Honey lures bees!
The first season of the newly introduced BWF World Tour is coming to an end with the $1.5 million finale at Guangzhou. Given the compulsions imposed on the players on playing a stipulated number of events during the year, this year’s select eightplayer invitational field, in each of the five sections of the HSBC BWF World Tour Finals, could well be the most tired lot seen in the yearending event.
As though the rigours of the travelling, playing, recovering, dealing with injuries, etc., was not tough enough, the Premier Badminton League is round the corner. One can well imagine the physical and mental state of some of the players coming from Guangzhou for the richest league in the sport.
Before going deeper into the PBL and its relevance in the packed international schedule, let’s look at the rules that compelled the top players to play more this year — for more prize money and ranking points.
This year, the newly christened World Tour events replaced the Superseries tournaments. The number of events went up and so did the prizemoney on offer. Further, the players faced the risk of being penalised if they did not turn up for a minimum number of tournaments.
For instance, the BWF raised the season’s prize money from $9.72 million in 31 tournaments, across Grand Prix up to the Superseries Finals in 2017, to $13.755 million spread over 3■ events. It is interesting to note that more than 50 per cent of the increase was due to the enhanced prizefund by China ($■75,000), Indonesia (approx. $670,000) and France (approximately $4■0,000).