Portuguese Men and Women of War |
| The rise in popularity of badminton is countries which were previously not renowned for being massive badminton countries is indicative of the growing demand for the sport and the Portuguese International event is the latest to showcase a surge in local talent. |
The main hope in the Mens tournament will lie on the shoulders of Marco Vasconcelo who goes into the tournament ranked as the second seed but with a home crowd behind him there will be a lot of hope and expectations that he will be able to triumph. The Portuguese hopes in the Female Singles events being shared around three different players with Telm Santos, Ana Moura and Filipa Lamy having serious ambitions of becoming the top Portuguese female and a victory on home soil would be enough to clinch this title.
Vascocelos nearly came a cropper in his opening round match against Rodrigo Pacheco from Peru after he lost his opening game but eventually triumphed and is set to come up against Rune Massing from Holland in his next match. Another European player who had a confident building win in his opening match was Belgiums Yuhan Tan who defeated Hans-Kristian Vittinghus from Denmark but now faces the situation of competing against his training partner Kevin Cordon.
Due to the nature of badminton and the way that players are not bound by international boundaries in their training regimes means that these match-ups occur regularly but the intrigue never lets up behind these match-ups.
The battle between the three Portuguese female players saw all of them ease through their first round of matches and there is the possibility that Lamy and Moura will meet up if they can get past their second round opponents. Given that there is only three places in the world rankings between the players, it's going to be virtually impossible to predict who will be the top player from the three of them but the unpredictability is sure to give an extra layer of excitement and tension for the watching fans at the Portuguese International event.
There was no great host nation hope in the Doubles events but there was certainly a lot of hopes for the Netherlands as they had major players in the Men's, Singles and Mixed Doubles with Ruud Bosch and Koen Ridder carrying the flag in the Mens Doubles event with Rachel Van Cutsen and Paulien Van Dooremalen providing the van driving force in the Ladies Doubles event.
With so many intriguing battles and games to come in the Portuguese International, there is sure to be a lot more twists and turns to come and with three female Portuguese stars all vying for top billing, ticket holders are sure to be in for a treat as the tournament progresses.
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