Saina Nehwal wins Djarum Indoesian Open 2010

Update - June 27, 2010:

Saina Nehwal of India wins the Djarum Indonesian open 2010 badminton tournament. She beat Sayaka Sato of Japan in a 3-game thriller 21-19 13-21 21-11.

With this victory, Saina completes an incredible hat trick of titles in the last 3 weeks. She started with winning the Indian Open Grandprix, followed it up with winning LiNing Singapore Open and now wins the Indonesian Open Super Series. Bring on the Chinese, Saina is waiting…

Saina holds the flag at the presentation ceremony -

Saina with Indian flag after winning Indoesia Open 2010 super series

Saina took an early lead in the first game but Sayaka came back sharply to level at 17 each. But Sayaka made some unforced errors and Saina took the first game. In the second game, Sayaka demonstrated why she was a force to reckon with by pulling off some powerful smashes to take the second game. In the third game, Saina again took an early lead and kept playing a combination of rallies and smart net game and with some unforced errors from Sayaka; it was a well deserved victory for Saina Nehwal - her 3rd back to back title in the last 3 weeks. Following is the statistics about the game from tournamentsoftware.com -

Match Statistics Indonesia Open Super Series Womens Final

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Top seed Saina Nehwal of India has reached the finals of Djarum Indoesian Open 2010. She beat 4th seed Eriko HIROSE from Japan 21-9 21-10 in just 27 minutes.

She will be meeting Sayaka Sato in the finals tomorrow. If Saina wins the final, this will be her 3rd back to back tournament wins.

Indian Open Grand Prix tournament June 2010, Chennai

Results of the Indian Grand Prix tournament that happened b/w June 8th to June13th at Chennai.

Womens Singles

Saina Nehwal overcame an initial setback of losing the first game to comfortably win the next 2 games against Malaysia’s Mew Choo Wong to win the Womens singles title. The scores - 20-22, 21-14, 21-12.

Saina admitted that she was nervous during the first game. But she changed strategy to play an attacking game (her natural game) in the next two games against Mew, whose energy levels was dipping starting from the 2nd game. Saina’s stamina and the attacking game made all the difference.

Mens Singles

Yunus Alamsyah lifted the men’s title by defeating Guru Sai Dutt, who was playing his first international finals. The scores - 21-13, 21-18.

Yunus was the discovery of this tournament. He doesnt have an attacking game; but is very good at playing the defensive game and has opponents making mistakes. The best thing about Alamsyah is his creativity at the net, and his wristy dribbles send the opponents in the wrong direction. The effectiveness of his game is evident from the fact that he defeated top seeded Chetan Anand, Arvind Bhat other than Guru Sai Dutt.

Men’s doubles

Rupesh Kumar and Sonave Thomas lost to the Malaysian pair of Mohd Fairuzizuan and Mohd Zarki. The malaysian pair was far superior to the indian pair. The indian pair played a lovely 2nd game which was close but the malaysian pair kept their nerves to win it. The scores - 21-12, 22-20.

Mixed doubles

The top seeded pair of Diju Valiyanti/Jwala Gutta won the mixed doubles title defeating Chayut Triachart/Lei Yao of Singapore. The scores - 23-21, 20-22, 21-7.

Women’s doubles:

The Indian pair of Ashwini Ponnappa/Jwala Gutta lost to singapore pair of Lei Yao/Shinta Mulia Sari. The scores 21-11, 19-21, 21-15.

Sunfeast Marathon 1OK Bangalore 2010

It was a lovely morning on 23rd May 2010, the day of the Sunfeast Marathon 2010. There was furious activity around the stadium right from 6am in the morning. The races were scheduled to start from 06:30am in the morning.

All kinds of people participated in the races - Professional runners, people with disabilities, corporates, representatives from various NGOs, general public participating in the 10K and the Majja Run(5.7Km). In the Majja Run, there was also a competition for best dressed runners. A lot of people turned up in interesting costumes, most of them with a message. Messages included support for Cancer, Alzheimer type of diseases to other initiatives like ‘Go Green’ and give way to ambulance etc. Finally it was Enable India, an NGO for enabling people with disabilities, that walked away with the top honors for best costume/theme.

Did you know -
Sunfeast World 10K Bangalore is an IAAF Gold Label Road Race event. It is one of only three 10K races in the world which have been give the Gold Label status by IAAF.

A few interesting moments captured shown below -

Practice run for Professional runners

marathon2010 practice run for professional runners

10K Race kick-off for general public

marathon2010 general public 10K race kick off

Interesting costumes by different participants

marathon2010 interesting costumes

marathon2010 interesting costumes 2

NGO Enable India team

The team won the best costume award at the races.

marathon2010 Enable India full team celebrating

And the winners are -

10K (Men)

1. Titus Mbieshei (Kenya) 27:54
2. Moses Kipsiro (Uganda) 28:08
3. Feyisa Lelisa (Kenya) 28:23
4. Deriba Merga (Ethiopia) 28:32
5. Edwin Kipkorir (Kenya) 28:35

10K (Women)
1. Yimer Wude of Ethiopia 31:58
2. Aselefech Mergia of Ethiopia 32:00
3. Grace Momanyi (Kenya) 32:05
4. Koren Yal (Ethiopia) 32:17
5. Aberu Kebede (Ethiopia) 32:21

Sunil Kumar and Preethi Rao won the top honors for men & womens category for India.

Tennis elbow and badminton racket selection

Tennis elbow - ouch. The pain is not so much physical, but more psychological. The pain is in not being able to play the way you want to play and how much you want to play. It forces you to be away from your favorite game and thats the worst part.

In this article, I will not talk about the medical aspects of the tennis elbow issue. There are several articles on the web that have a lot of details about the cure etc. I want to talk about my experience of buying a badminton racket that provided me great relief from Tennis elbow problem and had several other benefits. Read on….

The question is - what kind of badminton racket should someone choose who has the Tennis elbow problem? I read another article on the web that explained the science behind using a light racket Vs a heavier one and its impact on injuries. It compared the racket to a sledge hammer. If you swing the hammer with its head on top, there is going to be a lot of power or impact but will affect your arm & shoulder. Reverse it; in the sense hold the head of the hammer and swing the handle and the feeling is different.

The same analogy is used for the rackets being heavy on the head Vs the handle. Companies like Yonex, HEAD, Wilson, Ashaway have head-lite racket series. These rackets are light on the head and slightly heavier on the handle. Such rackets are ideal for people with shoulder injuries or Tennis elbow.

I did a lot of research and finally bought Yonex Nanoseries 4500 for myself. Nanoseries is the head lite series of Yonex. Had carbonex 7000DF before this. WHAT A RELIEF after I played my first few games with this new racket. The stress on the elbow has reduced to a great extent. Given the racket is overall light (80g only), the speed of swinging has increased and hence I am able to react faster to picking up shots or hitting back clears. Smashes are quite good because of speed of swing. The best part is that it has improved my backhand shots which typically is a weak point for many players.

Wow. what a racket. Thoroughly satisfied with it. The specs for the racket is given below -

Flexibility Medium
Composition (Frame) Graphite
Composition (Shaft) H.M. Graphite, FULLERENE
Weight / Grip Size 3U (85.0-89.9 g) / G3, 4, 5
Color Blue

References / Other interesting articles related to this blog -

About Tennis elbow/injuries
http://golumolu.in/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=9

http://badminton-racket.blogspot.com/2008/07/badminton-rackets-and-injuries.html

Match Schedule - Yonex Sunrise BWF World Badminton Championships 2009

For the list of matches (match list) in the World Badminton championship 2009 being held at Hyderabad, click on this link. Click on the date icons on top to get the list of the matches for the particular day.

I could not find this list on any other website. I am trying to get some videos for the matches as well.