The luck of the draw and the unexpected withdrawal of LCW favour Momota substantially. KM is expected to sail into the final and grab the crown, don't think anyone can stop him, it's his to lose.
According to this news article : https://www.thestar.com.my/sport/ba...-to-lower-targets-for-world-cships-and-asiad/ Brice Leverdez will get bye and through automatically to second round.
Anybody know what happened to the Korea team? I've not seen the top seed Korea mix and wd pairs in the 2 recent opens. Where did seo sung jae, chae yoo jung, and Chang ye na go? I couldn't find any news on the sudden disappearance of these players, hope someone from the Asia side could share some news here.
Yup, another top-ranked MS withdrew on 25th July, so two-seeded players will miss Nanjing WC, leaving Momota & Srikanth are the big gun in bottom half of-draw. Source : http://sports.sina.com.cn/others/badmin/2018-07-26/doc-ihfvkitw7550225.shtml
I think LCW or SonWanho for that matter knows that if they play hard, they will somehow gets injured , but they still rather choose Malaysia/Indonesia Open. Lee could have opted out of IO. Son issues has been ongoing due to defensive play like ChenLong. CL did the right thing for himself, by being knocked out in both R1. Just matter of choices, yeah.
There have been a lot of withdrawals due to injuries or illness in non World Tour tournaments. And that's because some players will get fined for skipping the Super 750 and Super 1000 so by doing so they barely had the time to take a well timed rest or treatment for their injuries or well being. What did BWF expect when they made the schedule for this year.
Yeah Sad, for few hundreds bucks player cant skip (at least they fight for money) and now they have to skip WC, which doesnt give bucks anyway. Ironic.
So, you are publishing articles. Good work for a freelance journalist. Sent from my SM-G600FY using Tapatalk
SWH too? The bottom half won't be as fun OTOH, SWH's off colour, kinda indicated it already. I wish he skipped INA and Mal, he adds so much diversity to the game.
I see, the reason given being "In the reserves list, Thailand’s Kantaphon Wangcharoen was supposed to be promoted to the 64-player main draw but according to BWF World Championships rules, there will be no further changes made once the draw was released." Too bad for Kantaphon who is capable of upsetting some of the fancied players.
Son Wan Ho too ? If only he had withdrawn before the draw was conducted, then a replacement for him would take place. Now the MS looks skewed in favour of those in the lower half, one top contender and another quite solid player gone. Too late for BWF to do anything about it, no substitutes, no redraw.
Nah, I don't you can fault him for trying to get fit. He called it quits against Momota after the first game in Malaysia but apparently thought he was fit enough to play in Indonesia. Turns out he wasn't, but it is apparently not an injury so severe that he knew beforehand that he wasn't going to make it.