KUALA LUMPUR: Pearly Tan-M. Thinaah may have lost in the final, but they certainly won hearts with their great fighting spirit at the Malaysia Masters today.
The packed Axiata Arena never saw them as losers even though Pearly-Thinaah settled for second place behind South Korea's Baek Ha Na-Lee So Hee in the women's doubles.
Pearly-Thinaah gave their all before going down 22-20, 8-21, 21-17 in an epic battle that lasted 101 minutes.
Towards the end of the rubber game, Pearly appeared so exhausted that she had to count on Thinaah to hold the fort. As a result, Thinaah exerted herself until the point that she felt like throwing up.
It wasn't that they were unfit.
Playing a total of 333 minutes over four matches leading to the final, Pearly-Thinaah had performed beyond expectations.
Ha Na-So Hee, on the contrary, won all their previous matches in straight games, and completed just 199 minutes of action.
Still, Pearly offered no excuse for their loss.
"I didn't know Thinaah was feeling nauseous until the last few points of the match. But that wasn't a distraction (contributing to defeat) at all. We had only ourselves to blame for losing focus in the last 11 points (during the third game)," said Pearly who attended the post-match press conference alone.
"We weren't fit enough. When we were tired, we started committing unforced errors.
"I guess this is something we have to train harder. To be the best, we have to be fit enough to sustain all the way to the end of the tournament."
Despite falling short in their third World Tour title bid, Pearly believes there are many positive takeaways, especially their endurance power, that she and Thinaah can build on from this tournament.
"There have been lots of ups and downs this year, so this week is kind of a good turnaround for us. But we're not satisfied yet,
"There's a lot of work to be done when we return to training and we want to come back stronger than ever. We can be a lot better than this.
"The best thing we have learned from this week is that we can withstand long rallies and lengthy matches for days in succession. In the past, we would have been exhausted on the very next day, but this time we're able to keep up for the entire week."
Pearly-Thinaah will take a well-deserved break by skipping the Thailand Open next week. They will return for the Singapore Open in two weeks time.