– Niall Kelly reports from Rio de Janeiro
SCOTT EVANS’S AGGRESSION paid dividends as he picked up his first win at the Olympics and gave himself a shot at a place in the last 16.
Evans was beaten on his Olympic debut by Marc Zwiebler in Beijing eight years ago, but he avenged that defeat in Rio on Friday with victory over the seeded German.
The win leaves him in pole position to advance from Group K, and Ireland’s top badminton player will progress if he can beat home hopeful Ygor Coelho de Oliveira on Saturday (11.55pm Irish).
“Marc is an excellent player,” Evans said. “He has beaten me seven or eight times.
“We have trained together a lot and I lose to him all the time in training.
I have a feeling he gets quite nervous playing against me because I have the type of game that can beat him so I think that got to him.
Evans dropped the first game 21-9 but dug deep against the world number 14 to take the a tight second game 21-17.
Then he blew Zwiebler away in the deciding game, winning 21-7 to take the point.
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“I started off very slow and with the wrong tactics,” he explained.
“I got quite a surprise that the shuttles were even slower than what we have been training with for the last five or six days.
In the second set I was playing a little bit better but I just felt like I wasn’t getting enough out of myself and I just decided with my coach to go 100% full speed all the time and be more aggressive, try to take the net, and it worked.
After defeat for team-mate Chloe Magee to China’s Yihan Wang on Thursday, Evans picked up an Irish win at the second time of asking.
“This will give a huge boost to badminton in Ireland,” he added.
I think quite a lot of people are following me and Chloe. The game is getting better and stuff like this makes young kids want to take up the sport.
“Me and Chloe are just doing our best to build a profile of badminton in our country and that is all we want to do.”
