It was discussed on TV that Tony Gunawen is the probably the best Men's Doubles player in the world. Did they steal that line from my "Japan Open" report? Or do I really have some analytical acumen for badminton?
Re: Tony G. Don't know but i didn't see the Japan Open because SINGAPORE, didn't broadcast it. Anyhow, it would be hard to say if Tony Gunawan is the best doubles player in the world but then again, with all the other great doubles players, its hard to say eg Candra Wijaya, Sigit Budiarto, Yoo Yong Sung, Zhang Wei, Eng Hian, Halim Haryanto, Flandi Limpele, the list goes on. Though many of them have not shown top form lately, eg Lee/Yoo, Zhang/Zhang and Flandi/Eng, they all have the capabilities to be world champions
Re: Tony G. He's the most intelligent doubles player I have ever seen. His net coverage is simply AWESOME!!
Re: Tony G. Agreed, especially against Zhang/Zhang at the Sudirman Cup. The winning shot was amazing. Tony plays net shots to level that i probably will never play to. Hendrawan also has some neat net shots but no one beats Tony.
Re: Tony G. I don't doubt your analytical acumen but whether they plagiarised your report is another matter =P How abt doing a comparison bwt Kim Dong Moon and Tony Gunawan (spelled with 2 As btw!)? Coz the former was considered "the player of the moment" in 2000, according to the same commentators.
Re: Tony G. I think a great deal of injustice is being done to Kim Dong Moon, he is by far the best doubles player that i have in recent years. His reading of the game and explosiveness whenever he wants to step up a gear or put the pressure on is unrivalled. Evidence of that in the Malaysian Open of last year against the Chinese pairing. And he bloody looks so casual and relaxed on court, like Rexy Mainaky letting his racket drop to his ankles after having played a smash but like lightning pouncing on the reply shots. I hope i've done him some justice.
balancing opinion I don't mean any injustice to Kim Dong Moon. Really what I should have said clearly is (IMO) Tony is the best Men's doubles players AT THIS PRESENT MOMENT. As an all round doubles player (inc. Mxd) then Kim is probably the best but it is difficult to gauge his form as he has played so few tournaments recently and lost to China in the Sudirman Cup. If you go on recent tournament results, the Zhang Jun or Michael Sogaard have showed more consistent form. And YES, Kim Dong Moon showed awesome form in 1999/2000 until the Olympics crashing spectacularly early in the Mxd and losing in the Men's doubles. I was quite shocked that time. Who was he playing against in the Men's Doubles? None other than Tony Gunawen. In the Korean Open, the Ina pairings were split and their 1st tournament with (relatively) new partners were always going to be under pressure.
Re: Cheung Yes but to be fair Kim was suffering from a bad back and maybe a little fatigued from all the tournaments he had won.
Just bringing up this old post again Had a conversation with a badminton person and that person had no special opinion on Tony G.; even rated Halim over Tony because Halim has a great smash. What's good about Tony's play is that you don't see any special shots (apart form a few cross court netshots). It's very interesting to see a person with no obvious oustanding aspect of the game playing at the highest level. (unlike Sigit, Rexy). IMHO , Tony's play shows intelligence. That's why I like his play.
That's the thing, Tony outsmarted all this opponents, that's what made him better than Candra, even KDM. To the uneducated observers: WHOO huge smash, impressive, incredible speed, cool, great reflexes WOW. Tony G didn't seem to have any of these things because he didn't need them, he read the game so damn well that he was always there so didn't seem to have the speed, always had his racquet in place (due to his ability to read the play again) so didn't need great reflexes, okay he didn't have a huge smash but it was good enough to set up. Someone (biased Pommy, you know who you are ) commented about Joanne Goode had probably the best badminton brain in the game, nup, not even close I've watched a lot of her play, watch Tony G vs KDM and you'll see two of the great badminton brains at work with Tony G the obvious winner. Someone else asked during the US Open why people thought Tony G could win the doubles at his age whilst Simon Archer couldn't win mixed at a similar age. When I thought about it at the time, my conclusion was [1] that Tony's great advantage was his brain, and that didn't really lessen as much as other physical attributes. Simon has a great hard and deceptive smash which has definately gotten worse with age. PS Tony G ended up winning mixed and I think came second in doubles? I could be wrong. [1] Besides the fact that Tony G is one of the all time greats and Simon Archers greatest achievement (bronze Olympic medal?) wouldn't rank in Tony G's top ten Sorry just stirring.
right partner The thing I like about Tony is he always play hard and smart and respect his partner. However, I would not put Tony in the same level as Rexy or even Chandra. It's important to find a right partner and Tony found one when teamed up with Chandra as they macthed each other perfectly. Tony did team up with Halim earlier and did not achieve much so was Sigit(with Halim) and came out short handed. So far, only Chandra did well teaming up with both Tony and Sigit, so Chandra should deserve better recognition. The Korean pairs are quite unique, on one hand there's a speedly Lee/Yoo and on the other there's power pair of Ha/Kim. Korea did try to mix and match among these 4 players and the result was unsatisfactory. In my opinion, in double, it's the team work that makes the players great, not that much of individual skill(or else Sigit would be on top of the list but Sigit has atitude problem especially when he teamed up with Halim).