Skip to main content

January 2015

First of all, Happy New Year! (I know it’s a little bit late saying that)

Since it is a new year, let’s look ahead to what’s interesting ahead on the sports calendar. To be honest, 2015 isn’t the year that where many major sporting events will be held. You will still have your UEFA Champions League Final, World Championships, Grand Slams, Super Bowl, NBA Finals, and also a World Series that involves only two countries. Here are five things I’m looking forward for this year in sports:

1. Can McIlroy complete a “Rory Slam”?
All eyes will be on Rory McIlroy come this April when the Masters begin. Guess who was the last man to hold all four slams at once? It’s none other than Tiger Woods. Tiger was the last man to hold all four slams at once which was way back in 2001. With the Masters being the only major missing from Rory’s trophy cabinet, a win at Augusta will make him a step closer to complete a “Rory Slam”.

2. The End of the “Big Four”?
Honestly, is it a “Big Four” or a “Big Three”? Based on the accomplishments, it’s definitely still a “Big Three” of Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic. Will this be the year where the dominance of these guys is officially done? Last year, the world witnessed two new grand slams winner: Wawrinka in the Australian Open and Cilic in the US Open. Who will be stepping up to threaten these guys? Raonic? Dimitrov? Nishikori?

3. Defending the UEFA Champions League Title
There’s always this curse in champions league football that no teams has ever successfully defend their title since the title name was introduced in 1992. Defending champion Real Madrid are in good shape to rewrite history by being the first team to successfully defend their title. Champions league football will return on February 17th when the Round of 16 begins.

4. Rugby World Cup
Perhaps the only major competition this year, the Rugby World Cup is all set in England come September. Defending champion New Zealand will hope that they will be able to win their first World Cup outside of home soil. This will be the eighth edition of the Rugby World Cup. New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and England are the only four countries that has ever won the title. France will definitely hope to nail their first title after losing in three finals.

5. Malaysia’s Badminton Future
The future of Malaysia’s badminton seems gloomy and bleakly. With Lee Chong Wei out indefinitely due to failed doping test, there are no players in the rank that are good enough to fill his shoes. All eyes will be on the coaching team changes in March when great Dane Morten Frost takes over as the performance director of the national badminton team. Hopefully the national badminton team will able to gain back those glory days we once had with a new man at the helm.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Djokovic's Title to Lose

Yes, the stage is set for Novak Djokovic to finally nail that elusive French Open to complete the career grand slam. If he manage to win at Roland Garros this year, he will become the 8th person (4th person in the open era) in the history of tennis to win the career grand slam, joining an elusive list which include Fred Perry, Don Budge, Rod Laver, Roy Emerson, Andre Agassi, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. The world no.1 player seems to manage to find his form that he produced in 2011 when he went on to win three grand slam titles in a single calendar year. This year, victories at Melbourne, Indian Wells, Miami, Monte Carlo and Rome make him a clear favorite to win the French. Among those victories, he has won 4 out of 5 ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tournaments and is riding a 22 match unbeaten streak coming into the second major of the year. He is now 35-2 for the season, with the only two lost came in Doha (Lost to Karlovic) and Dubai (Lost to Federer). Djokovic has come clos...
Post a Comment
Read more

Andy Murray, Not There Yet

Murray's victory at Flushing Meadows ended Britain's 76 years wait for a male Grand Slam winner.  First of all, I would like to congratulate Andy Murray for winning the 2012 US Open, his first grand slam title. Surely he is now a big sporting icon back in Great Britain by ending the country’s 76 years wait for a grand slam male winner. The last Brit to win a grand slam was Fred Perry back in 1936, when he won the US Open in New York. He shows the world his great mental strength since that Wimbledon final set-back. He went on to win the Olympic Gold Medal just exactly one month after that set-back and now his first grand slam title on his favorite hard court surface. His maiden grand slam doesn’t come at an easy cost. He finally wins his first grand slam after four failed attempts. Both Federer and Nadal won their first grand slam title at their very first grand slam final. While Djokovic won his first on his second attempt. He is definitely one of the talent guys on the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tokyo 2020

          It was 5.20am (Tokyo time) on a Sunday morning on September 8 when the announcement of the host city for the 2020 Olympic Games was being made. “The International Olympic Committee has the honor of announcing that the games of the 32nd Olympiad are awarded to the city of Tokyo”. The exact words from outgoing IOC President Jacques Rogge as this will be the last time he’s going to be announcing in front of the camera as the president of IOC. Live scenes from a Tokyo stadium shows a break of joy from the Japanese after the announcement was made, celebrating their winning bid. Tokyo will be the fifth city that is going to host the summer games for more than one time after staging the world’s largest games in 1964.           First, let’s don’t talk about the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in this article. Of all three candidates, Tokyo is indeed the safest choice of all the candidate cities. Japan has a more stable economy c...
Post a Comment
Read more