seens Xia is in very good form dispite an awful last year. Good for him and good for badminton as Xia is one of the old guys and plays a more tricky and crowd friendly game than players like Lin Dan, Chen Jin, LCW etc. I doubt WCH can defeat LCW since LCW seems fitter than Wong. Wong has lost a little speed the last 2 years and are also less powerful than before. In contrast Gade has been very fit since Malaysia Open and has almost played up to his "old" standard even if he has passed 29. Lets hope this is Xia tournament, but I think he will have a hard time against gade if Gade makes it through.
hmm - xia vs gade is a bit of a classic too.. to of the older generation (well - compared with the like of LCW and Chen Jin and the likes..) WCH vs LCW is sorta like when i sawy Yap Kim Hock vs WCH - but now WCH is the elder.. and i imagine the result might go the same way, with the apprenctice usurping the master... some good semi finals to come Coops
Amazing! WCH and XXZ!!!! Two of my favorite players all time! I thought for sure Xia was done after his performance the year before. If he regains form China has Chen Jin, Chen Hong, Lin Dan, Bao Chunali, Xia Xuanze.... talk about dominance. Only Taufik, LCW and Gade could stand up to them... maybe
wow - close mixed game - 1 game all between Lee/Lee and Clark/Kellog.. english pair took the 2nd game 17-16 after losing the first 15-10.. decider should start soon... the all english quarter should start soon too.. Coops
soooooo close... english went 7-2 up, only for lee/lee to come back to 8-8, 12-12 now tho... anybody's game... come on england!! make it 3 out of four pairs in the semi.. the all english semi is weird.. 15:0 to blair/munt in the first game.. but 11:4 to roebuck/wallwork in the second at the mo.
clark/kellog go 12-14 behind, but go 16-14 up when they get the serve back, but give the serve back to the koreans.... aaaaaargh!!! sooo close!!! Coops
the koreans get a point back on their serve , but give the serve back to clark/kellog who take the match at the second asking.. what a horribly close match... would love to get the vid.. 3 english pairs in the semis with Bo/TingTing holding the fort for the rest of the world in the other mixed game blair/munt have come back from 4-11 down to 14-11 up... quite an impressive comeback - but not really since they won the first game 15-0 and should be capable of cutting out the mistakes... Coops
then wch vs xzx match (i forgot which year) is a must watch. It was brutal. Btw, xzx had beaten taufik in 1999 or 2000 all england.
Xia VS Gade This will be a great game, hopefully, with Xia seems to be back on the top form. I Watched serveral Gade's games at 05 Copenhegen's Masters which was just 2 weeks ago. Gade is definitly on the top form. Very, very sharp at net, powful smashes. Will be very hard to beat. I am really kind of concerned for Xia. Even if Xia is really back on top form, he still not be able to beat today's Gade. But still, Xia is already very impressive in this tournament considering his performace in last couple of years. I just hope that he can keep his form for longer time so that he can show us some more wonderful games!
sorry for the hideously formatted post - had to take the swissopen results page and butcher it.. hence the hideous results.. hope this is enough Coops
KBH got around 6 and 4. KBH is a good player but I think his world ranking is a little overrated, the same with Kaldau
Agree with you. IBF must change the scoring system. Usually if a player consistently reach QF of lots of tournaments, he/she will make it to top 10. Lets see some example: a 5 star tournament: If you win you got 4800 point. If you make it to QF you got 2640 point. or 52,8 % from champion point. It mean that being 2 QF in 5 star tournament the scoring is better than being a 5 star champion. But lets see tennis scoring. A Wimbledon champion will get 200 point. A QF in Wimbledon will get only 50 point. Or 25 % from the champion point. Another example: A 5 star badminton champion get 4800 point. A 2 star badmintonchampion get 3000 point. Or 62,5 % from 5 star champ. At tennis, Wimbledon got 200 point. And 2 or 3 star tournament champion only got 50 point. Or only 25% of Grandslam champion. So usually no wonder in badminton, a mediocre player can get into Top 20 or even top 10 if he/she enter 10 or more event in a year. And skillful player like Taufik not even in Top 10 cause although his result not bad in every event he enter but he only enter 6-8 event a year. Or Yang Wei/Zhang Jie Wen only rank 3 in the world cause they only enter 9 event last year. Although they won most of this events or at least runner up. The Koreans girls rank 2 just because they enter 10 event last year although they mostly only each SF.
The way I see IBF is doing stuff is that, they try to make every player play more tournament in order to be world no.1
Sorry, here I go again defending the IBF ranking system. If you are consistently in the top 8 in lots of tournaments, shouldn't that make you a top 8 (or at least top 10) player in the world? This is subjective, isn't it? Another person could also argue that tennis gives too much credit to the winner in comparison to the quarterfinalists. As for me, I think that a quarterfinalist deserves something more significant than 25% of the winner. A quarterfinalist could be a winner given different circumstances, even in Wimbledon. I agree somewhat with this point. (However, how can you co-relate Wimbledon with a 5-star event? You should compare with a 7-star event.) I think the ranking points should be widened a bit more, but again this is subjective, and I can easily live with the current distribution. Is it too much to enter 10 tournaments a year? If there is no penalty for taking part in a minimum amount of tournaments, will the fans be happy? Here we are lamenting that this player and that player are not in the tournament, and that this tournament is skipped by the Chinese and Indonesians, and yet we complain about a ranking rule which encourage players to enter more than 9 tournaments a year. No doubt Taufik is skillful, and if there is a ranking based on skill, he will comfortably sit near the top, if not the top. But this is a ranking about results, and if you play in only 6 tournaments (inconsistently if I may add) a year, then you have not shown enough results and should be penalised. If your exam consists of 10 papers and you only turn up for 6, you get 0 for the other 4. Almost everyone considers Taufik as a great player, and in every tournament he enters, he is considered one of the strong favourites, but in terms of ranking, I have to agree with the IBF ranking system. For Yang/Zhang's case, it turns out that their competition is stiff. So, even getting penalised for just 1 event, they lost out to Gao/Huang and Lee/Lee. It's a akin to missing one paper in the exam. Even a genius would lose out overall for missing that one paper if there are other almost-geniuses around. Oh, and while we are comparing it to tennis, the ATP also penalises players for not taking part in enough tournaments (all 4 Grand Slams, all 9 Masters events, 1 Masters Cup and 5 other tournaments). And in WTA, the tournaments that count to ranking is capped to 17 (and all Grand Slam events are mandatory). It seems 10 events (as in badminton) is nothing. We also see "mediocre" players in the top 20 in many sports, not just badminton.
I agree with you on the points distribution part. However I don't think the 10 minimum events is exagerated. Any player can enter 10 events in the year. If you compare with tennis, tennis players spend the whole year playing tournaments. They easily enter at least 20 or 30 tournaments a year. (OK this is because they get a lot of money for each ) You should think of one thing : what is IBF's best way of promoting the game? Champions staying home all year and only entering a few tournaments? Or champions entering many tournaments taking place in many different countries? This explains why the ranking system is this way, as regards the minimum of 10 tournaments.