AY seems to be struggling physically. GJW's seemingly casual and fluid play seems to make things worse for her
Clearly, Akane's huge drawback make her losing this match. For a top player, she does not have backhand at all. Strange.
Yep. She makes more unforced errors than TTY, but without even remotely the same level of attacking quality. The first deserved ranking drop has already taken place, if she doesn't change something and quickly, this will be hard year for her.
Maybe she doesn't want to go though, just sign to fulfill tournaments because of BWF's law. ^-^ I will not surprise if Yamaguchi sudden plays better in Indonesia Open As the draw shown, who wins this match will meet HBJ in third round and Tai Tzu Ying in semi-final and a strong player in final. It's quite hard and it will be better for her to save energy for Indonesia Open
Biggest upset for today. GJW beats AY. Well done by GJW. JPN WS only has NO and AO in the R2, which they will fight each other tomorrow.
I'm late to this but wow even as an Indonesian I get a bit annoyed by how unorganised the Indonesian cheers in this tournament are...
Nah, this would be very much unlike her, would not do GJW justice and would ignore the fact that this has been coming for a while. Her performances have been uninspired (as you said, you sometimes don't even know what she's doing, like there's no point to her rallies) and incredibly error-prone for a year now. Overall she is a weaker player than in 2017. The worrying part is that, despite being so young, she hasn't improved anything. Fitness (weight) hasn't gotten better, backhand is still weak for a top player, netplay is still good, but not improved, errors have gotten more, winners have gotten less. Really don't know what they are telling her in training, but it's not working. This is her first first round loss since Malaysia '16 by the way, nearly three years.
Judging from the stream, it looks like he never intended to play this match at all. 4 half-hearted points in and he asked to retire. Even if it was an injury, it wasn't acquired during the match.