Chou Tien Cheng lost to Watanabe Hanggui, and Chinese Taipei's prospects of advancing to the semi-finals of the 2025 Sudirman Cup are not good

Chinese Taipei team met Japan in the quarterfinals of the 2025 Sudirman Cup World Badminton Mixed Team Championships on the 2nd, and the Chinese Taipei first brother Zhou Tiancheng, who was in charge of the second set of men's singles, fought hard for more than 1 hour, losing to Japanese good player Watanabe Hanggui 13:21, 22:20, 14:21, and missed the opportunity to help Chinese Taipei equalize the game, and also fell into a 0:2 disadvantage.

Chinese Taipei's first brother Zhou Tiancheng

The top 2 teams in the 4 groups of the Sudirman Cup advanced to the top 8 knockout rounds, with the host China, South Korea, Japan and Indonesia as the first in the group; Thailand, Chinese Taipei, Malaysia and Denmark are second in the group. According to the regulations, the teams in the same group will not meet in the top 8 in the preliminaries, and Chinese Taipei will fight with Japan to qualify for the top 8.

Chinese Taipei's mixed doubles Ye Hongwei/Hu Ayafang had a lead in both games, but when the opponent chased closer, it was easy to make mistakes spontaneously, and finally lost to Midorikawa Daiki/Igarashi Arisa 18:21, 18:21, and missed the opportunity to start the first game for Chinese Taipei.

Zhou Tiancheng won 3 of the past 4 times against Watanabe Hanggui, and won the last 3 encounters, but Zhou Tiancheng couldn't compete with Watanabe in the first game, and he fell behind in the whole game. Entering the second game, Zhou Tiancheng was up to 5 points behind, but he did not give up and continued to chase points, and even the first lead came to 20:19, even if it was resolved by the opponent with a false attack, Zhou Tiancheng finally extended the battle line.

It's just that Zhou Tiancheng was once again limited by Watanabe Hanggui in the deciding game, and entered a technical timeout with 4:11 behind, and Zhou Tiancheng tried to chase the score after changing sides and once chased it to 11:14, but unfortunately there were many mistakes in the end and finally fell short, allowing Watanabe Hanggui to take away the victory, and the Japanese team also took a 2:0 lead.

Japan's Women's Singles pressed against world No. 4 Akane Yamaguchi in the third set, while Chinese Taipei faced world No. 23 Hsu Minqi to see if they could stage a miracle to extend the front, while in the fourth set Men's Doubles Wang Qi Lin/Qiu Xiangyu faced 2021 World Championships gold medalists Takuro Hoki/Yugo Kobayashi, and in the fifth set Women's Doubles, Japan's World No. 2 Chiyo Shida/Nai Matsuyama met Chinese Taipei's Hsieh Pei Shan/Hong Enci.