VA has iron out some of his weaknesses and today is the top dog. KM has slowed a bit but I believe he has a crisis of confidence rather than Physical. There are some players whose style could trouble KM. We must remember that KM's game is under scrutiny for some time now. Remember also that LCW has had many injuries that were almost career ending . The last was the one he had in early 2017 which Morten thought were serious enough to end his career. LCW came back to win the AE in 2017 at 34. The MD department see Japan having a good replacement. The Danish pair is not bad too given that they are quite old men already. Goh - Izzuddin surprisingly do not have power smashes but there is something different in their game which is not seen in many Malaysian men doubles previously. Their flat game and Izzu 's creativity. they need to iron out some issues. Without an attacking game they may not move to the top but still could be dangerous dark horse in many tournaments. Many new exciting men singles are coming to the fore, HKs Lee , Canadas Brian, Chinas Li and the Thais Vittisarn and Wang Charoen. Koreas Heo may improve to be a good single player if given better guidance.
without knowing the results i stream the replays so i can skip all the in between points stuff using the 10 second jump with the right arrow key. wd: no desire to watch. ws: an seyoung can't overpower or out run a fully motivated yamaguchi yet. until she can she'll always have a hard time against her. i love seeing yamaguchi win. the ultimate inspiration to us short people. md: hoki/kobayashi don't have a dominating style but they have better all around games than astrup/rasmus. the outcome was predictable. an entertaining match, but nowhere near awe-inspiring. xd: higashino/watanabe are clearly the 3rd best xd pair. win or lose they are having fun. i never tire of watching watanabe: incredible skill set, awareness, intelligence, accuracy, speed. his very slight increase in power is catching his opponents off guard. ms: great match. momota's road to recovery during this tournament was encouraging. axelsen proved he is still improving. upcoming world championships in spain for mens singles is going to be very exciting.
Misjudgment is not "part of anyone's game".. of course. It is part of the game. The misjudgments by KM in this game were most likely a result of him being tired as it typically is when players make this kind of misjudgment. VA did it many times in the past. When KM regains his stamina from two years ago, he won't make those errors. But you also got to give it to VA that it is his game that is able to tire (this version of) KM. VA's game is a running game at a high pace; much different than two years ago. Lower the pace a little and KM can run forever.
The Indonesians performances were hampered by a tiring two weeks prior to DO. Despite my earlier reservations Kevin - Gideon pair is still a very good high quality men double. Other pairs may have caught on to their style. Kevin may have been less creative lately, but that is to be expected in any player whose style was refreshing but as he grow older and played more matches the feel for the game would no longer be the same . Good top players would evolve so Kevin may not be the Kevin yall know earlier anymore but would still be a force to be reckon with whoever he partners. There maybe new Indonesian MDs coming up. The MS department is little bare. JC and AG has been around for at least 5 years now and are dependable single players. But I doubt they would evolve into a Hendrawan much less a Taufik.
Tired he was, and he certainly does not have the stamina or injection of pace that he had in 2019. Nevertheless, Momota himself explains his loss as follows (Source: Badminton Spirit): In the second game, although I felt that there was somewhat of a sideways drift, the shuttles didn't fly as far as expected. I believe that the misjudgements made here were the cause of my defeat.
Read my post 1056 fully and grasp whatever I am saying fully before you make this comment. Also watch all of his matches first then you comment. Momota is making these misjudgements even when is not tired and fully relaxed. @kurako So he is attributing it to the drift. Then maybe it is more an adjustment of what kind of risk he wants to take. In my opinion he is taking too much risk when it comes to judgement since he came back.
Yeah I think Axelsen need to fix 3 things. He needs to be WR1 (has he before?) and need it to be long well say 1 year+, H2H maybe he cant chage much and basically he needs to win more titles, if only he didnt lose his 1st 6-7 SS Finals. (He is favourite for WC)
No need to be arrogant with the "fully grasp" as if I am some kind of imbecile. I fully read the post I quoted. I agreed with most of it (and left it out of the quote). And I watched pretty much all of Thomas cup and all of Denmark open because I was home sick, including all of KM's matches. The only reason I entered the discussion about the misjudgments was because you in post #1021 made it sound like it was the only thing that decided the outcome of the match.. like the good old "did KM lose the match or did VA win it" kind of discussion.
Yeah JC and AG is no Taufik but differently, Taufik is never 1st liner in TC and by the time he leads the nations, INA cant win TC anymore (from 2004 onwards) - even though that Denmark win in year 2000, he played a part.
Three tournaments in and there have been too much talk on whether the KM of the old would have done this or that. This to me is pointless because: - Only in time can we tell if he can go back to his previous best, judging by whether he can consistently beat everyone out there - If he couldn't, how could we tell that it is not because the other players have caught up or found him out? Are we just gonna keep saying he is a shadow of himself? On to the match yesterday, I had KM to win it in straight sets but it was rather shocking that VA had more stamina playing til the end with the attacking style that he is playing, given that both had COVID. Can't wait to see them play each other again in the upcoming French Open.
But I also said if VA attacked non stop from the start he would have won in 2 straight games. However, in the situation it was yesterday, Momota was in a position to finish the match in game 2 if he didn't misjudge these shuttles as he has been doing consistently since he came back whether he was tired or not, pressured or not! So you cannot ignore these parts and comment on only 1 part of what I said distorting everything. Btw - if you read my post on Momota's thread you will see that I already said Momota was not on a level to beat Axelsen. So I am not taking anything from Axelsen's win. I am only commenting on what could have made Momota win.
Well that's the fun of having a forum to talk about these things. Whatever we say here won't matter on the actual performance of the players but it matter to us. We have had a long period of no badminton at all. Now we are having some badminton so it is all fun
That is one way to see things. May be you could reflect on how the content of the forum can impact badminton at large and in your case, how it reflects on KM's reputation. That is only my opinion, as another fan of KM, but sometimes i wish KM never come across some of the content posted on here, especially in his thread(s) where some users often sound like they are entitled to talk for him only because they claim to be their biggest fan. I am not sure it serves him right or match his actual reputation/state of mind/how he wants to project himself out there/what he actually says in his post matchs interviews. (I hope I fully grasped what you said before commenting)
I commented on what I disagreed with. The rest I left out. That is not distorting. True true. He was indeed in that position. That I agree with. But being in that position was a result of so many things, that's all I am saying. However, I am not sure VA would have won in 2 straight games by attacking all out. KM is exceptional at reading VA's smashes and VA couldn't really get through until late game 2. Technically, that is actually exactly what that is.. taking something from VA's win . But it is fair enough though; I don't think anyone disagrees with it.
VA usually smashed crosscourt from his forehand side and 95% of the time, KM guessed it right until towards the end of the match where VA managed to penetrate a few times. Perhaps KM was already beginning to tire. From the left side, he smashed straight down to right side of KM and he also guessed it right. In these instances, KM's forehand side was left wide open, why didn't VA smash crosscourt? I don't know.
Read my relevant posts in the SYQ thread. Don't assumed you understand where I stand. Please take the trouble to read with an open mind (quite a bit of reading to do) before you shoot as most have done here, attacking a straw man as I never once excused SYQ's action (esp that inane remark). Anyway, there's no need to flog a dead horse.
