Saina does not have as many shots in her repertoire. Makes it difficult to change the game around.I know. But she needs to develop the mentality of Marin. Marin fights till the end. Even the Danish commentator said that Saina's movement was gone because of psychological damage, not because of tiredness.
But to be fair Saina deals with a lot of pressure of expectations that Marin does not.
Saina does not have as many shots in her repertoire. Makes it difficult to change the game around.
It would be interesting to see Saina's win loss ratio in matches going to three sets.
"No matter the loss..saina nehwal achieved a great feat..tremendous performance by an Indian..all credits to her ", Jwala Gutta tweeted.
I must say she should have capitalize the opportunity in the second game lead during mid game interval but she lost it... She is really mentally down and making lots of unforced errors. And the game 3 was completely given away ..
Nevertheless, she played an excellent tournament here . Being 3rd seed, she already exceeded expectations to reach the finals of prestigious ALL ENGLAND tournament. She has defeated her long time rival Yihan on the way convincingly in 2 straight games. Hope she learns from her mistakes soon and come back to India open with a full bang.
Jwala tweeted that? That's so nice of Jwala. She doesn't normally say pro-Saina words.
Saina said about her loss ..
"I just lost focus and began hurrying, which was not right,"
"Playing against top players anything can happen at any stage, and you can always get nervous at some point in time. That's what happened here,"
“I didn’t fight that well and I just made lots of small mistakes. The game went away from my hand, and Carolina was playing very well.”
You know - it was 8-10 points before the second game interval. Marin was behind and looking nervous and her coach said something from the chair followed by "vamos vamos". That gave Marin the confidence to fight. I thought it was important that Marin lost the next 2 points. But she was lucky and won them instead. Her facial expression changed after that.Marin said
"This is quite amazing for me. I lost to her every time before, so to beat her like this, and in this tournament, is very special indeed,"
“The second set, when I was down 11-9 I heard my coach and then tried to focus on sticking to my game plan. I tried to keep the shuttle on court and make long rallies. I wanted to put pressure on her, to make it faster, more speed.”
Agree.We have to give credit to carolina. She used Saina's nervousness clearly and capitalised the situation. Though Saina played multiple finals, this final is big in her lifetime. That may be the reason she became nervous. I understand that. Hope she overcomes that.
Really disappointed with her loss. She deserves to win a 'major' after all these years, especially after all her contributions to badminton. I believe that she has played a major role in promoting and developing India into a badminton superpower.
Sadly though, I agree with some of the people here that she needs to change something eg. better tactical strategies / new skill sets / stronger big match temperament etc. Contrary to what some may believe, she's not young anymore. In fact I cannot see anyone else in the top 50 who have been around longer than her or have more playing years than her (not even wang yihan, who's two years older). The younger generation (tai / Marin / ratchanok) has started to win majors and her same junior batch (Li XR / Wang SX) are way ahead in terms of majors and achievements. Additionally, an even younger generation (Sindhu / akane / nozomi etc) is already breaking records and will not make it easy.
Hope that she can continue on this vein of form and capitalize on the poor form of the Chinese to win the WC this year.
LXR: 84,244 -9,350 +4,320 = 79,214
SN: 71,081 -6,050 +9,350 = 74,381 if losing
71,081 -6,050 +11,000 - 76,031 if winning
LXR will hold her #1 spot. But since LXR is not playing IO, she will drop to 71,414 after IO. If SN scores any points at all at IO, she will be #1.
.........
Actually, SN will be #1 regardless, since she has points to spare even if she gets no points from IO. Congrats!
good question and I don't have an answer yet. That's the difference between an amateur observer and an internationally experienced coach. Coaches pick up things real quick.Cheung, What do you think is Marin's weakness? Because the way I see it- Marin's style is very different from from rest of the female players. She plays almost like a man. What kind of strategy should one try against Marin?
Good point about 3-setters. I think Wang Yihan is the best 3 set player in WS. She very rarely loses 3-setters.
I have to admit that I did not account for CM's victory at AE. SN's #1 is no longer automatic.....
But Now that she has lost, I wonder if Carolina can catch up. Perhaps Saina needs to reach the finals to reach the #1 rank.
Saina Nehwal with the runner up medal
View attachment 167012View attachment 167013
Source - https://instagram.com/nehwalsaina/
Yep . She might have said that because she changed her coach now. This is my personal opinion. May be she changed her character and started to becoming friendly to saina.
Saina had recently developed this deceptive shot where where she pretends to smash but it actually drops near the net. I didn't see a single one of them in AE finals, but she used them quite successfully in the Syed Modi India Open GPG. In that match, Saina actually came from behind to win despite the fact that Marin was playing really well. This shows that Saina wasn't thinking clearly in the AE finals....
I feel it is crucial not to let Marin get her rhythm in from the start to the end. You see in this match, Marin's shot making improved. Saina went for full power shots a bit early and made mistakes. This is where Marin came in and forced herself psychologically on the game. I am not sure at present but it looks like Carolina is the big match player. If the competition/match is slightly less exciting, she doesn't play as well. When the pressure is on for the big tournaments, her coach knows how to motivate her. This makes her very difficult as you don't know what to expect as an opponent in the big matches.
I feel that Saina's smash lacks some variation. She hits hard, and then hard again. The angle of the smash doesn't seem to change much - she can't clip the shuttle down, she cannot do the quick light hops around the court. So Marin knows this and can adjust accordingly.
Ya, this IOSS will be interesting.I have to admit that I did not account for CM's victory at AE. SN's #1 is no longer automatic.
The situation is now this (don't hold me to it. I will check my math after they release the ranking next week):
CM can't catch SN, unless CM advances all the way into the final of IO.
If CM reaches the final and lost, SN needs to reach just SF to become #1.
If CM wins the IO, SN needs to go all the way to the final (win or lose).
Only fellow Indian players are on the way for SN to reach QF. But if CM reaches the final, only SN can prevent her from winning.
This should make a rather interesting IO, especially for Indian fans.