Czech Open 2019 (World Tour)

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Tomorrow's SF match between Hirano and Ishikawa will have huge Olympic implications. They are only separated by 5 points in the World Rankings Points for January 2020 right now. (Hirano has 9590 points while Ishikawa has 9585). The winner will obviously gain the lead in the race for one of those 2 singles spots, but the benefit of winning the match has huge rest-of-the-year benefits.

For Ishikawa, a win allows her to overtake Hirano for the 2nd Olympic singles spot and allows her to maintain her current status as Japanese No. 1 based on WR.

For Hirano, a win not only gives her more breathing room with regard to her lead over Ishikawa, but also sets her up for a Top 4 seeding in the World Cup. This would effectively negate Ishikawa's advantage of meeting a Chinese opponent one round later than Hirano had Hirano still been seeded 5th. Furthermore, if Hirano can win the whole tournament, she will break into the top 8 in current WR while Ishikawa drops to 9th. This would mean that for the Swedish and German Opens, Hirano won't meet a top Chinese player till the QF, while Ishikawa will likely meet one in the R16. Hirano's seeding as compared to Ito's and Ishikawa's seedings has been one of her biggest obstacles in her race towards an Olympic Singles spot, but this one win would remedy that problem for the rest of the year.

I commend both players for stepping up when the situation called for it: Ishikawa for getting her revenge on He Zhuojia and Hirano for coming back from down 0-3 to save her Olympic hopes. I hope to see the same or an even greater fighting spirit from both players tomorrow.


Miu Hirano will have a noticeable deduction when calculating the rating for September .....
(-1260x2=-2520)...
The reserve so far is 1170 + 1170 = + 2340 ...
If Hirano wins this tournament:
(-2520+1170+1800)=+450
12050+450=12500
Ito already has 12,620 in the September ranking..
(C.I.C. - 12125)
If Ishikawa reaches the final and scores at least 1440 points, she will be higher than Ito in the September ranking .....
If Ishikawa loses Hirano tomorrow, then Ito will be higher in the ranking .....
 
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Many told me when I was there, that Shiba is a great player, but with NOTHING in his head.. sad..

Watching Franziska playing Ovtcharov, one thing I just cant get .. understand .. why the hell he played majority of shots into Dima´s backhand? Me being Franziska, I would go through the FH side, there I feel Franziska is stronger. Yet he kept it in the backhand side.. why?
Tomorrow very interresting match Boll vs Lin .. I cant guess the winner .. but that can be great match!
Also Dima vs. Calderano, well, great matches comming up!
 
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Many told me when I was there, that Shiba is a great player, but with NOTHING in his head.. sad..

Watching Franziska playing Ovtcharov, one thing I just cant get .. understand .. why the hell he played majority of shots into Dima´s backhand? Me being Franziska, I would go through the FH side, there I feel Franziska is stronger. Yet he kept it in the backhand side.. why?
Tomorrow very interresting match Boll vs Lin .. I cant guess the winner .. but that can be great match!
Also Dima vs. Calderano, well, great matches comming up!

I would be surprised if Boll beats LYJ. Boll usually dominates lefties, but LYJ has a good practice partner who is a lefty.

Obviously, I Want Calderano to beat Dima, but it isn't clear or easy.
 
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Thank you for your videos in general! It's happened more than once that I found some upset from an obscure player who I then looked up, and you were the only one with solid uploads for them. Good camera angles, too. Keep them coming if you can, I can't be the only one who has been silently (I don't interact on YouTube) grateful .
Thank you, its good to read words like that.
I only wish I had more resources ;)
 
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says Shoo...nothing to see here. - zeio
says Shoo...nothing to see here. - zeio
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Many told me when I was there, that Shiba is a great player, but with NOTHING in his head.. sad..

Watching Franziska playing Ovtcharov, one thing I just cant get .. understand .. why the hell he played majority of shots into Dima´s backhand? Me being Franziska, I would go through the FH side, there I feel Franziska is stronger. Yet he kept it in the backhand side.. why?
Tomorrow very interresting match Boll vs Lin .. I cant guess the winner .. but that can be great match!
Also Dima vs. Calderano, well, great matches comming up!

Perhaps Franziska intended to push Ovtcharov up the ranking, for the 2nd seed over Japan at the upcoming Team World Cup.
 
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says Shoo...nothing to see here. - zeio
says Shoo...nothing to see here. - zeio
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This. That is why most people who use pips have to step back to chop and why close to the table players want frictionless pips. The strategy is always to make the ball slip.off the pips. For someone like He, it gets worse because doe doesn't really add spin, she mostly tries to kill it. The thing is that with Chinese rubber, adding spin and looping harder tend to be similar things. With European rubber, not always. That is why the advice was key on the backhand.

Exactly. In a previous interview, HZJ says her BH has more or less reached the end of development and that she wants to work on her FH instead. So the game plan Qiu came up for Ishikawa is specifically playing into the weakness of pips.

 
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I actually thought he was complaining about the Butterfly rubber but it was halting English so what do I know...

Just rewatched on ITTV, he may have been complaining about the Butterfly one. His phrasing leaves a lot to be desired there...
 
says Shoo...nothing to see here. - zeio
says Shoo...nothing to see here. - zeio
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Not sure this is true for sp, although far be it from me to question zeio. It seems that if you can't handle a given spin level with short pips, you have zero chance if handling it with tenergy.

Listen to what Li Xiaoxia has to say.

 
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Not sure this is true for sp, although far be it from me to question zeio. It seems that if you can't handle a given spin level with short pips, you have zero chance if handling it with tenergy.

It is true for all pips, it is a matter of degree. The biggest benefit of inverted is that you can always produce good spin while taking the ball later so you also have more options when you let the spin wear off.
 
says Shoo...nothing to see here. - zeio
says Shoo...nothing to see here. - zeio
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It is true for all pips, it is a matter of degree. The biggest benefit of inverted is that you can always produce good spin while taking the ball later so you also have more options when you let the spin wear off.

This. That's why double inverted is said to have the highest ceiling. Pips have a tighter tolerance level because of timing, which in turn lowers the threshold of your effective range - the distance you could play from the table.
 
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Why obviously? Not a fan of Dima? (I also want Calderano to win btw, i'm just curious)

You are right, it isn't obvious. I really wanted Franziska to win, Dima can make someone depressed with his attitude which is worse than Harimoto's both when Dima wins and when he loses.
 
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