...they were all wearing white t-shirts so they went very see-through!

Posted 14:10 21 January 2007 in Super Series 2006

I wasn’t due to play till 6pm so it was one of those days of hanging around.

When in doubt of what to do, there is always sleep!  I didn’t get out of bed till 1pm!  Nathan and I had to play Rob and Jenny in the 2nd round.  It is so hard playing someone from your own country as they are your friends and training colleagues.  It was a good game though, bit scrappy in places from both pairs, but we got the edge in the end 21-13, 16-21, 21-13.  Nathan and I did the job and so through to the quarter-finals.

Anthony and Donna lost though – big shock, but Clarky managed to get through in the doubles with Rob.  So only 2 pairs left in the tournament.  It was a bad day for China – Lin Dan lost to a Korean guy and Cai and Fu lost to a Malaysian doubles pair.  Awesome atmosphere in the hall!  The Malaysian crowds are the best!  10,000 people in the stadium were making so much noise and it is so much fun playing in that environment!

Friday 19th January

Quarter-finals day of the Super Series.  To be honest, it feels exactly the same as the previous tournaments so I don’t feel any different at all!  Had a little wonder around to get out of the hotel room and went for some sushi with Nathan and George (physio).  I am really into sushi at the moment.  I think it is my new favourite food.  I don’t eat loads of it, as it fills me up easily, but it’s very good for you so that always helps! 

The best one is definitely the raw tuna but the place we went to didn’t do that so had lots of salmon instead.  If someone had told me a few years ago that I would like going to eat raw fish in restaurants, I would have told them they are crazy!

Donna knocked on the door in the afternoon and I opened it to find her, Natalie and Jo, absolutely soaked to the skin!  They looked like someone had just chucked them into the swimming pool!  They had been caught in one of the many thunderstorms out here!  I have never seen so much rain come down in an hour as I have done here.  And there is always a storm in the afternoon going on till the evening.  The roads turn in to rivers for a few hours.  The girls had been caught while they were about 200 metres from the hotel and in that short distance, every bit of their clothing was soaked. 

Worse still was that they were all wearing white t-shirts so they went very see-through!  Bet they had a few looks!!

Had to play Flandy and Vita in the quarter-finals.  We beat them in the Copenhagen Masters in December, but we had to play amazing to beat them. 

Flandy is one of those players that you never know what you are going to get – he can be very lazy and seems to give up sometimes.  Then when you think you are in with a chance, he will come out and hit it so hard that it just depresses you!  It was a really good match – I was enjoying every second of it! 

The pace was really quick and the quality was high.  We lost the 1st game 21-16, but we were doing everything right so I knew that we could get back into it.  Our second 2 sets were brilliant.  I was even standing on the service line to get Flandy’s smash back – that was how confident I was feeling!!  Maybe slightly crazy too…!  We won the next games 21-10, 21-13. 

Yippee!  Through to the semis!