DANISA Denmark Open I 2020 (World Tour Super 750)

kurako said:
Given the unpredictability of the problem at hand [...]
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kurako said:
The Olympics will be held in less than a year, in an environment that will be 'with corona', and probably 'without a vaccine'.
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Hmmm. :D

kurako said:
Nevertheless, whilst being careful in taking precautions, other sports are moving forward. So why can't badminton?
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This is a good article, albeit a bit dated: https://theconversation.com/the-business-of-sports-resumes-amid-covid-19-but-at-what-cost-142793 Other sports moved forward, but it's not all going well. Djokovic's ill-fated Adria tour, which got himself and others infected, is a good example. The 20/21 NBA season is postponed until January '21 without specific plans on how to organize it. Ronaldo tested positive. The Miami Marlins had half of their players tested positive and the entire team was subsequently suspended for the season by the MLB. By July, 59 NFL players had already tested positive.
Imagine even half that number over a couple of months in the indoor sport badminton. Player x tests positive, his/her entire national fedaration will probably have to be barred from tournaments/get quarantined for some time. Tournaments may have to be canceled halfway through, despite players and staff having already spent time and money to show up. Needless to say, this would hit smaller federations and tournament organizers much harder.

The NBA, which created a highly effective bubble to host their playoffs, estimates the cost of said bubble at around 170 million dollar. Granted, this would probably be lower for badminton, because badminton tournaments usually only last a week, and there are probably less teams participating in tournaments than during the basketball bubble (22).
On the other hand, the Lakers' title-winning roster consisted of 18 players, while China, for example, sent 35 players to the All England.

It is a logistic nightmare and a financial undertaking that I don't think badminton can handle. The NBA also did it just for the playoffs, badminton has to find a way to make an entire season work. Across borders, with the interests of numerous federations and entire countries to consider.
I think it is safe to say that the more money a sport has to implement measures, the safer the tournaments/games will most likely be. Since this is badminton we're talking about, we know where we will end up on the "safety"- scale. :D

kurako said:
I think that Denmark deserves to be commended for bringing about this tournament. And one way of doing this is to treat the Denmark Open as a fully-fledged tournament, points and all.
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Totally agree on the first part, not so much on the second. These simply aren't normal times and test-run tournaments, where the majority of the world elite can't (!) participate, can not be treated as such. The players, national associations and the BWF have to find solutions that leave no one behind.

kurako said:
I sincerely hope that that no infections are discovered, and that this particular event will act as an example in show-casing that international badminton can indeed move forward.
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I do, too. However, there will be no "normal" season for the foreseeable future, as the planning for the Asia Open tournaments already suggests. Thus, this tournament and the rankings can't be treated as normal, either.
 
Obviously, under such an impactful, rare and totally unexpected worldwide situation as a global pandemic, any action and decision made by any entity, whether individuals and organizations, can only be the best compromise based on give and take or else nothing gets done and then everybody loses.

Personally, I'd like to suggest BWF set up an ad hoc committee comprising generally acceptable representatives from the various stakeholders, mainly the players and sponsors (I should think the sponsors would expect a bigger weightage, after all, money talks in professional sports), perhaps with some input from well-known badminton fans (such as from BadmintonCentral and other fora, as well as sports writers?) before coming out with any major decisions and proposals with accompanying explanation and rationale before final implementation.

From the practical point of view, I would like to think that the proposed ad hoc committee I suggested make their decision-making process based not solely on the principles of pragmatism but also, as far as possible, taking into account the basic principle of Utilitarianism (the greatest happiness principle), and strike a balance. True, easier said than done, but BWF has to take the lead and the responsibility, who else? Right, extraordinary (desperate) times call for extraordinary (desperate) measures.
 
Frankly, I wouldn't take this tournament as an indication of the participant's form as most players have been out of real competition for so long, furthermore, not much is at stake here.
 
This match reminds me of lakshya vs christo last year Scottish open. Though lakshya won that match but christo deserved to win that .So many mistakes in today's second game. And third game was well deserved to HKV. That forehand hkv defence on Lakshya's smash was really great.
 
It's a shame for Lakshya because he clearly lost his focus and played well below his capabilities, but I guess that is young age for you. He'll be royally mad at himself for a while and then he's going to learn from it.
HKV was clearly struggling physically, but gave yet another warrior's performance and thoroughly deserved to go through. Really happy for him and JOJ.
Did you agree with Steen regarding LS's attack, @Baddie lover ?
 
Argh. I'd forgotten about her habit.

Shout. On. Every. Point.

*SMH*

Also, I'm fed up in general with the lack of variation in celebratory exclamations, can't we do better than "HO!", "HI!", and "HA!"?!

As a start I propose a good hearty "Yee-haw!"....
 
Cunning Linguist said:
It's a shame for Lakshya because he clearly lost his focus and played well below his capabilities, but I guess that is young age for you. He'll be royally mad at himself for a while and then he's going to learn from it.
HKV was clearly struggling physically, but gave yet another warrior's performance and thoroughly deserved to go through. Really happy for him and JOJ.
Did you agree with Steen regarding LS's attack, @Baddie lover ?
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Man I missed what he said about Lakshya's attack. All I can say is this was hard to watch haha. I mean he didn't play to his caliber in the second game doing so so many mistakes , quite uncharacteristic of him. He had the chance to capitalise on third game when he narrowed down the gap but I guess hkv did really well to down LS. Props to hkv that he didn't get exhausted in the final stages of the decider. Ahh, tough pill to swallow .
 
HKV is known for his diving defence. Lakshya should have used more drop shots.
Morten Frost Hansen your opinion please
 
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Baddie lover said:
Man I missed what he said about Lakshya's attack. All I can say is this was hard to watch haha. I mean he didn't play to his caliber in the second game doing so so many mistakes , quite uncharacteristic of him. He had the chance to capitalise on third game when he narrowed down the gap but I guess hkv did really well to down LS. Props to hkv that he didn't get exhausted in the final stages of the decider. Ahh, tough pill to swallow .
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Yeah, it is. But look at other top players at that age. They had similar issues and 19 is really young in terms of men's singles badminton.

Steen said a couple of things, as far as I recall (I'm paraphrasing from memory here, don't blame Steen :D)

  • the way HKV played showed that he wasn't really afraid of LS's attack
  • LS had trouble scoring points on his own with his setup and attack
  • His attack worked better when he took off the pace

Can't comment on the first point, because I'm not a badminton coach. :D
The second I found a quite harsh, because he did put some smashes on the ground and has shown previously (All England, for example) that he can do that. The third I agree with. His sliced, slower and more precise shots are really good and they did a lot of damage to HKV. LS probably didn't use that enough. Ah, well. Let's hope the infection numbers in Germany don't continue on the (horrible) current path, and he can show his quality in Saarbrücken. The draw looks good.
 
sen said:
It's kind of useless prevention unless you throw away the shuttles EVERYTIME after the opponent won a point. Otherwise when you serve, you will touch the shuttle after the opponent has touched it when they served before.
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without getting into detail surface contact is not an issue. as an example look at what the nba finals just did. how many players & referees were touching the same basketball repeatedly? you rarely touch the shuttle in badminton.

it makes sense to not want heavy breathing players approaching a service judge.
 
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