I slightly disagree. The ruthlessness lies with BWF, not CBA. If 1% of the Chinese population plays badminton on a regular basis, that is 13 million people out of 1.3 billion. If 1% of those regular turns professional, that is 130,000 professional players out of 13 million. Of the 130,000 players, only 10 can go to Olympics because of BWF rules!!!
The way I see it, Li Xuerui has a nemesis and it is none other than herself. The day she conquers herself will herald the beginning of her dominance a la her idol Lin Dan. Clearly, Li Xuerui's problem isn't so much to do with fitness or lack thereof, which if that were the case, could be solved by better or more targeted state-of-the-art training methodology and sport science. It seems to me that the more she wanted to win the worse she played. The self-induced pressure she subjected herself worked against her, counterproductive, self-defeating. I still regard her as the best player who unfortunately simply fails to play her best when it matters sometimes, or at the wrong time. And it has nothing to do with her skills or techniques for which she is highly proficient and has no lack of, the best in my opinion. I repeat, she is her own worst enemy,indeed. I'm afraid there's not much her coaches and mentor(s) can do for her other than to continue supporting, guiding, motivating and encouraging her. I feel the only way is for her to grow out of her problem through accumulating life experiences, maturing over time and character development as she ages. Luckily for her, at age 24 now (born 24th Jan 1991), time is still on her side. Even so, I sincerely hope she achieves a greater breakthrough, another milestone in her career, sooner rather than later, at just the right time for this year's world championship and next year's Rio Olympics. When asked by a reporter yesterday what she does to destress herself outside of training and competition, she reacted without hesitation:"Eat,sleep,that's all." I'd urged her to earnestly consider,eat,meditate,then sleep, and again meditate each time before any tournament and match.
I believe Sho Sasaki answered during an interview that his late success as a player is due to finding himself a mental coach and began practicing meditation. I'm going to piggy back off of your comment, and say that I get the same impression that her greatest enemy is herself. Li Xue Rui chokes. In two instances already, she makes it through the World Championships with dominating form, and then falls on the ground and shatters into a million pieces. I believe her combination of consistency, usage of all angles (i'm particularly impressed by her control on punch clears), and the ability to finish off rallies really make her the most complete package in women's singles currently. In both instances of world championship finals, she just fell apart on her own. Sure the two young prodigies played some excellent badminton beyond their regular capacity. However on the other side of the court LXR made error after error, and simply looking at her body language, she was completely taken over by her nerves.
While I agree that LXR biggest enemy is herself, I do think Ratchanok deserves a lot of credit for staging an amazing comeback in the Asian games final. Her mental fortitude and stamina was really impressive because the first 2 games were very physically demanding. At one stage LXR was leading 14-10 in the second game and maybe here is the crucial passage of the match where she failed to put the nail in the coffin. She might have become a little passive. At the same time, she had an opponent who refused to lie down. LXR also held match point in the second game and she didn't do much wrong there, put Ratchanok under great pressure but Ratchanok just came up with some amazing play. So while I agree that LXR mental game can still be put under question, I can not see this loss as a choke but more of a fantastic comeback and stronger stamina from Ratchanok.
Although LXR may not have the strongest mindset, I don't think that is her main problem. She has shown on multiple occasions that she is real fighter. LXR's lack of physical endurance has been well documented. That has more to do with her DNA than being lazy in her training. Even with that, she mustered a 30-match winning streak and had been WR#1 for more than 100 weeks. So that's not a show stopper either. LXR's problem lies in her game management. All players have ups and downs during a match. The big difference between the elite and lesser players is that the former can minimize/hide the damage in their down periods and play the key points wells. LXR is so good that she can often run up a streak of points. But her point streaks often come at strange times, compared to other top players. With her endurance problem, she needs to pay particular attention to when to give herself a break and when to go all out. Since she is so good that this problem has often been masked. In the two WC finals and the recent BAC final, this problem was mercilessly exposed. Since she did not covert her opportunities early and did not spare herself a chance to fight later, she ran out of steam and went down meekly. Because of her meteoric rise in 2012, we often overlooked that she is still a relatively young player. There are still things that she needs to learn. Now it is a good time for her to learn better game management.
She will hand it back to SN once again after the Sudirman Cup. LXR will lose points from SC while SN will gain points, regardless how their teams will do.
Everyone has different opinion on who is #1. She is the true #1 in my heart. She will be the 2016 Olympic Champ.
Somewhere i read that the sudirman cup wont give world ranking points. Then how Li will lose points? Help me in this. Confused.
For playing in the Cups, players get their average, plus a 1% of their opponent's total points for a win. Both LXR and SN will lose their UC points and gain SC points. LXR had a higher average when playing the UC, so she will have a net loss. SN had a lower average when playing the UC, so she will have a net gain. LXR and SN are virtually tied at the moment. With the net gains and losses described above, SN will pull ahead after the SC.
I'm so happy for her good performance in beating Akane, now her next target should be winning some superseries titles to add to her collection just to further increase her confidence before the world championships.
hey, do u know where i can find the rules on how the points are calculated for SC and T/U Cup? thanks
My apologies for reposting my view here from the KOR Open tournament thread relating to the following two articles: http://sports.sina.com.cn/others/bad...f8033434.shtml , http://news.xinhuanet.com/sports/201..._127274266.htm (thanks to pcll99 who first brought them to my attention and jkkwongnz's subsequent posts discussing the matter) "Quote Originally Posted by jkkwongnz View Post :- I think she went for conservative approach and rest for many months. I doubt we can see old LXR again but I hope she can put (prove) me wrong. what a shame!" My post follows: I recall the first sign of her injury was a twitch during her French Open Final last Oct'14 with WSX when she suddenly retired at the G2 mid-game interval (I remember some BCers accusing her of throwing the match). Two weeks later she aggravated her injury during training and the doctor proposed two treatment options, either surgery with a shorter, complete recuperation and recovery or the conservative, non-surgical method but much longer recovery period which also necessitated her putting on a cast for one month. She chose the latter option fearing surgery might lead to complications (perhaps after seeing what happened to Wang Xin and Wang Lin, wrongly and needlessly I think because theirs involved ACL, not her case of navicular bone stress fracture). After the cast was removed, she was eager to return to proper training; however, her rehab and recovery took longer than expected,in the end about 6 - 9 months to be fully match-fit. Only now then I read her injury is similar to basketballer Yao Ming's, a tricky problem if not carefully handled esp when the athlete is too eager to resume proper training. On hindsight,I supposed her injury woes which included other ailments as reported in the said articles partly contributed to her loss of form and worsened her mental weakness and anxiety to perform. Li Xuerui is now 24 years old, neither young nor old, I can only hope earnestly that she makes a successful, great comeback one day, the sooner the better. To me, she is the best WS player technically speaking and prodigiously talented. It'll be such a shame if her career is cut short just like that. I admit I've been unduly harsh on her recently but that's because I have very high hopes of her and thought she has what it takes to be one of the greatest players of all time.
a picture of 2014 World Championship in Denmark taken on 31 Aug 2014. Was this an achilles heel injury? or ankle? i can't remember... hmm.. [video=youtube;cfamEfEA4rg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfamEfEA4rg?t=4546[/video]
I very much hope and sincerely wish that Li Xuerui makes a successful comeback soon enough. It is still possible, history has shown several stories of super successes who overcame failures or severe setbacks. But there is not much time left for the Rio Olympic cycle, it's all up to her. The other week after the WC debacle she said she wanted to start all over again like becoming a piece of white paper (where the most beautiful characters can be written,in my own words). Wish her great success.
I don't know, Chen Jin tends to see LXR's problem as mainly fitness and injury related, paying scant attention to her mental aspect. I, humbly speaking, attribute her failures, esp at the majors, largely to her lack of mental toughness. Don't forget, her 2013 and 2014 WC meltdowns occurred when she wasn't beset by or coming back from any known serious injury.
I think she has both physical and psychological issues right now. She now plays in a way avoid injury to her foot which make her not as comfortable and smooth as before. The anxiety of injuring her foot again will be on her mind all the time.
