The reigning World Cup silver medalist Mattias Falck has shown great form recently, and yesterday took one of his biggest scalps in his career.
He then defeated, for the first time in his career, world number two Xu Xin in the quarterfinals.
But when it was time for the semifinals today, against the 20-year-old Chinese Chuqin Wang, it stopped.
The world champion made a phenomenal effort, and despite Falck in no way making a bad effort, it was a Chinese victory in four straight sets (11-3, 11-8, 11-8), where Wang, who now has to face Ma Long in tomorrow's final, decided with a serveess.
- He is a strong opponent.
I knew it would be tough, so I focused on every point, Wang said in the victory interview immediately after the match.
Falck can, however, look back on a couple of nice weeks in China.
Last week it was a quarter-final place and two won sets (more than he took before him) against World Cup and Olympic gold medalist Ma Long in the world tour final in Zhengzhou, and now a semi-final place in WTT Macao, and 277,000 recorded Swedish kronor.