Good job, Akane Yamaguchi , upsetting a more fancied opponent coming after her senior, Nozomi's, success over another favourite, the top seed, Tai TY.
I think both players are at same level. Fancied, I don't think so. Imo Sindhu, Okuhara, Yamaguchi are at same level. TTY, CM, CYF are better than them at present.
I actually never thought that Sindhu will go such a steep low that even Off form Yamaguchi can beat her. Kudos to indian coaches. Considering her form and her statistics in Big Events, i am not sure whether she will reach even Semis this time, let alone Finals.
To be honest, I think Yamaguchi is nowhere near Okuhara at the moment. Two weeks ago, at the All Japan, AY struggled against world junior champ Riko Gunji and then Asuka Takahashi before losing to Ohori (you know, the player that never beats top players) in the semis. Today was slightly better, but, as I said, both these ladies can play much better. Next year we will surely see a different Sindhu (hopefully a different Yamaguchi as well ). I think CYF is the heavy favourite for this tournament because the players that are better than her and regularly beat her (TTY, PVS, AY, CM) are all in different forms of struggle. Good position to be in.
I often agree with your thoughts, however I believe you are often too harsh on CYF yes, I see that she hasn't won anything significant yet and hasn't exactly achieved to place the Chinese flag up and high back in its place since LXR got injured (and obviously I am a lil biased towards her, cause ever since her junior days I've always looked up at her when everyone was busy blowing bagpipes of praises for HBJ). But, she has done remarkably well in her short career especially this year. Yes the tournament is hers to loose, just like the WC this year, which didn't go exactly her way. But since she has shown great character and tenacity.
Maybe. I certainly do not claim neutrality when it comes to players. Just like everybody else, I have my favourites, and CYF simply isn't one of them. But that has less to do with her as a person and player and more with what the Chinese BA tries to do with WS and WD. Anyway, that is just my really insignificant personal preference. I still think that a point can be made that CYF clearly has favourite opponents in RI and NO that she can outgrind because of physical advantages (nothing wrong with that) and that the players who aren't struggling that much physically against her (AY does the most, for obvious reasons) all have a fairly clear h2h advantages against her. She's 2-8 vs TTY, AY, PVS and CM this year, despite all of them not having exactly stellar 2019s for different reasons. At the same time she's 7-0 against RI and NO. So yes, her 2019 was impressive with 6 titles from 6 finals, but I had initially feared p) it would be even more successful. It wasn't, because the top players, with the exception of that one game in England, are still ahead of her. Despite struggling themselves. Feel free to disagree with me, I'm open to well-made points.
What has happened to Antonsen since world championships? His smashing power has completely disappeared. I remember him smashing past Chen Long at will a few months ago, today it looked like Tommy Sugiarto was trying to kill the shuttle. Antonsen was just playing his midcourt cat and mouse tactics and waiting for Christie to make a mistake. And somehow it was still a close match. Looks to me like Antonsen has injury unless he switched his racket to wet noodle.
Defending champion Pusarla Sindhu going down 21-18 / 18-21 / 8-21, a signal of slightly better performance by Akane Yamaguchi and possible would pocketing second victory in group stage against He Bingjiao today. Interesting to wait whether Chen Yufei could conquer Sindhu as she faltered to the tall Indian at last two encounters. As usual Tai Tzu Ying displaying magnificent shots but too bad she couldn't control the errors and lack of accuracy in second and third game. A quite tough chance for this TPE ace to progress as she will take on Ratchanok Intanon who has similar style of play. On paper Okuhara is predicted to overcome Busanan Ongbamrungphan. Men's singles group B is more appealing to follow, couple of very close opening matches saw Chen Long and Chou Tien Chen won narrowly over Viktor Axelsen and Anthony Ginting respectively. Axelsen should make amends today against Chou, 9-1 stats indicating the Dane is favourite to keep his chance alive. A must win situation for Ginting in second match in group fixture otherwise he would repeat last year disastrous outing. Kento Momota is demonstrating his class to outplay Wang Tzu Wei, maybe only Jonatan Christie who could deliver decent resistance to the world champion. Christie passed crucial test, see-saw battle against current WChamps silver medalist Anders Antonsen who made brief comeback in second game, 5-17 but too late to catching up, 23-21 / 21-16. The off-form world number one Zheng/Huang losing their fine touch lately, their attacking looked blunt suddenly, four service errors and being dictated by Japanese duo Watanabe/Higashino in two straight-games, 15-21 / 15-21. Arisa Higashino played much better at front area than Huang Yaqiong to intercept fastly that flat footed the Chinese. Former All England champions will challenge Jordan/Oktavianti who lost surprisingly to teammates Faizal/Widjaja. DAY 2 (GROUP STAGE) | 11.00am & 06.00pm : https://www.tournamentsoftware.com/...144033-A23C-47A2-9CC7-4F292234AFF7&d=20191212
That's contrast with her teammate He Bingjiao despite the left-hander is claimed as more talented than Chen YF.
AA did switch his racket....but 90k isn't exactly noodle relatively....probably he is just off form would be my guess
Yeah... what the hell. By losing to their less talented teammates, both INA pairs might as well go home early. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk