Starting next week at the YONEX French Open 2023, Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik shall no longer field questions on the absence of an HSBC BWF World Tour title on their CV.

“Total relief. No more ‘when are you getting your first World Tour title’ questions,” said Chia after he and Soh filled that vacuum with the shiny VICTOR Denmark Open 2023 trophies on Sunday.

At the Jyske Bank Arena in Odense, the fifth seeds defeated unseeded Indonesians Bagas Maulana/Muhammad Shohibul Fikri 21-13 21-17 to open their World Tour account.

“Here on, it will be ‘when is your second title coming’. That will be the motivation for us as well moving forward. Go for that next one,” added Chia.

Chia/Soh had lost six World Tour finals before their moment of glory.

The Malaysians, first shuttlers from their country to be world champions last year, broke through at the 2019 All England, losing the title match to favourites Mohammad Ahsan/Hendra Setiawan. This year, they played bridesmaids at the India, Indonesia and China Opens.

“We always had the belief in ourselves and trusted our partnership,” said Chia. “We never gave up although we’ve been waiting for five, six years. We played a lot of finals in that time, won medals at major events and even the World Championship gold but were always looking for a World Tour title. And now we finally did it. There’s more to come.”

On what won them the match in straight games and in just 33 minutes, Soh said: “We had to get the first three shots right because that’s their strength and we did that very well.

“Defensively we were more solid, so winning the first game put us in an advantageous position. We kept pushing them in the second, then it was all about focus.”

Chia/Soh’s success also ends Malaysia’s seven-year wait for Denmark Open winners. In 2016, they topped the men’s doubles podium via Goh V Shem/Tan Wee Kiong.

→ Results (Finals)

WHAT OTHERS SAID:

“It’s good you are telling us today. We would have been under more pressure had we known yesterday!” – Chen Qing Chen when she found out she and Jia Yi Fan are the first Chinese women’s pair in 34 years to win consecutive editions

“The last point was unlucky, I wanted to change the racket but I had no time so I just tried to keep the shuttle alive. We are glad we got silver nevertheless and gave the people an excellent match.” – Zheng Si Wei on playing the last point on broken strings

“I will just throw away everything negative and take the positives away and build on them. One of it is I’m starting to feel more confident with my gameplay. I’ll try to work on it and be more consistent.” – Lee Zii Jia

“I’m happy of course but there are more matches coming up (next week) and I want to be ready to fight for that as well.” – Men’s singles champion Weng Hong Yang turning his focus to France