It's good to see she's still in court! I thought she was gone for good when she announced her intention to go into media
..she must be *really out of shape*...i mean she lost in straight sets, in the first round to say the least, esp. with her talent & experience level, at least she could've forced a rubber set...
but you know Mia, she is hardly ever in shape when compared to the Chinese. no offense, but she normally last only 1 1/2 sets and then then she is a spent force. her form drastically improved before and during the Olympics but still was unable to catch up with her final opponent, Zhang Ning, in the Olympics. i can imagine taking a few months break will take a while to recover. we are all guessing though, this is only the most logical explanation. it would be nice to hear from someone who have actually seen the match.
..(phew)another close match for Tony G. and Howard B, they barely won in 3 sets..And I believe their opponent(from Taiwan), they've faced them before here last year in the U.S. Open...Either they're still jetlagged or other players are catching up to them... I believe all but 1 WD and the MD from Indonesia are out??..
In your first competitive match after out for a long period, the last player you would want to meet is somebody who will run for every shuttle with a never-say-die attitude. Koari Mori, when I last saw her, was exactly that kind of player.
I saw her some weeks ago in the Swedish International, which she won. I only saw one match (the semi) and there she played quite a fast and attacking game. Great potential. She's quite small and fast compared to Tine Rasmussen, perhaps she simply managed to make her run.
Vladislav Druzchenko and Elena Nozdran are clearly not "unknown", they have been on the circuit for many years and are very good players (Elena used to be in the top 20 in WS before being pregnant and same for Vladislav who already reached the final of the German Open in MS a few years ago). Still we could expect the Malaysians to win, but they probably lacked experience compared to the Ukrainians...
my first big tournament - watching... Hi! I´ve been there yesterday (Tuesday). I would like to tell you my impressions. Before i´ve only visited the german masters a few years ago. We arrived and the first person i saw aws lin dan who was on the tribune warming up. Wow he`s really! impressive. I thought he would perhaps look small in reality, but he`s very tall and looks super-fit. By the way, i know why badminton is so upopular in germany now...There were almost no hints to the tournament, we were looking for the hall for quite some time. As there are so many stars i think it should be promoted much better. There weren`t many spectators either... Back to the topic: The first game we saw was LinDan versus some unknown player. LinDan played very well. My neighbour said to me: "Look the footworkk of this (unknown) guy is brilliant, The chinese - He moves too fast to see his movements...". My two friends were most impressed by the match of bach_gunnawan vs 2 singapore players. And yes this was a great match although i think we were the only 3 people who watched this ;( . Bach had super big legs and always jumpsmashed. Tony always talked to him and leat the whole game. I gave a tape of the AE final match Tony_Halim vs. Sigit_Candra to one of my friend before and told him during the tournament that gunnawan is one of the guys of the tape. The third person who didn`t watch the tape thought we talked about Bach, because he was so impressed about his jumpsmashes . About Mia: I only watched her warming up. Wow she was doing exercises for 30 minutes, a lot of stuff for the back, i think it`s important for her flexible back . I watched the first 5 points of the game. She was 0-3 back because of three errors of her. I thought the match wouldn`t get interesting, because i thought mia would win easily. Beside her gong ruina was playing. The japanese lady played very well against her and screamed very loud when she won. Very interesting was the match of chenHong vs. Marc Zwiebler (the new german champion, he won against joppien). Zwiebler got 13 points in the first set, but man - Everytime Hong could lift himself up in the air you knew what would happen, while Zwieblers smashes were not so well placed. ChenHong always hit the lines, one time he backhand-smashed at Zwiebler and he couldn`t handle it. So it was really a different world... Very interesting game between Bao and Persson. Bao lost the first set against Persson who played very aggresively. Then the chinese coach came over and talked a lot to bao... I was so disappointed i couldn`t see XiaXuanze. He did his warm-up and walked to the court until the game was cancelled (The tournament speaker had already advertised the world champion... Eriksen/Lundgard were very impressive, too. My friend was allowed to touch the freshly stringed racket (36 lbs ). It´s a pitty i cannot visit the tournament again this week.... I forgot to mention the funniest thing: We watched many korean double pairs playing and they shouted at each other ("Ho") before each rally, even before the first serve was played. One pair complained to the judge after the first rally ... The pair shouting most lost against eriksen/lundgard i think... And i saw our local stringer at the tournament - Now i know he`s good.
No problem! Anyway they are certainly not a "young and upcoming" Ukrainian pair, their best results are probably far behind them now...
lol...i knew someone would point this out maybe there is hope in chen hong and xia converting to XD players
If memory serves me right this is the same Valdislav who beat Ong Ewe Hock at the world championships some years back... boy wonder how old he is by now.
http://www.worldbadminton.net/Porta...0&firstrec=0&recno=7&recs=49&searchnation=UKR He was born in 1973.
OK! Same for Vladislav meant he was also in the top 20, not that he was pregnant. I realize my sentence wasn't very clear!
