Seeded number one in the $125,000 Air-India Open badminton championships at the Indira Gandhi indoor stadium, Delhi, he ran into a rejuvenated Heryanto Arbi and made his exit.
The 31-year-old Danish world no 3 came to Delhi after a series of consistent performances. His only upset was in the Japan Open in January this year.
His nemesis World badminton champion Arbi, 25, was on a comeback trail. He had suffered a calf injury in his right leg after the Atlanta Olympics last year and was not expected to give the Dane a big fight.
This was not the only surprise of the first Indian Open tournament. The mens' singles draw had only three recognisable faces. Apart from Hoyer and Arbie there was Ardy Wiranata, former world number 1. The Chinese, busy trying to solve internal wranglings among their players, failed to turn up. Malaysia, Korea, England and Indonesia sent either juniors or rank newcomers for this four-star tournament which fell way below the expectations of the badminton fans.
There were only 20 entries in the mens' singles six
of them Indians and only 14 entries in the ladies' singles out of
which four were Indians. One cannot remember when a tournament of
this calibre had no Qualifying draw and not one single morning
session to speak of.There was some criticism about how Larsen could have run into Ardy in the very first match.
The points system of rating the players was okay but organisers could have applied some logic. Ardy had only recently reached the semifinals of the Japan Open. "True, he has not played a lot and that probably reflects in the world rankings, but the fact that he had done well in Japan should have reflected in the Delhi tournament." said a BAI official. "Yet he was not seeded."
Another problem was the speed of the shuttles. Apparently, there was only one speed available, and the shuttlers had to resort to breaking the feathers to slow it down. This was deplorable as it held up matches.
1f the International Badminton Federation (IBF) has to popularise the game this is not the way to go about it. Why not penalise countries and associations who deliberately send weak entries. If the English association could be put in the dock for sending a weak entry at the Thomas / Uber Cup finals why not the others who left the sponsors at the Indian Open twiddling their thumbs.
No matter what the failings were, it cannot be
denied that it was a golden opportunity for the Indians to score
against foreigners. But no one barring Andhra Pradesh's P. Gopi
Chand actually made use of it. "This is what is so good
about Gopi," said Prakash Padukone in whose Bangalore-based
academy the national champ trains. "He is intelligent enough
to realise that and capitalise on it."Gopi disposed off fourth-seeded Indonesian Dwi Aryanto in three games 10-15, 15-13, 15-7. The newly crowned national champion gained in confidence with every passing match. He later stormed into the semi finals after giving a tremendous display of attacking game beating Korean Jang Chen Woong 8-15, 15-3, 1 54. And even though he was annihilated by the world champion in the finals, Gopi did give a few glimpses of his supple wristy play so favoured by the Indians.
He had Arbie caught on the wrong foot many a time, only to let him off as he did not know how to finish the point. "He has done extremely well and should gain lots of confidence after this.The main thing now is to try and beat some of the top ranked players so that his ranking goes up," said Padukone.
The many Indians-Dipankar Bhattacharjee, Rajeev Bagga, Siddhartha Jain and Vikrant Patwardhan in the mens' singles-were up against an opposition which at best was way below average in terms of international badminton.
Lack of exposure was certainly not the reason why all the Indians fell by the wayside. Most of them have played tons of international badminton and have immense experience in tournaments of this magnitude. Same was the case with the mens' doubles pairs.
In the womens' section a lot was naturally expected of World Junior No 2 Aparna Popat who started off in fine form demolishing Korea's Park So Yan 11-6, 11-6 in just 15 minutes. The 19-year-old from Karnataka was in superb form in the domestic circuit recently. She helped Karnataka claim the Chadda Cup at Pune for the first time but in Delhi it was a luckless tournament. The only consolation for her was that she lost to top seed Cindano Hartono 3-11, 7-11 by a smaller margin this time. In their last encounter Cindano had overcome Popat 11-1, 11-0 in Malaysia.
Munjusha Kanwar, reigning national champion, beat
Malaysia's Lee Winnic 11-3, 12-11 but could not get past Korean
Choi Maree.For all its faults, the revelation of the Indian Open was the form of Arbi. The tournament truly belonged to Arbi. He seems to have fully recovered from his back and calf problems.
He was not only moving with absolute ease but delivering lightening smashes after leaping high in the air. He had Larsen on the run, winning the first game 15-5 in just eight minutes.
The smashes on either flanks, had so much speed and zip that larsen was truly floored. The Dane however had started reading Arbi's strategy of displacing him from the base with chopped forehand crosscourt sliced drops.
In the second game he managed to stave off defeat and took the game 15-12. But in the third Arbie was back on top aided by the fast shuttles. Larsen simply had no answers to the smash down the line or the sliced forehand crosscourt.
Yet the acrobatic Indonesian was not happy. "I do not think that 1 am fully fit," he said. "I need a couple of more weeks to train. I feel that during the All England 1 will be in peak form."
In the end it were these few flashes of brilliance that saved the day for the, eager fans.