WCH will only earn (4250-880)=3370 points. He was unlucky to meet with Simon in few SS earlier this year.
There's many GP Gold events to be held from July onwards, time for the second-string players to grab some massive points. Thailand Open Philippines Open India Open Chinese Taipei Open Macau Open Plus a few more GP events offering similar ranking points like the NZ Open: US Open Bitburger Open Dutch Open Vietnam Open And not forgetting the Asian Challenger events (US$15,000) and Satellite events (US$5000) offering quite juicy ranking points for players like Andre Kurniawan: Vietnam Int Challenge Singapore Satellite Indonesia Int Challenge Korea Int Challenge and the numerous European based Int Challenge events.
Congratulations to WCH! He should be ranked around 28 this coming Thursday. This also means no more SS qualifying rounds for him. He should take part in Vietnam Challenge next week, but it looks like he has not submitted his name for this tournament. Zhou Mi is wiser, she will take part in Vietnam Challenge. 1 GP Champ + 1 Challenge Champ = 1 SS Champ ranking point. WCH should take part because it will be so quiet in June as only Sudirman Cup is the major event. Roslin does not deserve the wild card although BAM forgot to submit his name for the last two SS. May be BAM should organize qualifying match for MS wild card. This is more fair. Let them play against each other for 3 matches.
LCW won Pahang Open. Still a big gap between youngsters and him. I am glad to see the gap between KBH and youngsters is closer. KBH's mental strength is really weak. He performed badly ever since he lost to Denmark No 3 during the last Thomas Cup in Tokyo. Indo players' mental strength seems better. LCW should not care too much about the World Ranking. He should care to whom he lost to, and not which round he is being eliminated (looking at the current SS 1~8 seeding system, being eliminated in the first round will become more and more common). I think he lost to Susilo mainly because his confidence level during that period was damn low.
It started cutting out a lot today . I thought the video quality was alright, but it wasn't very stable and I kept losing sound and/or video which was annoying. It wasn't very well pulled off. I would have thought they would have handled the finals better, but oh well I'm just glad I got to see it at all. I was hoping it would be on NZ free-to-air TV again this year so I was pretty disappointed to find out it was only on Sky and paid web streaming >_> (I mean last year when it was on free-to-air it really had an impact in NZ, loads of people came up to me and informed me that badminton was a very fast and exciting sport ).
In the rubber game, WCH started to run out of gas at 10-12, only managed to get another 4 points while Andrea got 9 points to finish the game. His accuracy was not there when he run out ot gas (few unforced errors). Andrea also forced him to run all corners of the court knowing that his opponent was slowing down. Maybe it was very tiring to win LTS in rubber games.
Swiss Open streaming quality was much better. I watched it using my Pocket PC phone, extremely nice experience. No wonder quality of life for Switzerland is so high. Even the public toilet in Zurich is also with world standard but it came with a price (you have to pay 1 Euro for that).
Agree. LYB should let the excellent player win the Olympic title. Anyway, HK is still part of China, therefore, it will be too bad if he disallows Zhou Mi in participating the Olympic.
I agree that draws must have an element of luck but on the other hand, it will make the World Ranking less accurate. BWF is trying very hard in stopping China from dominating the games, so that it will remain an Olympic sports if badminton get more participations from other countries. However, it is sad to say, up to today, China is still dominating.
Honestly, Malaysia should seriously consider sending the 2nd stringers like Daren Liew, Lim Kenn and Tan Chun Seang to these types of tournaments instead of sending the oldies who are already going downhill. At least the youngsters can try to pick up their match experiences faster and maybe we will have more MS who can shoulder the burden of getting honours for the country. At the moment, sadly, Lee CW is the benchmark that the youngsters and even Kuan BH can hardly match, as evident in all the games played at the Pahang Open the last few days.:crying:
Agree. Should let the youngsters pick up some ranking points so that they do not have to play qualifying rounds which is very tiring (imagine one day 3 matches). When they are top 28, they might meet with world top player during the first round of the SS, from there, they will gain a lot of experience. Also, let them feel the excitement when they win the GP tournament.
Notional rankings was not started this year. It has been around for at least a few years, probably much longer, but I don't know when it started. CCM/HTH had at least 2 tournaments to their name, so points garnered with previous partners were not used. Instead, if they have 2 to 5 tournaments, their ranking points are doubled. 6 tournaments - multiply by 10/6. 7 tournaments - multiply by 10/7. More than that, just use world rankings. However, a notionally-ranked pair cannot be seeded in the top 4. If it's a new pair that has never played together or played just once, then points with previous partners were used (with some conditions of course). It is common to see a new (good) pair with good seeding at first, but after that they tend to be unseeded. That's because once they have 2 events under their belt, their ranking point is only doubled for notional ranking. That is usually not as good as when they were using their points with previous partners. The notional rankings have good intentions and it is reasonably fair (in my opinion) but it is convulated, and that is my main grouch. It is better to have notional rankings than not, but there could be better solutions. http://www.internationalbadminton.org/PDF - Regulations/197 APPENDIX 6 - WORLD RANKING SYSTEM.pdf
Congrats to the winners. Too bad WCH lost. He was that close in securing his 1st title after injury. BUt Adrea did a beter job beating all Malaysians to clinch the title. Proud to know the Japanese won! GO nippon.
Really2 surprise for the youngster Andre to defeat MAS trio Roslin-Yeoh and Wong Choong Han, probably he will become another INA promising-talent beside Tommy to back-up Sony, Simon and of course TH. Good beginning to reach MS title in GP-level without top-names here. Congratz! Zhou Mi/Wang Chen/Yip Pui Yin obviously are stumble blocks for LYB' girls to seal Gold in Beijing next year.
Extremely delighted to note that Andre , an INA rookie,has beaten three solid MAS veterans in a row to clinch his first title.I hope this augurs well for the future of INA badminton and there is a wealth of INA badminton talent waiting for opportunities to open up. But you know what's the problem with MAS veterans? They tend to underestimate their lesser known opponents and be lax in their pre-match preparations. However I would still bet on WCH to win one good title although he missed this one. He is such a fighter but he has to be aware of his psychological giveaway. He either overestimates his opponents (eg.LD in GO07) or underestimates (eg.LTS in NZ07) and sound out loud so his opponent (LD) knows he has the upper hand or riles his opponent (LTS) so he put up his biggest fight 'to show him'. Be smart like TH in pre-match interviews. TH never gives anything away in how he views his opponents.In ABC07,clearly seeing LCW as his only hurdle to the title, he said he was there to get a good result.But because he never declared that LCW's the one to beat, LCW never knew TH was not so confident against him.After defeating LCW, TH was clearly confident of taking the title and his original aim of 'getting a good result' graduated to 'winning the title'. With the NSS, which does not allow time to think on your feet, with points moving so fast, match outcome depends a lot on form and on pre-match preparations based on many 'what ifs?'. WCH is still gung ho;to me he's MAS MS no. 2. Hafiz should go nurse his injury properly or retire.
Actually I would like to see WCH do well. But I don't know whether he has still got it in him to win the big one. He is always thereabouts --- think it is a bit of age and fitness. Hope he can call on his reserves to rise to the occasion again, tough but not impossible.
Yeah.. WCH forever. Even though his game has declined, he plays and gives 120%. His HEART keeps him going. I have full respect for him. Definately one of my fav lad.
still a very good 3rd single Choon Han still will be very useful in Thomas Cup as 3rd singles. At this point of his career, I don't think he's consistent enough to play as 2nd singles, that slot should leave to Hafiz(we know he can't win win either but at least Choon Hann has better chance to win as 3rd single, none of the Malaysian player capable of winning 2nd single if go against China, Indonesia or even Denmark). Malaysia should start to insert a junior single player into Thomas Cup squad to gain valuable experience as our players are pretty old now. Is hard to imagine Choon Hann can play the way he use to when he almost won the World Championship back in 2003 as he may not want to push too hard to re-injure again. Choon Hann will always be our favorite and even though I don't see him win any major title in near future but team Malaysia still will find his service valuable just like Tan Fok/Wan Wah. Choon Hann boleh!!!
