang Chilin, world champions Li Junhui and Liu Yuchen turned around the duel their way to triumph 21-12, 21-9.
"We didn't play quite well in the first game, while making our response since the second game. We had advantage in our serves and returns in the decider," Liu pointed out.
Chen Long and Wang Tzuwei went neck-to-neck en route to 18-18, before Wang snatched the following three points for an upper hand.
Then Chen made timely adjustment to turn the tide through his long-rally quality and went on to outgun Wang 21-13, 21-17.
"My opponent did pretty well in adjusting his mindset, so I just want to be more concentrated on the match," Chen said.
In their first match at the tournament, the 2017 World Championships doubles title holders Liu Cheng and Zhang Nan prevailed over Lee Jhehuei and Lee Yang 21-13, 21-17.
China will face Indonesia in Wednesday's final as the hosts shocked Japan 3-1.
China finished runners-up behind South Korea in men's team event four years ago.
