What Can be Expected At the Korean Open

[event]

Well, the BAM website notes that the 2005 WC points will come off before this year's WC's seedings are done. Add to that, the loss of the 2005 HK Open points and the ranking points would be as follows for any top men's singles players who enter neither the Korea nor Hong Kong Open this year:

Lee Chong Wei - 35073.02
Chen Jin - 32329.32
Peter Gade - 30829.17
Lin Dan - 30403.13
Hafiz - 27333.91
Lee Hyun-il - 27148.8
Chen Hong - 26880
Jonassen - 24948.18
Bao Chunlai - 22745.36
Boonsak Ponsana - 21620.05

5400 points should be up for grabs for the winner of each tournament. If seedings mean anything for these guys, they have to play both tournaments. On the other hand, since it looks so unlikely that Lin Dan will end up in the top 2, if he's the guy they all want to avoid, then being in the top 2 will not necessarily prevent a match with him prior to the finals. There are so many permutations. The other thing is that because the IBF only counts the top 10 events in the last year, winning the Korea Open will mean, for most of them, adding 5400 points but then removing their 10th best result from the last 12 months. For most of them, that means around 2000 points.

 

[event]

Men's singles and doubles draws

Well, not too many particulars but the Badminton Times magazine claims that 9 of the top 10 men's doubles pairs will compete in Korea and that 7 of the top 10 in each of the other categories will compete.

In doubles, they claim that Lee/Choong will be here as well as Chan/Koo but that contradicts what has been posted elsewhere.

They also say that LCW and Taufik and Peter Gade will be here but they don't mention Lin Dan.

 

[Han]

Just pick up

I don't think China will send the same players to both the Korea and Hong Kong Opens, too close to WC to stretch to the limit for the players. The same can be said about players for other nations who are in contention for the titles. If Lin Dan skip Korea then he will be in Hong Kong Open. Injury is what need to be avoided for those top guns, not raking points at this stage ...