Have you seen the draw for the Hong Kong Open Men's Doubles first round? HOW can you have Candra Wijaya and Halim Haryanto playing Lee and Yoo of Korea in the first round??? Lee and Yoo are seeded 6, which is fair enough, they can justify that with the wins throughout their career, but Wijaya and Haryanto are unseeded. What the hell? Between them, the two Indonesians have won the World Championship, the All England (more than once), an Olympic gold, and they are unseeded? And Lee and Yoo were the silver medalists on the losing side of that Olympic final. This match shouldn't happen until at least the quarter finals, and would make a pretty decent semi-final or even final. Did anyone read that there were only 36 spectators for the first day of the men's singles? That is terrible. I would pay a lot to see a match like this live. The Olympic final, yes it was 3 years ago, but it was a fantastic match, so how can the IBF justify such a mess-up? Just because the two Indonesians haven't played with each other that much? Someone please explain...
Yes, Candra and Halim have only played three tournaments together reaching one final (denmark open), one semi (indonesian open), and one 2nd round (malaysian open). This is clearly not sufficient to be seeded in a 6* open! ... though we all know they are worth more than their current 49th world rank, and that they should probably reach the top 10 relatively quickly on the basis of their performance in the denmark open!
I understand what you are saying, but its really hard for the IBF to "tweak" matches based on "how they expect teams to play". They have to base it on facts, like Halim and Chandra being ranked 49th as a pair. Sure, 3 years ago in Sydney Chandra and Tony beat Lee and Yoo. (In an incredible game I might add...) I do agree that this presents and interesting problem....will Lee Dong Soo and Yoo Yong Sung ( a seeded pair ) get knocked out first round? Or will Halim Hariyanto and Chandra Wijaya get knocked out first round, ruining their already deflated ranking? Either way, this should be an awesome match to watch.
I like the way ATP ranks double tennis players. If A and B team up to win a tournment, both A and B gain certain points individually. So if A and C team up to play another tournments, they add up A and C's accumlated points. Maybe the IBF can learn from ATP.
I am not sure whether such should be encouraged or not. To me, doubles are "team work", and to be good, u need to utlized each partner, and fill up the protential "holes". Just drag 2 players (regardless former single, or even double) players, u met end up with a horrible team. For the IBF system, even though a "new pair" might be treated unfairly in early events (but how we going to determine the "protential" case by case), if they really have the stuff, they should surely shine in the very near future. Like Lin Dan and Bao CL in earlier events this year. Their seeding were lower than they should be, or even unseeded, but who can say, they are the "easy" ones to deal with? And as for today, both of them improved their ranking (at least Lin Dan). I can understand there's no perfect system anywhere, but certainly the ATP ranking system is not anywhere better than IBF to me.
As I stated in my early post, I believe "no system could be perfect". Ranking system should just be a reference table, which gives general idea to the public certain players having better performance during a particular period of time. With different # of events participated (injuries, mult. events, etc) and "hot vs cold" period, the ranking can't 100% reflect everything. However, I can never remember any ranking system in any event could be "100% satisfy" everyone. For me, I won't really picking a special case (new teams, long term injuries, etc) and make a conclusion. Overall, it's just a reference, and any event has to be based on some "reference" for seeding, even though, it surely won't please every single person in the world. A special case (believer vs non-believer) should not reflect the whole. Unless IBF suddenly naming a "Joe club player" to be #1 seed and put current world champ. to be unseeded in the same event, I don't think I will say its "totally useless."
The fact is, when all these happened??? If just 2 weeks ago, I will surely support your idea, but these are just "history". As for now, the pair is just "brand new" in the system, and just participated a limited # of events. So, lower ranking is acceptable, to me. The "amazing resume" can only give a hope for the fans and might as well a good "protential" for them to improve in the future. However, for now, they have to fight from the ground zero to proof themselves again. Let me use an example. We all know how great players like Liem Sew King, Yang Yang, Zhao Jia Hua, etc. But if say they want to participate in this HK Open, do u think we should rank them (according to their CURRENT skill, physcial condition) to be #1, #2, #3 for MS??? Or put any 2 of them to be #1 in MD ???
reply You can't seriously be comparing a player who has been retired for what, ten years plus in some of those cases, to a player who has just reached the final of the World Championships a few months ago and has just changed partners. That's just stupid. I'm not saying Candra Wijaya should be ranked because he is an old retired veteran who used to be good in the 1980s. I'm saying he is a great player now, and if teams up with another very strong player, the mere fact that the two have never played together before should not mean they have to start from absolute zero. Come on, use a little common sense. Teamwork and experience playing as a pair is important in judging how good a pair is, but so is the individual skill level of each player. The way the IBF system works now, it ONLY considers the pair as a single unit and doesn't take into account how strong each player is individually.
david14700, Candra and Halim didn't start from absolute zero. In the case of new pairs, there is what we call "notional ranking", this is why Candra and Halim never needed to go through qualifications in any tournaments, and also why Sigit and Trikus were seeded in the Indo Open! If you are interested in how things are done, I suggest you go and have a look at the regulations on worldbadminton.net ...
Re: reply 1. Please don't use offensive word like "stupid" please... It's just a discussion, no need to get upset. 2. When I used my examples, I just show, "past is not equal to the current". Maybe 10-20 yrs seems long, but "several months" could be a totally different world. What about Peter Gade? What about Hafiz? Hafiz got the all England, but can you say he's still "good" as for the past events? 3. Candra is surely talented, but not saying "any other player" (even good, too) could just team up with him. 3.1 Ex: can you just put Chen Hong (MS#1) and Gong Ruina (WS#1) together, and rank them to be MXD #1 as well? Both of them are surely the best for their event, but "merge" not means the best. If u think single example is not good enough, then why Candra and his new partner could only hold on to 2nd round in MAS open? That's surely not a good proof of "dominating performance". I know u can argue, "heck, they just team up together for days...". Exactly my point, they need to "proof" this. Theory could be only reference, but the fact is the only thing we can talk about. If they are the real deal (which I also believe so), they will surely boost up their rankings in later events. No need to be upset for the current one. 3.2 Two good player does not equal to be the best. See CHN need to frequently switching their MD and LD partners to get the "utlization". Namely, Wei Yili used to pair with Zhang Jiewen. After it's been proved to be "relatively non-effective", they switched to Wei Yili / Zhao Tingting, which almost proved they are 1 of the best in the world. I am not saying Zhao TT must be much better than Zhang Jiewen individually. I just say, it seems more like a "better match". 4. Protential is not equal to the fact. I can claim blah blah player(s) could be the best one day. Maybe many others will believe the same. However, if s/he never perform consistently, then, "high hope" is just a dream. 5. Ranking 49 is surely low for Candra, but he surely has space to improve. And to me, world ranking 49 (team up just several months) is surely not "absolute zero".
Which one? Or, actually referring to "just stupid"??? hehehehhhhehehhe.... j/k... thanks for the support.
