This year's BWF Finals will be held in Indonesia in the first week of December. However, the Chinese team was absent, and Dai Ziying, Ma Lin, Caihua Hirota, Mayu Matsumoto/Nagahara and Kona were absent from the tour due to various reasons such as injury and illness, resulting in the failure to qualify.
Why is it that the competition, which should be a year-end feast, has been so exciting that it is not so popular with the players? In fact, it is not just because of the epidemic this year, the controversial topic of the BWF Finals has a long history.
First, the competition is dense, and the stars can't eat
The BWF began hosting the Super Finals in 2008, and it has been 13 years since then, but it is often criticized by many media as "chicken rib competitions".
This is especially true in the Olympic year, such as the 2012 Guangzhou Finals, which were held after the London Olympics, and Wang Yihan, Li Zongwei, Cai Yun/Fu Haifeng, and several Korean doubles pairs all chose to withdraw from the competition. For example, in the 2016 finals, Boby, Nasir, Indanong, Chen Long, Zhang Nan/Fu Haifeng, Polly/Mahswari and other famous players also chose to withdraw from the competition.
In addition, the BWF's events themselves are very intensive, so many well-known players in the Olympics, World Championships, Tangyou Cup and other competitions after a busy year, the state is the end of the crossbow, physical and mental fatigue has also accumulated to the peak, will give up the qualification for the finals, but some young players who have not qualified for the Olympic Games or the World Championships are more likely to strive for good results.
Second, the format is not perfect
Before 2017, the BWF stipulated that the points of the year-end finals should be the sum of the points of the 12 super tournaments, which means that the points of the 12 races are directly added, and whoever scores the top eight points will participate in the finals.
After the BWF adopted a new format in 2018, the year-end finals points became the sum of all super100 and above levels. You know, the BWF Tour only has 12 stops and the players can't all participate, and after the tour has expanded to nearly 40 stops, it is even more impossible for the players to participate in all of them. Therefore, "brushing points" has become an important way to qualify for the finals, which reduces the gold content of the finals seats to a certain extent and weakens the fierce competition.
For example, Lin Dan, Li Zongwei, Chen Long and Acealon all missed the 2018 finals, but Indonesian veteran Sugiato qualified for the finals that year as the third place in the finals, because he participated in 17 races during the points race, but he could only reach the second and third rounds in many competitions. Compared to Momota Kendou, who was no. 2 in points at the time, he played only 10 races.
For example, in the 2019 finals, the Chinese Taipei combination Lu Jingyao / Yang Bohan participated in 31 races, although it did not get a championship in the whole year, but relying on crazy brushing points, it won the qualification for the last year-end finals of the year.
Moreover, as a commercial competition, the BWF year-end finals limit the number of participants (only a maximum of two places in each individual country/region), resulting in some of the top players not qualifying. In the group stage system, once the players have won two consecutive games in the group stage to qualify, the last group stage is also prone to strategic abandonment.
In the past two years, some fans have suggested that the BWF revise the format, "suggesting that the points of the World Tour Finals should be changed to the same calculation method as the world rankings, taking the points of the 10 best performing world tour matches in the year, rather than directly accumulating, otherwise the finals will become the top eight with the most competitions, rather than the top eight performers on the World Tour." If the points are the same, the number of participants in the event determines eligibility. ”
Personally, I think this suggestion is good, but in this way, the players can choose to participate, can not be affected by the rain and dew of the world's various tour events, the rights and interests of major sponsors are bound to be affected.
What do you think about that?
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