BWF World Championship Quater Finals

I woke up late this morning as I stayed up watching BWF Badminton World Championship on Astro. Got pretty pumped up watching KKK & Tan Boon Heong against Chinese pair world ranked 14. On paper our Malaysian pair can win the match easily but it was not the case last night. They had to fight hard to win the match. The thing about our world no. 1 pair is - they are very good but sometimes they underestimate / look down on their opponent. Boleh kena heart attack la tengok their match everytime. I just hope they will play a better game for the quarter final match against Jung Jae Sung & Lee Yong Dae, Korean world no. 7.

Jae Sung & Yong Dae is a tricky opponent. Forget about their rank. They used to be world no. 1. They got to no. 7 after they had to pull out from so many tournaments due to injuries. If KKK & Boon Heong are not playing their best badminton against this pair, they can be outplayed easily. 

Another interesting match in the quarter finals is our own Datuk Lee Chong Wei against world no 5, Taufik Hidayat. Although Chong Wei has won all his encounters against Taufik for the last few years, I believe we  should never write off Taufik Hidayat from this tournament. His performance is not consistent but Taufik always delivers on big occasion. He is a former World champion  (2005) and a former Olympics champion (2004) in men's singles. These two titles have been eluding Chong Wei for such a long time. Chong Wei only managed Silver for Olympics, as we all know, he lost easily to Lin Dan in Beijing Olympics 2008 & Chong Wei only managed Bronze for World Championship in Anaheim 2005 where he lost to eventual winner - Taufik Hidayat.

Base on current performance, my money is on Chong Wei but he has to be careful against this tricky opponent. If Chong Wei progresses, he will be meeting either Park Sung Hwan or Lin Dan in the Semis. My prediction is the latter as Lin Dan has won 3 consecutive World Championship since 2006 - 2009. Lin Dan will be kicking himself if he is not progressing to the finals this year.