All England Finals

Peter Gade vs Lin Dan

Nobody expected Gade to win this match having lost to Lin Dan in the last two meetings.
After watching Lin play through the whole tournament, i was really interested on how he was going to play Gade this time.
Having seen Lin's form this week, he played really attacking badminton with alot of speed, sharp and powerfull smashes up to the final.
I expected him to play a full on offensive game against Gade with alot of quick drives and getting to the net early to play alot of flat pushes and suprise smashes.
After all, this tactic has always worked really well for Xia Xuanze against Gade, as Xia is quicker more athletic and more able to deal with drive rallies, also the flat pushes at the net helps eliminate Xia's weakness which is his net game.

Comparing the recent Lin Dan with Xia Xuanze:
Lin is just as fast as Xia.
They both move around the backhand really quickly and produce alot of suprise smashes.
They both have a diving type defensive game.
The Lin Dan of today is every bit as mentally tough as Xia.
Lin's jump smash can be as high as Xia's and produce devastating steep angles.
Lin is far more fitter than Xia and has better stamina.

To analyse Gade at his best, the match with Chen Hong is the perfect example.
Chen Hong's main weapon is his penetrating power smash. To support this smash, he has developed a more european style of play by concentrating more on the net area, playing tight net shots and flat pushes from the net as passing shots down the sides to catch the net aware player off guard, and as a more european style player, his driving game is non existent.
Against Gade he was well beaten at the net, as Gade was the more superior net player, and everytime Chen tried to push the shuttle from the net Gade intercepted the pushes not with lifts or pushes to the baseline but engaging Chen with drive rallies which Chen lost everytime. Obviously with Gade having a superior net game, he had the chance to attack and smash more often than Chen, but something more vital was missing in Chen's game which was present in every player who was able to beat Gade consistently.

That part of the game is ultimately pure defensive retrieving ability, which was present in all of the players who could trash Gade.
Players like Sun Jun in the past and Rolsin Hashim in the present.
This ability allows the player to have confidence to play the shuttle away from the net, lifting more times than often and have the confidence to deal with the attacks that would come.
In fact players like Sun Jun and Roslin are not very offensive players and are more comfortable with defending and lifting the shuttle, and by simply doing that they have managed to pin Gade to the back court and beat him consistently.
People always rave about Gade's smash and how good his attacking overheads are, but what people don't realize is that 90% of his rallies are won at the net.
Even at the quaterfinal stage against Roslin Hashim, Gade did not look anywhere near beating Roslin (dont let the scoreline decieve you)
In fact Roslin lost the match by getting over exited in the match, as he applied the same tactic against Kenneth and totally tired him out and then decided to do some attacking himself. This change of style in play actually lost him the last game against Gade when he clearly had an advantage in fitness and stamina and could of fed off Gade's errors.

More interesting, is how Lin Dan played the first rally against Gade.
Gade put up a incredible jump smash, and lin dived and flew all the way to retreive the smash..not only that, as Gade was expecting a weak drop from the smash, Lin sent the shot way to the baseline.
Every coach knows that Gade's best attacks are at the early parts of the game, and Lin Dan was sending a very powerfull message accross to Gade "I can retrieve everyone of your best smashes"
As the match wore on, Gade knew that he had to go for the lines to get the points off Lin, as Lin chose to not engage in any attacking rallies and lift almost every single shot from the net. In a couple of rallies Gade become more under pressure and more error prone and sent alot of smashes wide off the line. The crazy thing is, Lin dived for all of them. There were a couple of smashes from Gade that were out by half a meter and Lin dived flat out for them too. At that point i thought to myself " this guy is crazy" but one has to think of Gade's situation when this guy is willing to save smashes that are out by miles, what good is hitting the lines.
As the match progressed, it become obvious that there was only gonna be one winner. Even when Lin lost the first game, none of the coaches seemed to be worried at all, for they knew how to beat Gade even as far back as Sun Jun's era, all they needed was the right player, and Lin Dan was perfect.
You could almost feel that Gade just wanted the rally to end on numerous occasions, as Lin refused to finish off the rallies and decided to keep the endless lifts and clears going, almost forcing Gade to go for smashes that were obviously not going to be in.
Result was a very boring game, as Lin Dan did hardly any attacking himself with just the odd smash once in a while, and Gade's smash was taken apart at the middle of game 2.


Choong/Lee vs Eriksen/Hansen

This has got to be the highlight of the tournament.
The yellow card incident awarded to Lee has got to be the funniest thing ive ever seen in the All England, and regretably decided the match in my opinion.

Looking at the replays, i can clearly say that Lee was not ready for the service or to be more accurate not intending to recieve the service.
According to the rules, this allows the malays to play a let as he raised his hand when the service was struck indicating that he was not ready.
This is an error of judgment by the ref, as she awarded the danes the point, and in doing so made a confrontation with Lee and panicked when she knew she had made a mistake and in doing so awarded the yellow card to contain the situation.
What should have been done was to issue a warning to the malays and then allow them to play a let, as i feel the malays are using dirty tricks to put off the danes.

Before any malaysian starts replying angrily to my post, you should watch the match yourself and maybe the match against Cai Yun and Fu Haifeng as the same thing happened in that match on numerous times.
The malaysian pair always got ready to recieve and then indicating that they were not ready and when it came for Martin to re-serve, it always ended up in the net. In fact the malays used that tactic against the chinese pair and got the same results from it and it worked like a gem against the danes, because everytime they had to re-serve it, it almost always ended up in the net.
I think the ref saw clearly what was going on and thought she needed to punish the malays for their tactics, but sadly she went about it the wrong way. and Lee never recovered from the embarrasment.

To be honest i didnt think the malays deserved to win anyway, and i am kinda glad they lossed.
The malays were technically better and produced the better play through most of the first and second games but their tactics to put the danes off back fired on them and totally destroyed their own game, as a matter of fact that occurs quite often with these current malaysian pairs ever since Park Joo Bong left them.
I recall Chan/Chew playing against the chinese pair of Sang/Zheng in the WC when Sang had a leg injury in the last game and Chan and Chew took the piss by trying to put them off by delaying play and destroying any rythm the chinese pair had and at the end the ref confronted Chan and told him to play on... Chan childishly then asked to towel down with a grin on his face, the ref said no, then Chan came back with a bigger grin on his face and asked for the floor to be mopped, the empire saw through the tricks by then and refused and Chan was severly embarrassed. From then on the malaysians lost the advantage they had and their game was in shambles. On the other hand, the chinese just kept on playing and they won.

What i really dont understand is, why cant these malaysians just play.
They seem to be trying to pull off really stupid tactics to gain a mental advantage over their opponents, and when it back fires they are too mentally weak to deal with the embarrasment and therefore throw away games.

The danes on the other hand were well deserving of their win.
They tried their best and never gave up. Even when their best was clearly being beaten by the malays, they never stopped playing, and as a result they prevailed over the mentally weak malaysian pair.
I think Choong and Lee could learn something from them.
Had they just concentrated on playing, they would have won.

All the best singles or doubles pairings when under pressure or are wrongly robbed of line calls react in the right way, and that is just to carry on playing.
And no matter how malaysians would complain about the incident of that point, it is still just one point.
How many true champions have we seen failed to live up to expectation in a match because of one point ?

One has to wonder where do these malaysian pairs get their little tactical mind games from. I hope its not from Yap Kim Hock as he was very professional in his time.