Yonex Canada Open

No karate today, which meant I was able to make plans to attend the 2015 Yonex Canada Open. The badminton tournament, I believe if I did my research correctly, is the grandest tournament (in terms of skilled players) in Canada. Not only that, but this year had Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia.

Out of the five matches today, there were two upsets (in terms of how they were seeded in the tournament). The first match was the women's doubles between a team from the Netherlands and a team from India. It ended up with the lower seeded Indian team winning, though it was a pretty eventful match in my opinion.

The second match was the men's doubles, which hosted two teams from China. Out of the five, I would have to say that this was the dullest match for the day. Rallies were short and I was falling asleep. It was certainly not my cup of tea... It was the only match that went to three games, yet I didn't find any of the three games really exciting.

The third match was the mixed doubles, between Hong Kong and Indonesia. It seemed a little bit lopsided to me with the Hong Kong side having an edge over the Indonesians. There were some really great rallies during the match from both sides though!

The fourth match, and arguably the best match of the day was the women's singles. It featured Canada's own Michelle Li and Japan's Imabeppu Kaori (Last, First). It was quite an exciting match with amazing plays from both sides. Imabeppu's defense was quite stellar in my opinion, with her making some amazing return shots from Li. The second match had to go up to 25!

And finally, the featured title match: Men's singles. I can see why Lee was number 1 for an extremely long time. He played with such an efficiency and look of effortlessness, that it seemed like he was just warming up.

And that was my day at the Canada Open tournament! My first, but most likely not my last tournament!

It's blurry, but Lee Chong Wei is the one in the orange.