An Se Young is like Arya Stark of GOT. She's scalping and cutting the big names off her list. TTY done, PVS done, SN done, AY done. Against CM, she nearly did it. Great win from her even after trailing in the later part of second game against Akane. Tomorrow she'll face either Carolina or TTY. Up from here ASY, keep doing well.
Barring unforeseen circumstances, An Se Young is destined for greatness. I venture to say she will be a serious contender for Tokyo Olympic gold, KOR's brightest prospect, if not, she is likely to get at least one world title either in 2021 or 2022. Reminds me of another child prodigy who captured the world championship at age 18, Intanon Ratchanok.
She plays a very fun game. Lots of dives, defenses. Very stable. Has a fun around the head-shot and doesn't seem to be doing a lot of mistakes. She can improve the way she goes back for some punch-clears, but that's perhaps it. Wonder how good she can be in two years. Also insanely good lifts, even if Carolina were doing a mostly good job of limiting her to play those, with her own very good netplay. As for the edit, someone should stop her from playing in Macau as well, even at 17 she could certainly use some rest by now.
The edit? I would be very surprised if she were to play the Macau Open. I think most players skipped that because they want the week before Fuzhou to get over jet-lag or other fatigue. In An's case, the entry deadline for Macau was when they already knew she would be playing Sung in the first round in Korea and Sindhu in the second in Denmark. They might not have expected she'd be busy anywhere near this late in the week in Paris. On the other hand, she is now so close to qualifying for Guangzhou that it might make sense to just sleep off jetlag in a hotel in Macau and show up on court to pick up 1670 points that might help her qualify. Playing a whole week in Macau might not be the best decision, though.
if it weren't an og qualifying period i'd agree. however, she is korea's chance of getting 2 ws into the mix. get as many points as possible as soon as possible to get her in, then rest up and tune up during the 90 days before the games start. if i was running kba wtf wouldn't be my priority for her. in a non-olympic qualifying year i'd be resting her.
I'm not sure how much one would need to reach the top 16 but I'm guessing the almost 57,000 points she has now will be enough. She could quit playing now and qualify, I figure. If she even walks on court at the Asian Women's Team Championships in February, she will earn 2,000 points more. There has never been an early May when the #16 player had more than 50,000 points, so it would appear that her Olympic qualification is secure. And if it isn't, Super 300s aren't that big a help. If she plays the WTF, she can get 4800 points just by showing up on court three times and she'll have the opportunity to win many more, plus the experience of being in a bigger tournament with more (money, at least) at stake. She has only played that one Super 1000 and only the All England and Indonesia remain before Tokyo.
I edited my first post, and decided to write that I did in the somewhat confusing way that I did. Gill and Morten talked about that she would play in Macau, and last time I checked, yesterday, she was still entered. But perhaps she will give a walkover or something along those lines, yes. At least I kinda hope she will, it's a bit too soon to play there as well.
It's funny how she can beat all these top 10 players like TTY, akane, marin, sindhu, saina yet keep losing to SJH.
With the exception of Marin, the others all lost their first time against her. When Sung first beat her last year in Gwangju, it was obviously not the first time. Kim Ga Eun and Sim Yu Jin have also beaten her, I believe. Same reason? Chen Yufei really has An's number so far. She was the first top player to face her, last year at the Asian Games.
She was entered but she has now withdrawn. Presumably that was announced at the team managers' meeting.
Ah, good good. Hopefully she will be fully rested to play as well as she can for her next tournament then.
Yes, that's good, it's better for her to start the Fuzhou China Open after a week's rest. For all we know, she might well make waves there (in a positive sense) a second time after the French Open sensational outing.
As long as she doesn't jump at Viktor Axelsen and pokes him in the belly with a dagger, it's all good. That round the head cross court drop shot (clip smash?) is one of a kind and a serious weapon though. I feel like we will see a lot more from her in the upcoming years. The talent is there - and lots of it!
She has two key weaknesses imo: Vunarable in the deep cornerns, in particular to punch clears, likely because she's so young and not as physically strong as opponents. The lack of power in her smashed, same thing applies here. Though she makes Up for it with wonderful disguised clips, they would be even more effective if there was a bigger threath of the power smash and opponents would have to move a bit deeper into court to cover it.
She has two key weaknesses imo: Vunarable in the deep cornerns, in particular to punch clears, likely because she's so young and not as physically strong as opponents. The lack of power in her smashes, same thing applies here. Though she makes Up for it with wonderful disguised clips, they would be even more effective if there was a bigger threath of the power smash and opponents would have to move a bit deeper into court to cover it.
I don't think that is her weakness. Imoh. She reacted excellently well in those situations against Marin who is extremely good in pushing the shuttles to deep corners which did not hurt An Se Young at all, which was well spotted by Morten Frost who said in his commentary that Marin should avoid doing that and start to do more net play to get initiatives. But Marin could not do that . I felt her weakness is to drop shots , deceptive cross court drops and so on. Saina won many points using that strategy , for that An se Young could not even react to some of the shots.