Venue : Odense Sports Park Total prize-money : US$600,000 Tournament website : http://www.badmintondenmark.com/cms/...33&pageid=1649 Odense time : http://www.worldtimezone.com/time/wt...ma=Find%20Time Order of Play (11.00am, 3 courts) : https://www.tournamentsoftware.com/...032FB5-FD58-4259-A71C-4A4B52A4C4FE&d=20141016 Many intriguing clashes today in all 5 disciplines : - Son WH (KOR) v Momota (JPN) - Tian HW (CHN) v Nguyen TM (VIE) - Lin D (CHN) v Jorgensen (DEN) - Li XR (CHN) v Takahashi (JPN) - Liu X (CHN) v Intanon (THA) - Mitani (JPN) v Nehwal (IND) - Kim GJ/Kim SR (KOR) v Chai B/Hong W (CHN) - Liu XL/Qiu ZH (CHN) v Endo/Hayakawa (JPN) - Fu HF/Zhang N (CHN) v Lee SM/Tsai CH (TPE) - Matsutomo/Takahashi (JPN) v Jung KE/Kim HN (KOR) - Lee SH/Shin SC (KOR) v Ma J/Tang YT (CHN) - Zhang N/Zhao YL v Jordan/Susanto (INA) Premature exit for some seeded players yesterday, Sugiarto (5th), Wang ZM (6th), Vittinghus (8th), Bae YJ (6th). Home fave Jorgensen will get tough task, LD. He won over the two time Olympic Champion at JPN SS quarterfinal last June. For INA badminton fans, FOX Sports channel will broadcast LIVE second session matches (court 1, started 10.00pm WIB)
Tomorrow is a make-or-break day for CHN MD. Also interested in seeing SWH, LD, LXR, and ZN/ZYL play. Jordan/Susanto really played well against ZN/ZYL in the AG SFs.
Lin Dan vs. Jan O Jorgensen [3] That will be a thriller! Jorgensen:" [..] but I love playing him because it brings out the best in me. I’m glad he’s back,”. I have a good feeling that Jorgensen will win this match today. What are your expectations?
Since this is not a major championship, I'd say a number of players, not just JOJ, has a fighting chance of upsetting Lin Dan. Chou Tien Chen almost did it yesterday.
Somebody brought up a possible explanation or good point, Lin Dan may be tired so soon after the Asian Games, a major championship where he competed in both team and individual events, winning the latter. Who knows, he would rather be resting or engaging in some extra-curricular activities (learning to cook another dish for his mum and wife?) than roughing it out here in DEN then France the following week. But I guess he's forced to compete as part of preparations for the Sudirman Cup six months down the road in Dongguan, China, for which I supposed raising his world ranking is one of CBA's prerequisites in order to have a better strategic team lineup.
I'm cheering for most of the underdogs, but of all them I want Sayaka Takahashi to win the most, for some reason. Well, after JOJ of course. If he can beat LD I think it could mean a lot for the landscape of the sport and perhaps also set up JOJ as a nemesis for LD.
Even if JOJ somehow manages to surprise Lin Dan again today, he, or for that matter anyone else,is not going to become LD's nemesis, I'm certain of that, never in the past nor ever in the future. As for LXR, she is really her own worst enemy in the proverbial sense, once she grows up in good time and overcomes her mental problem on the big occasions, I believe she will achieve what she truly deserves. What will be, will be.
I think it's really unlikely, but not ridiculous enough for it to be "certain" that it won't happen. If JOJ wins it would mean three consecutive wins for JOJ against LD and such things can mean a lot to the mind, and not just of those two but also third parties who are watching LD be brought closer to Earth by JOJ.
We also cannot deny, going by his performance since he came back in March this year, that Lin Dan is clearly past his prime. Age is inevitably the implacable enemy of all humans. However, it is not impossible but highly improbable for Lin Dan to attain another peak going forward in the lead-up to the Rio Olympics, an amazing and rare phenomenon indeed if it happens. Personally, my expectations for Lin Dan are justifiably and realistically considerably lower than before, up until the London Olympics I've always expected him to be all-conquering and winning every time he steps onto court. I'm already quite contented and felt extremely fortunate that Lin Dan has chosen not to hang up his racquet after the LOG'12 and then the WC'13. From now on, it means one match less for every match he plays as time goes on. Just enjoy and cherish it while we can. As for becoming Lin Dan's nemesis, you not only have to beat him more often than not but also do so when he was at or near his best at least some of the time and not when he's at his worst most of if not all the time; otherwise you don't qualify and even then it has to be over a sufficient number of encounters, a H2H of about 10 meetings or more, to be convincing. Take Park Sung Hwan's case, he was once upon a time Lin Dan's most troublesome opponent but nobody today would regard him as Lin Dan's nemesis simply because their H2H is indisputably clearly in Lin Dan's favour, 13 to 4 as a matter of fact.
Tian Houwei vs Nguyen Tien Minh is now on here http://www.fixalen.tv/20141014/vv-916740--543c4e3da59d29.04736093.html