as I see it the top 8 have an almost evenly chance of taking the WC. LD and Taufik has a slide edge, but people like CH, LCW and Gade has showed that they can trouble them. I would say that Bao and Kenneth perhaps is the weakest of these 8 if you should count them as champions because of the lack of mental strengh from Bao and the enormeous energy that kenneth uses in every match which surely will tire him. My bet would be Taufik and LD as main contenders and Gade and LCW as possible winners with Hafiz and CH as dark horses... But of course Bao and Kenneth also has the chance
our great man, Peter Gade made the same comment in an interview.. he rated LD and TF in class A with greater chance of taking the WC title, and BCL, CH, KJ and himself in group B. having seen LCW performance, i dare say he is one of the contender too. hope he cd shed the 'jaguh kampung' tag with a good win...
Well if you watch carefully, at the end of most matches against Taufik, Peter GADE always gladly shook hands with Taufik. Peter has always been a good sportmanship but I think he even admits that his games against Taufik are good after his defeat at the Singapore Open this year. Although he was defeated by Taufik, he went over to Taufik's side at the end and gave him a friendly hug, since they are good friend off-court. I think I read this from one of the articles on the IBF's website regarding the 2005 Singapore Open. As for his feelings against Lin Dan, I have not seen any recent matches against them but in the 2004 Thomas Cup against Lin, he was arguing with Lin regarding some line calls and did not seem to be happy about his defeat and as we all know, he is always a good sportmanship. The same thing happened in the 2004 All England Open too, I believe.
aint both matches (thomas cup and AE) played on neutral ground? why wd there be argument on line calls with the opposition? if i remember correctly, there were couple incidents where lin dan refused change of shuttle cocks whn peter asked for it. and peter did the same thr after. thr was also incident whr peter ran to the net and point his finger to lin after a good smash. from what i have seen, peter, the always nice guy even in defeat has shown no hostility towards lin. there were good handshakes...
Exactly, Peter has always demonstrated good sportmanship. My point was never that he does not like Lin Dan but rather that he favors Taufik better and maybe even prefer to play Taufik as opposed to Lin Dan. I was just commenting on some tensions I saw in those matches between the two but I know Peter does not keep that kinda thing in his mind.
Lin Dan poor sportmanship I think among the Chinese players, Lin Dan has the worst sportmanship. I was really dissapointed to see how be behaved during the Thomas Cup Final against Peter Gade as he refused to change shuttles each time when Peter requested, it made the games so much harder to watch. I think IBF should change the rule and let the judge decide and should be automatic once is requested by any player unless the judge feel otherwise, do not the player decide is the better way to go. I have yet to see Lin Dan behave the same after Thomas Cup, may be coach Li have a long talk with him? Good sportmanship does take time to develop! On the other hand, Chen Hong, Boa Chulai and Xia Xuanze are real gentlemen. Just my opinion!
Lin Dan's problem seems to be his arrogance. if he doesn't feel like it, or if he is mad about something, he will stop trying hard and start to play around in a match, not getting to the shuttle early, rally on, etc. it is ok when he is facing a weak opponent, but potentially disasterous otherwise. once one gets into this mindset during a game, it can be difficult to get back into rhythm again. he already faced the consequences once in the Olympics last year against Susilo. he picked himself up and did well for the latter part of last year, but now he is doing it again. in Malaysian Open, he did ok the first half of the first game. once he disagreed with a line call, he got pissed and stopped trying. then LeeCW got a string of points and eventually won the game. and simlarly for game 3. LeeCW on the other hand, was trying 100% throughout the whole game. i must say that if Lin had played seriously and used 100% effort, the match will have resulted differently. maybe all these praises has blown his head too big. too much arrogance is bad no matter how you look at it. Lin should not learn from LiYB.
I agreed with you basically but I think Lin Dan showed some positive changes after his loss in Athens Olympics. Even Malaysia's Chinese Daily, Sin Chew Daily reported that he replied politely and gladly any questions during Malaysia Open's press conference after his win over Peter Gade and it was the first time in history! Taufik did improve graduallly in terms of attitude since he played badminton, he was used to be known for his outburst and indicipline in the Indonesian team and nowadays, he is more mature in the court!Peter Gade should win the best sportmanship award if there is any. He always has a fair spirit during matches!
These pros from different nationalities, you say they are good friends off court, how do they communicate to each other? I think all the MS in the top 8 have equal chances of winning, they are all very skilled although some have a stronger mentality. However, in badminton, if you feel like yourself on the day of the tournament, you're going to win. If it's not your day, you'll lose.
fully agree as to lin's arrogance or perhaps, his over confidence. in most of his matches when he ws in good lead, more often thn not he wd change his game and started playing around. i was hoping for an upset in the sudirman's cup group matches when he was toying around sony dwi kuncoro after having good start. the same pattern developed in his game again lee chong wei, in fact in all 3 games. lucky for him to be able to take game 2 after his huge lead were cut to just 1 point advantage. if he does not change his way of play, though he is probably one of the best out there, perhaps the best, it's not surprising to see him fail flat in the coming WC, a scenario many wont wanna see. a little disappointed as i have commented before of his never say die attitude and and his commitment in winning every rally even when he ws far behind. he was so persistent in winning every point. hopefully there is no change in his attitude. agree with han that sportmanship does take time to develop, afterall, he had the success a little too young.. remember what happen to taufik hidayat couple of years ago.
totally. he has excellent techinque and amazing speed. if you look at the middle of the 3rd game of the Malaysian Open when he was trying to save the match, he outplayed LeeCW and showed what he is truely capable of. but for whatever reason, he gave up the last 6-7 points in less than 5 mins, all by his own errors.
Yeah, they were all unforced errors - you could see Lin Dan was so pissed off at some of the line calls, he stopped trying! Normally his smashes are so crisp and accurate, (you could see that at AE2005 and Sirdirman this year) but in that game, kept going wide of the mark! Maybe he feels that th Malaysian Open wasn't as important to him as it was to LCW and let him win?!
You'd be surprised. Some of these players/people who tour around the world are at least conversationally fluent multilingual. For example, one of the top soccer referees, Kim Milton Nielsen from Denmark. Whenever he officiated an international match, I always wondered how Italian, French, some African countries' players express their displeasures when he ruled against them. After all---no offence to Danish BC/BF members---Danish isn't exactly widely spoken around the world, is it? Well, that's before I found out that he speaks at least 5 languages fluently! I forget exactly which ones, but I'm certain English, French and Spanish are on the list. So, basically, short of swearing in some obscure Chinese dialect, there's a good chance that he'd understand you. Another example that came to mind is the retired tennis player Arantxa Sanchez Vicario. When she was on the tour, she regularly gave interviews to various international TV/radio stations, magazines, newspapers, etc. in their respective native languages, if possible. I remember seeing a short feature about her giving interviews in Spanish, English, French and German one right after another.
i don't think so... this champion was a stimulant for Lin Dan before WC we all were very disappointed to his failure but i think he will adjust his form and do his best next month
i guess thrs lesson to be learnt and hopefully a good one.. at the very least, it brought lin dan a bit more down to earth as to his own acclaimed invincibility.. he and his team of coaches should realise now there are players (apart from taufik) who are capable of taking the game from him, and should come up with new strategy and resolution. disappointed, we all were.. let's look at the bigger picture, the all important WC next month. it maybe a blessing in disguise... a lil side note, i dont think lin dan stopped playing solely because of those bad line calls. those unforced errors in the later part of game 3 were so unbelievable... hidden agenda?? duh...
i just finished watching this MOpen MS final match between LCW and LD. However, first of all i need to say some things which i think i have not read anywhere in this forum. In a game of badminton, there is always 2 opposing sides. Umpires, service judge, and line judges are there to MAKE SURE FAIR GAME. It doesn't matter if you are world number 1 rank for 3 consecutive years or a world rank 200, you would still want fair game, and if you CAN'T TRUST the people supposedly there to MAKE SURE FAIR GAME, what happen? you crack, you make mistakes, your confidence becomes lower, and what else etc. in this match, if you watch carefully, after each bad line calls (which i count is 4) LD would just stop trying just as you guys have said. However, you may not notice that several point after that bad line calls when LD was trying to play again, to concentrate again, he couldn't. why? simply because he DOESN'T FEEL SAFE to let go of the ball. see everytime a ball seems out, LD would hit it last minute - resulting in points for LCW. is this hard to understand? Even LCW also had this "unsafe-feeling" throughout the match after the bad line calls against LD. Putting it in another context is that if you go for driving license test, the examiner ask you to do this do that. after you done all that he would just say that you make mistakes and that you fail the test. next day you come again to retake the test, wouldn't you be more nervous? wouldn't you have less self-confidence? would you be telling yourself to be more careful this time? ------> like LD would "play it safe" by hitting last minute the thing is that from those 4 bad line calls, 3 happens with LD RIGHT THERE AT THE SPOT. 1 happens far away from LD although in the video record after slow motion replay it does seem to confirm that it was bad line call (as to why i said 4 bad line calls). this is like YOU KNOW it's out but the ppl supposedly 'protecting you' says otherwise (like you feel you didn't make mistake at all yet you fail the driving license test). and this is a very bad feeling i don't know if all you talking about that a champion shouldn't be bothered by these stupid bad line calls and bla bla bla bla about mental toughness, but in my most honest opinion (and i think to most ppl), this kind of feeling ranks quite high in my list of things that disturb one's brain / mental. especially when it happens again and again. and looking at the video record seems that the second bad line calls happen just when LD was regaining his confidence. so does the third one. which just makes things seriously ugly in my eyes anyway, i do agree that LCW did troubled LD a lot, but in neutral ground and in game with much less 'mental-destroyer-situation' i would really say LD would win LCW. as a last word, probably you all should still remember that champions are also human, capable of emotion. in fact, how many of you managed to be sterile, not affected at all by what happens around you? just my 2cents
4 bad line calls in a 3-set match? Now, how many times have we seen those? This issue has been blown right out of proportion. Many have won matches with line calls against you.