What Can be Expected At the Korean Open

**EastDevil** · 08-03-2006, 06:24 PM

Originally Posted by X Ball

I think it would not be too long before we see top players being paid appearance money to play -- this is the case with golf, athletics, tennis.

Then I would like to be an agent for LCW. LOL

Something more personal would be better like Tiger Wood's caddy. Big bucks...

**nugroho** · 08-04-2006, 03:55 AM

you can wait for the fullteam of Indonesia. they will likely sent their fullteam for the warm up before WC on september...

i red the article on www.bolanews.com

so... Good luck indonesia!!!

**event** · 08-04-2006, 09:26 PM

As for the ranking incentive, someone will likely do the math but players like Zhang Ning or Lin Dan may be assured of keeping their top 2 spots even if they don't play in Korea or Hong Kong so they might keep resting. The players lower in the top 10 should be hungry come late August.

In terms of seeding for the World Championships, these two events will be very important. It depends when they do the seeding, of course. If they do it right before the Worlds, then last year's WC points will be gone by then and their last chance for points will have been the Korea and HK Opens. Once the HK Open is played this year, the new ranking system will make last year's HK Open points disappear. That means that players who did well at the HK Open last year, and possibly at the WC, will lose a big chunk of ranking points right before this year's WC. For someone like Lin Dan, that means almost 10,000 of his 40,000 points! In other words, if he skips both Korea and Hong Kong, he could easily drop to fifth place and end up having to face LCW in the Quarter-finals or something. People who are poised to springboard off the points from these events include players who either didn't play, or didn't finish well in the WC or HK Open last year: for example, Chen Jin, Lee Hyun-il, Hafiz, and even Boonsak Ponsana.
In the women's singles rankings, it's the same. Xie and Zhang stand to lose 10,500 points each while Pi, Wang, and Xu all stand to lose around 7,000 points. So even if Zhang Ning were to skip one and win the other 6* event, Pi Hongyan could end up as the WC top seed by simply making the semis of both tournaments.

**event** · 08-11-2006, 08:00 PM

Well, the BAM website notes that the 2005 WC points will come off before this year's WC's seedings are done. Add to that, the loss of the 2005 HK Open points and the ranking points would be as follows for any top men's singles players who enter neither the Korea nor Hong Kong Open this year:

Lee Chong Wei - 35073.02
Chen Jin - 32329.32
Peter Gade - 30829.17
Lin Dan - 30403.13
Hafiz - 27333.91
Lee Hyun-il - 27148.8
Chen Hong - 26880
Jonassen - 24948.18
Bao Chunlai - 22745.36
Boonsak Ponsana - 21620.05

5400 points should be up for grabs for the winner of each tournament. If seedings mean anything for these guys, they have to play both tournaments. On the other hand, since it looks so unlikely that Lin Dan will end up in the top 2, if he's the guy they all want to avoid, then being in the top 2 will not necessarily prevent a match with him prior to the finals. There are so many permutations. The other thing is that because the IBF only counts the top 10 events in the last year, winning the Korea Open will mean, for most of them, adding 5400 points but then removing their 10th best result from the last 12 months. For most of them, that means around 2000 points.

**event** · 08-16-2006, 07:41 AM

Well, not too many particulars but the Badminton Times magazine claims that 9 of the top 10 men's doubles pairs will compete in Korea and that 7 of the top 10 in each of the other categories will compete.

In doubles, they claim that Lee/Choong will be here as well as Chan/Koo but that contradicts what has been posted elsewhere.

They also say that LCW and Taufik and Peter Gade will be here but they don't mention Lin Dan.

**Han** · 08-16-2006, 06:35 PM

I don't think China will send the same players to both the Korea and Hong Kong Opens, too close to WC to stretch to the limit for the players. The same can be said about players for other nations who are in contention for the titles. If Lin Dan skip Korea then he will be in Hong Kong Open. Injury is what need to be avoided for those top guns, not raking points at this stage ...