Yesterday, our first match was scheduled at 12.45 hrs. During the manager meeting it became clear that some couples had withdrawn from the main tournament, because of which others moved directly into the main tournament without playing the qualification. Lotte and I still had to play the qualification tournament. At first we were scheduled to play against a Japanese couple, but when I double checked later that evening, I found out that we had to play against a Korean couple instead.
12.45 hrs isn’t the best time as it’s lunch time and therefore it’s hard to know when to eat what. I decided to have a late and extensive breakfast. Upon arrival I have been watching a couple of men’s singles after which I started my warming up at 12.00 hrs. Once I was completely prepared for the matches we heard that another match was scheduled on our court (court 2) before ours. This match did not appear in the schedule because of a mistake the organisation had made. This meant that we had to wait, which was quite annoying. I was prepared to play my match, I was fully focussed and then I heard that I had to get back to my seat and wait. I had something small to eat while waiting, making sure I would not be hungry during the match. At 13.30 hrs, we could finally start our match.
During the first game we constantly were a couple of points behind, but at the end of the game we managed to get ahead of our opponents by one point. Lotte and I were the first to get a gamepoint, but we did not manage to win the rally. The next two points were also made by the Koreans, so we lost the first game. During the second game we started playing better. We won this game quite easily with 21-14. At the beginning of the third game, we were 3 points behind, but fortunately, we managed to correct this and during the break the score was 11-10. We managed to win the third game with 21-18. It was so cool to win this exciting game against a Korean couple. Especially, since it was only our fifth match together.
The next evening we played against a German couple: Fuchs and Overzier. Unfortunately, our coach, Mr Kim, could not be present due to private reasons. It turned out to be a very exciting match, which we ultimately lost in three games. Really unfortunate. During the first game we played pretty well.  We managed to win the first game with 21-17. The second game started off well, we were ahead of our opponents with 7-2. But then we started loosing rally’s fast. The Germans got ahead of us with 11-10. During the second part we got too far behind to win the game, we lost 18-21. During the third game we were not manage to keep up with the Germans, who played a great match. We lost the third game with 14-21 which meant that we also lost the match. Really unfortunate, as I think we did have our chances to win the match.
Eventhough we lost the match, I have a very positive feeling about this trip to Korea. Last week, I trained with the best badminton players in the world and I could experience the way they train. Lotte and I played a great match against our Korean opponents and I learned a lot from the match against the Germans.
Tomorrow, I will try to get a flight back to the Netherlands, using an open ticket with Air France. I will have to fly from Seoul to Paris and then take a KLM plane from Paris to Amsterdam. The flights seem to be fully booked, but I hope to have one more seat available for me, so I can be back in the Netherlands in time for the competition match against Velo, the current number one in Dutch badminton competition.