WHile their singles players struggle Denmark have a wealth of mens doubles talent at the HK open. All 5 pairs made the second round. Laugenson / Mogenson reached the third round losing to their fellow danes , Mogenson is only I beleive 20 or 21 years old. Lamp/Boe also continue to progress taking a game off Ha/Kim. So Danes have 5 world class pairs right now!
Lee/Choong Beat Kim/Ha !!! CLose Game Powerful pack 3rd Set. They will play Erikson and Hansen in the semis.
wow, that's two tournaments in a row where Kim & Ha are defeated... They seemed unbeatable not so long ago, but finally the olympics MD next year might be much tighter than we could have thought!!...
New upset by Jun Jae Youn : 11-6 8-11 11-7 against Wang Chen !! She will meet Gong Ruina in the semis...
Kim is undoubtedly the best all round doubles player. Ha has had injury problems, should Kim have swapped partners to ensure an olympic title, does his long friendship with Ha mean he would stick with him even if he wasn't fit?
I think Candra Wijaya is also probably one of the very best MD players badminton has known... Maybe a partnership between Kim and Candra would be the "dream team"? (though we will never see such a thing, so it can only be a "dream")
It won’t be an all Asian semi-final. The women single final four are Zhang N, Gong RN, JUN Jae Youn and Mia.
Xia won in 3 sets. Boesen was trashing Xia for 1 and a half sets. Xia slowly got the speed up. 3rd game Boesen got a big lead again, Xia pulled it back. Xia looks tired The Ha/Kim vs Tan/Lee match extremely good. You can see the classic lifting defensively by Lee being punished by the koreans. Runs of points won by M'sians on the 3rd shot. Very tense at the end of 3rd set. Ha got a yellow card for time wasting. Many people in the audience were shouting out because of his delay tactics. They were 13-11 up and then Ha continued messing around. I shouted out 'red card' a couple of times and the ref brandished it out! Now 13-12 to the M'sians. Lee stopped lifting so much pushing the shuttle flat and midcourt. You should have seen Kim change speed - I thoght he was fast before but the change was impressive. But the M'sians were equal to it. Goes to setting and Lee does a backhand cross court trick shot to the rear court of the Koreans winning the match. Kim had a lot of ice on his shoulder afterwards JR/Rikke won their mixed. Rikke's defence was excellent today JR/Lars lost against Lee DS/Yoo YS. Lee DS looks much stronger. Drives by the Koreans particularly strong getting past the Danes to the back court. JR looked a bit jaded. Perhaps becuase he had to play the 1st macth of the day(mxd) and the last match of the day.(MD) Sigit/Trikus vs Fu/Cai...another fantastic match. Very little to choose between the two pairs in the scores all the way through. The match lasts 85mins! 3 sets. Trikus and Sigit could claim to be the Harlem globetrotters of badminton Ina win. Sigit's bandages are all gone. Boonsak beat Lee Hyun Il- Lee not as sharp as his Sudirman cup performance. Bonsak played a controlled game, nice net shots. Seems to have some trouble with his right leg which was heavily strapped. WD no big upsets. I see an English pair putting up a good, but losing fight. There is a girl called Donna(?) Kellogg. Very thin legs and arms. Got a huge shock when I saw her jump smash. Mia beat Zhou Mi! Gong Ruina beat Xie xing fang Zhang Ning beat Pi Hong yan sorry no scores, Raphy probably has them later - I saw him crouched over his laptop. Seems that almost all matches now from q/f are tough ones (even some earlier rounds). Undoubtedly good entertainment. Any of you guys should make an effort to see early rounds in later 4*/5* tournaments. It is worth the money.
