Being attacked in the media by Lee Chong Wei (LCW) and Taufik Hidayat (TH) regarding his suspicious walkover in the Malaysian Open SS, Lin Dan (LD) proved once again that he is still the best in the world of badminton by winning the Korean Open SS 2011. The Olympic Champion made his way to the final comfortably by crushing TH & Simon Santoso in the semifinal to meet his big rival, LCW.
The final match was as intense as it could ever be. The two traded fast & deadly smashes, nasty drop shots, a centimeter precision of net play, while pounced the shuttle whenever it flew above the net tape. In the beginning of the match, it was LD who took control of the game. It's interesting to see that he can collect points after points without need to pull the trigger too often. Different with his usual style of play which is very explosive & aggressive it seems that he changed a bit, we can see that he's more relaxed and patient to wait for LCW's mistake. LCW, the current world number one, showed that he's the only player who can earn respect from LD. Although he lost in the first set, he succeeded to force a rubber set match. The third set was quite tight, however, LD is LD, a type of a player who can dictate the game play whatever he wants and whenever he suddenly increases his speed, no one can match him. In addition to that, some of LCW's unforced errors really made LD to close down the score deficit. Advice to LCW: never give free donation points, especially if you play against LD!
Looking back from the past 5 years until now, the men singles has been boring as the gap between LD&LCW and the rest of the world is quite significant, especially when TH already out from his hey days. I think we need some more brilliant players to ignite the fire of the competition, we need a wonder kid we saw in TH 11 years ago, we need European players who are on par with Chinese players, we need more talented Indonesian players to bring back the badminton domination to our country. Nevertheless, I must admit, Lin Dan is the king right now, and if he can keep his performance until next year, a back to back Olympic champion is not a dream. Super Dan.
Looking back from the past 5 years until now, the men singles has been boring as the gap between LD&LCW and the rest of the world is quite significant, especially when TH already out from his hey days. I think we need some more brilliant players to ignite the fire of the competition, we need a wonder kid we saw in TH 11 years ago, we need European players who are on par with Chinese players, we need more talented Indonesian players to bring back the badminton domination to our country. Nevertheless, I must admit, Lin Dan is the king right now, and if he can keep his performance until next year, a back to back Olympic champion is not a dream. Super Dan.
