any idea axelsen ranking points after the tournament? i think he is WR2 but if he had poor result last year , he stand to gain lots from this wtf alone.
Didn't take a lot, did it? And this is not a particularly good match at all, huge amount of easy mistakes from both players.
I disagree. I think the umpire made a poor call there. Antonsen is playing his best - his best shot at beating Viktor is to take set 1, rest in set 2, and save his energy for set 3. Morten Frost said this is why Antonsen gave up the 2nd set. Antonsen beat Viktor so Antosen's strategy was the right strategy, to conserve his energy in the 2nd set. The umpire made a bad call against Antonsen.
What a huge upset ... Hefty 8.8 for Antonsen to win the match what the hell! Its just as shocking as the match where he lost to Daren Liew. Never fails to confound.
I am disappointed in the umpire's call against Antonsen in the 2nd set. After Antonsen won the 1st set, the umpire should have recognized that Antonsen was playing a specific strategy of conserving his energy in the 2nd set and trying to waste Viktor's energy in the 2nd set, so Antonsen could use his full energy in the 3rd set. Poor call by the umpire to try to force Antonsen waste his energy in the 2nd set.
I don't see how you can police how much effort a player puts into any certain game. If antonsen feels out of shape and doesn't think he can win 2 games in a row from an on-fire axelsen, then it is perfectly within his right to conserve energy in the second. If a player plays at the fastest possible pace they can and put the most pressure on players to try and score points, they won't last long before they run out of steam. Where is the line between playing with less intensity to conserve energy and 'not playing your best' (whatever that means). Would you disqualify for son wan ho for playing in a passive retrieving style and not trying to score points directly, even though it wins him games he otherwise wouldn't? Would you disqualify endo/watanabe for lifting to the minions to tire gideon and relying on their defense and consistency? How is 'playing your best' defined in the rulebook anyway? How can you even quantify it, or is it simply up to umpire interpretation?