[transcript]
Hey guys, welcome to Get Good At Badminton. Today we will be going over one of the best matches played in 2018 between Anthony Sinisuka Ginting and Kento Momota.
Ginting played brilliantly throughout this whole tournament, taking out names like Lin Dan in the first round, the first seed, Viktor Axelsen in the second round, Chen Long in the quarterfinals, and Chou Tien Chen in the semifinals, and eventually meeting Momota in the finals.
This game against Momota featured furious flat exchanges, and displayed intense fast-paced rallies from both players.
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Ginting’s strategy going into this game was to play faster and flatter rallies.
Look how Ginting opts to play flatter shots in the backcourt and frontcourt, never really pushing or clearing high.
However, just playing flat with prime Momota will not win you the game. It is simply not enough.
First, you need to anticipate what your opponent is going to do. In this game, Ginting played very smart. He knew that Momota will play mostly straight and down on his around the head side so he would wait there in anticipation and quickly change direction and pace.
This is mainly how Ginting would break Kento’s attacking rhythm. If Ginting was given the opportunity, he would also attack the net early with drives and spin nets to set himself up for an better opportunity to end the rally.
Now what makes Ginting particularly deadly is his ability to change the pace of the game from fast to slow using deceptions. When you play against someone like Momota, you need to force them out of position to create good attacking opportunities.
Like in these clips, Ginting would change the pace by holding first and then dropping his racket face to play a tighter block.
This caught Momota many times.
The reason these deceptions were so effective, is because it was not the shot that Momota was expecting. You can see that Momota is ready for Ginting’s cross court push and anticipating his around the head.
Momota is anticipating the cross push because Ginting has played a cross push without pausing multiple times and the shots are always very fast. Thus, in anticipation of this shot, Momota speeds up his rhythm and gets caught by the unexpected slow shot.
It’s also good to mention that Ginting’s deceptions were also frequently direction changes as well.
This makes your opponent not only mistime their split step but also forces them to turn their body. Very difficult to change direction if you’re stuck to the ground.
Another important thing to mention that played a significant factor to Ginting’s victory is his consistency. Ginting would rarely make mistakes in this game, and did not hit out the side very much. This is contradictory to what we see in his game now, as we see many mistakes from Ginting.
Next, we want to go over what Kento should’ve done. In China Open, the conditions were a little driftier which affected the two players’ playstyles. However, the best way to deal with an extremely fast player is to not let them use their speed.
To do this, Kento should’ve played higher lifts and more of a four corner style. A box style is what will allow Ginting to use his deceptions most effectively because he excels at changing pace from fast to slow.
However, if Kento plays a four corner style, it becomes increasingly harder for Ginting to change the pace from fast to slow. Instead, he is more or less forced to rally back, or try to change the pace from slow to fast.
This is because a four corner style brings the shuttle more towards the four corners as the name suggests. For a shorter player like Ginting, it is tiring for him to run from corner to corner.
And even if Ginting gets to the shuttle early, his ability to go from slow to fast just isn’t as powerful.
The only caveat about playing a four corner style is that you have to make sure your shot quality is good. For someone like Momota, however, that shouldn’t be a problem. Let’s look at how this adjustment helped Momota beat Ginting in the 2019 HSBC World Tour Finals.
We can see that Momota loses the first game because he is playing a faster style.
Let’s focus on Momota’s around the head corner. In the first game, he often half smashes downwards with a lot of speed and power. This plays into Ginting’s strengths which is why Momota loses the first game.
In the second and third game, however, Momota plays more drops, slices, and clears on his around the head side. This slows down the game and prevents a fast player like Ginting from using his speed. Momota’s adjustment here is what ultimately allows him to beat Ginting in the 2019 World Tour Finals.
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It is super unfortunate that the pandemic and Momota’s accident happened when it happened. Momota and Ginting could have became the new Lin Dan Lee Chong Wei rivalry.
In the 2018 China Open, Ginting showed a phenomenal display of how to use deceptions and pace changes to break your opponent’s rhythm to set up opportunities. He was definitely one of the toughest opponents Momota had to deal with.
If Ginting played like this in the 2024 Paris Olympics, how far would he have gotten? Let us know in the comments.
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