Looking at the line up. It's gonna be a loong looong way before we get to watch the last match of today. Especially with WD between 2 JPN just before the last one.
He Bingjiao, you know very well your shortcoming, get serious and work on it doggedly, it's your call.
Maybe it's better to have some of the doubles matches to a Court 2, not sure if Kento Momota and Lee Chong Wei relish playing the last match of the day which might end very late and then the winner having to play in the afternoon tomorrow, though 8 hours' rest is good enough for most fit athletes, imo.
Depends. Many people have been singing their praises about how they improved their game and such, but that just really is one way of rationalizing the recent results. This is going to sound like naysaying, but allow me to explain: SJH has been steadily declining for over a year and looks a lot slower than she used to. If you told me before the tournament that she'd easily dispatch of RI and only lose to CYF by the smallest of margins in game three, I wouldn't have believed you. She wasn't able to make even the slightest dent in a tournament in quite a while and her good results in Indonesia are imo an indication of the current low level of play (TTY the exception). This is true for a lot of top players. Take CYF for example. This was a performance of will rather than quality. She's won the last three games against SJY with absolute ease, today she was nearly kicked out. She lost first round at Malaysia against an also struggling NO and had an awful TUC campaign. RI had a first round loss against Michelle Li at AE, second round against Lee Jang Mi at the Asia Championships, a mediocre TUC and now straight game defeats to HBJ and SJH. Marin isn't a factor at all anymore. Whenever she is in a halfway critical situation, she totally collapses. AY does play well below her standard, error prone, sluggish (nowhere near as quick to get tough shots back). Somebody said she was injured, to me she looks unfit and like she does not really want to play badminton atm. NO is very inconsistent with some good but also some really bad performances. Being unseeded and getting ridiculously tough draws doesn't help either. Sindhu hasn't won anything of late with some questionable defeats against SN and SJH. Usually she's so solid in her play, in yesterday's match she made highly uncharacteristic unforced errors, especially with her back hand. Resting through the UC did not result in good results or form. SN simply doesn't look like she's going to be able to challenge for a top title at the moment, even though she won a couple of games against top players this year and took the CWG title. Currently, WS isn't the crown jewel of badminton like it was last year. This is not to belittle the achievements of those few (!) that currently do well (CYF is doing well terms of results rather than performance, imo). I just hope all these out-of-form ladies are just going through a tough phase in their preparation for the WC and that we'll see them at their very best again, soon.
Malaysia Open last year started at 10 but actually it was like 2 sessions and the 6th match starts at 5pm so i think its still early and ok here at IO.
I think HBJ strategy is to tank the first game and work out the second and third game. Just like how CYF did it. I mean, its better that way , she will have nothing to lose.
