The Boston Open was last weekend at MIT, featuring more fantastic badminton than a regional tournament usually draws. There was a large contingent from California that dominated the finals, most notably, Halim Haryanto, Tony Gunawan, Howard Bach, Raju Rai, Khan Malaythong, Angeline De Pouw. It was a great pleasure to see them all play, especially Halim who I'd never seen play up close before. Lili Zhou played Eva Lee in the women's singles final, winning in 3 games. Halim Haryanto and Angeline De Pouw beat Tony Gunawan and Jennifer Coleman in 3 excellent games. Hat's off to Jenn, she played very well amongst the Indonesians on court. The men's singles featured Raju Rai and Tony Gunawan; it seemed Tony was pretty tired from the mixed final and Raju wrapped it up in two games. The women's doubles was another 3 game encounter, with Mesinee Mangalikiri and Eva Lee taking the title over Angeline De Pouw and Lauren Todt. The men's doubles was very fast paced, pitting Halim Haryanto and Raju Rai against Khan Malaythong and Howard Bach. Bach and Malaythong were definitely the most rested, as Halim and Raju had both played in finals an hour or so before. Howard Bach and Khan Malaythong took it in two games. Anyone have pictures or stories from Boston?
Awesome commentary Great recap, blckknght! Reading your commentary, I feel like I was there! Yeah, pictures and more stories would be great...
Apparently a friend of mine from my baddy club here at school played against Tony Gunawan in men's singles first round! He got 1 point in 2 games. hehe! I also get to play baddy with Jennifer Coleman's dad. He's super nice and funny.
Gee, looks like OCBC took home most of the prize money.... The USA National will probably end in the similar results in the up coming week. Gets kinda boring watching the same players in the finals. I do like what Tony did. Tony picked Ronald Sou as his partner, giving Ronald a chance to gain some valuable experience. If Tony, Howard, Bob, Halim all picked a junior partner to play with, it will be much more interesting to see who will be the winner, right? We all know that if Tony and Howard partner together, no one will beat them. Anyways, that's my two cents. Congrats to Lili Zhou as one of the two non-OCBC player to win. Oh, and to Angie too.
One other interesting thing was that Wilson was sponsoring the Boston Open in part, and they gave away a free ncode racket (n2, n4, or n6) and a pair of shoes to every participant! Fantastic marketing strategy. G
2006 Boston Open photos Pictures I took at the tournament: http://www.aamir.org/gallery/2006BostonOpenBadmintonTournament Cheers, - Aamir
me and a couple U21s were looking at entering this tournament and looking at the pics I see a couple guys from quebec!
Excellent pictures AMIR ......just love them ...!!!! Too bad they dont have the results posted online ....
Below are the results as posted by Viper2005 in the link below. Ladies Singles-Lili Zhou Mens Singles- Raju Womens Doubles -Eva & Mei Mens Doubles-Howard-Bob Mixed- Halim & Angeline http://www.badmintoncentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23918&referrerid=12195
Yeah,, LiLi is great!! Like the way she plays, and smashes... Anyone by any chance might know more about her? Her pic^^?