So far this year, WYH only lost to her team mates. (if I am not wrong) She win against other countries players. In WC event, if WYH had to play her teammates , LYB will instruct WYH to win. Except if all the remaining players are from China.
yes, you are correct. Asia Badminton Championship 2009 - XXF bt WYH Singapore Open 2009 - JYJ bt WYH Indonesia Open 2009 - LL bt WYH WYH has good results against non-chinese players especially ZM
No wonder ZM gets only 14 votes against 51 votes for WYH. But ZM has a high chance of winning the WC title exactly because WYH is prone to defeats by her teammates. But you are right, LYB will never forgive ZM, the currently WR1 and die, die must order the other CHN girls to let WYH win as she has beaten ZM before. But the situation is different now and ZM wants to be World Champion to complement her WR1 ranking before she considers retirement!
In the Singapore SS in June, ZM beat WL (22-20, 21-18 in 41min) in SF and XXF (21-19, 18-21, 21-10 in 1hr) in the Final. In QF, WL beat SN and Jiang YJ defeated WYH 21-17, 21-11 in 34min. In the Indonesia SS a week later, in QF, WYH also lost to LL who won 21-10.11-21.22-20 in 51min) I think all of these players did not participated in the Thai GP in July. Judging from the above stats, it woud mean my choice of ZM would be the best bet to win the WC instead of WYH who lost twice in the QF of the above two tournaments and she has secured from BC members the highest vote to win! Yet ZM has very poor votes.
We see the latest of the latest Judging from WYH's attitude and attacking style of play, i reckon The All england champion will be the champion this time.
As already mentioned by suetyan.. this only points to a conclusion that: WYH's losses had been to her fellow compatriots. She has never lost to players who aren't her fellow compatriots. Zhou Mi could win vs. XXF, in the QF, but could she beat WYH should both of them cross path in the Semis?? On that note, should XXF beat ZM, and WYH beat all of her opponents prior to the Semifinals Rd, both of them would play against each other in the Semis. Which of course, will bring up another scenario, which had already been brought up: who would win between the two??..
After ZM's victory in Singapore Open, she fell in Indonesia Open by losing to Sato Sayaka in the first round. Then few weeks later in Philipphines Open, she lost to an unknown chinese player, Wang Xin.
Remember ZM hasn't quite won any notable majors yet therefore the motivation to do so at this WC becomes much more meaningful to her considering that she's due for retirement soon. ZM, though now playing for HKG, has been trained almost all her life under the CHN system and that's why she could beat some of the younger CHN players recently. She can't be considered to be totally alien to WYH's stlye of play as such. Remember too that ZM has also given WYH's coach ZN not an easy time when they met in the past although I believed ZN must have prevailed in most of these encounters. Yes I've noted that as well and I suppose voters take this to be her major weakness, thus she gets relatively very few votes compared to WYH. I could only think she must be quite happy with her SIN SS performance and was not too motivated to give her best after that. Furthermore the subsequent tournaments came too closely together at the expense of her fitness and I guess she wouldn't want to suffer an injury to especially her back so near to the WC. Perhaps being knocked out in the early rounds of the subsequent tournaments was a blessing in disguise for ZM as she is able to take more time to recover and to train. ZM is no longer young and she must capitalize on maintaining all her available resources in good condition to ensure she wins the WC.
Does ZM still have it in her??.. - I don't have the link (in BWF's database) to see what major title(s) Zhou Mi has accomplished. The motivation could be there, but i think it's more to prove that she could upset her ex-teammates and ex-head coach. But it won't be easy as she has also seen how hard it is and if she is going to win a WC title, this yr, she has to go through possibly 3 CHN WS players, starting in the QF. - As for Zhou Mi being "totally alien to WYH's style of play as such", yes she has played her before. Do you remember what the outcome was in each of their meeting? I think her possible matchup vs. XXF could be key. She wins against XXF and she'll probably be facing the young CHN WS batches and who knows what'll happen. Zhou Mi will then have the experience. - Sure ZM has given her ex-teammates as well as her ex-head coach some headaches in the past. However, what are the chances that LYB and the rest of the WS squad won't be prepared to play against her? I'm sure they have as much respect for her as she is probably the biggest achilles heel to CHN's WS squad's quest to keep their WC WS title tradition rolling.
It looks like tine rasmussen holds the advantage more than other players this time. She gets a free ticket and prevail to the round of 16..lucky her
