oh, i was responding to the post re. Hoon/Tan's qualification. are you saying Ko/Lee couldn't qualify (ranked 4 atm) because Lee has a new partnership with YYS? sounded a bit odd.
Last year champion and finalists, Xu Chen / Ma Jin and Zhang Nan / Zhao Yunlei, withdrew. Malaysia's Peng Soon Chan / Liu Ying Goh are the top seed left. Followed by several pairs from Indonesia.
Not indicated by the latest draw (released yesterday night). Nevertheless, I see that the CHN pairs are not fit probably, given Zhao Yunlei's flu bout last week and not sure what happened to Ma Jin or Xu Chen. The INA and Danish pairs also withdraw, giving it a perfect opportunity for other pairs to have a chance at a SS title. The 11 titles was won by only 3 pairs this year: 6 was won by Zhang/Zhao (Korea, Indonesia, China Masters, Japan, Denmark, French) 4 was won by Owi/Butet (All England, India, Singapore, China) 1 was won by Fischer-Nielsen/Pedersen (Malaysia) Xu/Ma fail to win any single SS title so far, the last one was the China Open SSP 2012. They will fall behind Fischer-Nielsen/Pedersen to no 4 if they really withdraw from the HKG Open 2013.
Not to be a pedanker but it's 2220 points for a regular Superseries. Your argument is, as usual, perfectly correct, however. Could not qualify doesn't make sense. They have qualified. It is now a question of whether the Korean team chooses to send players who have qualified and whether the BWF chooses to slap fines on pairs that have disbanded. We haven't seen this in a while. Last year, the only disbanded pair that remained in the top 8 after Hong Kong were Ikeda/Shiota and that was a special case because they had already officially given notice to the BWF of retirement. The last time I remember a disbanded pair qualifying for the SSF was way back in 2009 when Lee Hyo Jung and Lee Kyung Won had split up but initially confirmed their participation before Hyo Jung's injury resulted in a change of plans. That was before the BWF started fining players for not showing up so this year will be precedent-setting. Since neither Ko nor Lee has retired and they are the only disbanded pair who has qualified, we shall see how the BWF applies its punitive policy.
