Yeo Jia Min achieved a personal milestone with her first HSBC BWF World Tour Super 300 win as she claimed the YONEX German Open 2025 over “good friend” Nguyen Thuy Linh.

With Nguyen travelling by herself to the German Open, the Vietnamese has depended on the Singapore team for her training sessions. However, Yeo kept her focus and came through in 41 minutes, 21-16 21-17, for her career’s biggest victory, which also marked Singapore’s first title at the German Open.

“My opponent in the final is my very good friend,” said Yeo. “Off court we always eat together. And also she doesn’t have a coach so we train together as well. She’s also been improving and she has a good attack and I hope that we both can keep getting better.”

Speaking of what the title meant to her, she said: “I’m very grateful for this opportunity that I can win my first Super 300 title and I’ll continue to do my best.

“I was just trying to keep my focus from the start to the end and every time I felt I’m dropping my focus, I had to regain composure again and just think of what I needed to do. This definitely gives me more confidence, this week has been a good week of testing my mental (ability) and I’m really happy that I can overcome myself and hopefully there’s still a lot more to improve and I’ll keep working on it.

There were other milestones on the day, with Japan’s women’s doubles pair Mizuki Otake/Miyu Takahashi winning their first Super 300 title, while Denmark’s Alexandra BØje overcame a difficult personal period since missing Paris 2024 by taking the mixed doubles with new partner Robin Tabeling. The Dutch-Danish combination beat Indonesia’s Rehan Naufal Kusharjanto/Gloria Emanuelle Widjaja 21-17 21-12.

An emotional Boje said: “The last half-year hasn’t been fun for me. So it’s just a mix of being proud of us this week and being proud of myself. I’ve been going to practise every day and just kept going, believing it will come (together) in the end, so extremely happy.”

Men’s singles saw top seed Viktor Axelsen take his second title of the year – and his first German Open – by beating Loh Kean Yew in straight games.

““It feels good,” said Axelsen. “It was a hard-fought tournament win. To go home with a title here, it means a lot. It has been a lot of long matches, a lot of hard rallies and very good match training for me. So, all in all, I’m super happy about it.”

What Others Said

“I’m not his friend anymore, I just lost to him. I’m just kidding. It’s always hard to play against a friend and we know each other’s game quite well. So obviously it’s a tough battle out there physically and mentally.” – Loh Kean Yew, after losing to Axelsen

“This time I needed the Singapore team to help me train and we were training together. When I’m training with them I’m more confident on court. Her coach asked me to keep on fighting.” – Nguyen Thuy Linh, on training with final opponent Yeo Jia Min

“The Japanese were quite a solid pair. They were making us work hard, they didn’t give up, they were fighting like crazy on court, and it was tough to make points against them.” – Stefani Stoeva

“I feel great because I think we played well. Somehow we didn’t drop a single game but I consider that the past. Now we need to focus on preparing for the upcoming matches.” Seo Seung Jae, after Seo/Kim Won Ho’s second title from three finals

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