Fair enough - perhaps she'll mature in that respect as she gets older though. At 17 she hasn't yet had much time to gain experience in winning matches like this.
I think it's due to Malaysia Open/Singapore Open, then 1 week for rest, then Asia Championship and move to NZ right after that. Many tournaments and long journey make Akane tired. But Li Xuerui also played well, when I saw her on court, I think she was full recovery. Li Xuerui that Akane had to face yesterday was Li Xuerui of Olympic 2016 ^-^, but not "injured Li Xuerui".
Just watched the mens doubles semi finals. And I have to say: Did Setiawan fall into a fountain of youth? He is the Badminton GOAT as much as Federer is the Tennis GOAT. Not the strongest athlete, but I have never seen a more talented player with better racket skills. That`s just insane, what he is doing this year. Definitely slowed down, but so creative and such good understanding of the game. Too bad, the Olympics are more than a year away. This year I`d give them a good shot for Gold. But I don`t know how long they can keep it up.
How did she celebrate? I don’t remember seeing anything out of the ordinary. I also used to dislike some players after an interview, a gesture or whatever but I think sometime with the pressure, the adrenaline etc it gets out of control and not much of us on here know how it feels to win a professional match anyway so I try not to judge players based on their off court behaviour/reactions anymore now.
Haha, I see. Putting "!" at the end of sentence is pretty much a strong statement. Anyway, both Endo/Wata and TakaMatsu will face tough opponents. If they don't win, it is quite alarming for JPN team.
Well a lot of things can happen in a year. No one said the same thing about Ahsan/Hendra before they won AE.
Yeah, I know. I should have just inserted one of the "smilies". That apart, like you, I am really concerned about Team JPN's performance as a whole. I mean, with the exception of Momota and Okuhara, the entire A team participated in the NZ Open, ... and this is the result. There is no problem with MS or MD, but alarm bells are ringing as pertains to the women's game. A short-post match interview of Fukuhiro was aired on mainstream television yesterday; they were both obviously shaken, with Hirota in tears. Looking on the bright side, at least the wake-up call is happening fairly early on in the race.
Add XD to MS and MD. As long as the club system exists, Japan's XD will never flourish.The only noteworthy XD pairing is Arisa/Yuta, both of them members of Unisys. The other pairs are scratch pairings at best.
