This week I’m trying something new. I’ve prepared an exciting summary of last week’s Thomas Cup in Chengdu, China. It comes with all the drama and spectacular highlights you’re used to from top-tier badminton tournaments.
This also serves as an excuse for me to assess which badminton shoes are the most popular among the pro players right now. If you’re curious about your favorite player’s model, you’ll find that too (provided they participated in the Thomas Cup 2024).
Since this tournament doesn’t follow your typical format, let’s begin with a quick reminder of how it works.
The Thomas Cup is known as the men’s world cup for countries and is played over the course of a week or so. That means each player is representing their country rather than competing individually as is the case during usual tournaments on the BWF World Tour.
As such, each round is played as best of five matches with the usual 2-3 games per match played right after one another.
These five matches are made up of a combination between singles and doubles matches, but the order can change. For example, during the group stage, each round might have one singles match followed by a doubles match, another singles match, and so on, until all five matches are played between two teams.
On the other hand, some quarter-finals play all their singles matches before moving on to their doubles matches. Don’t worry, it sounds more confusing than it is in the real world.
A team has to win three matches (i.e. two singles- and one doubles match) to win the round. In the group stage, all five matches are played even if one team is ahead 3-0 because the number of games and rallies won can affect the overall scoreline in case of a tie down the road.
But there’s a fun twist that makes this event more exciting for Western nations where the singles discipline tends to be more popular. It’s technically possible to win each round by only winning the singles matches since there are three of them and only two doubles matches.
That is especially exciting for underdog nations like Denmark where singles is the preferred discipline. There’s still a chance to snatch the title from dominant nations like China, Indonesia, and India with exceptionally strong players across both singles and doubles disciplines.
Now, you might be wondering what the women and mixed double pairs are up to during this tournament.
There’s a counterpart for women held at the same time and venue, called Uber Cup. Since this mini-guide is an experiment, I won’t be covering that today, but I might in the future if you’re interested.
In some cases, the mixed doubles pairs are participating with a different partner in the male- or female doubles discipline during this tournament. In others, they aren’t participating at all.
With this overview out of the way, let’s dive into the summary and highlights of this 2024 event of the Thomas Cup.
Keep in mind that there will be spoilers, so if you want to watch the games later you might wanna skip this (if you just want to know more about the gear used by the pro players this year, skip to the last chapter).
Table of Contents
Thomas Cup 2024: highlights
The group stage breaks up the 16 teams that qualified into four groups with four countries in each group. They play one match against each other and the two countries with the most wins in each group advance to the knock-out stage with the last eight countries.
Next, there’s the quarter-final, semi-final, and final as is common in most sports tournaments. When you lose you’re knocked out.
For your convenience, I’ll follow a chronological order of the tournament starting with the best highlights from the group stage before covering each round of the knock-out stage.
The group stage: any surprising exits?
First, here’s an overview of the groups and the countries playing each other.
| Group A | Group B | Group C | Group D |
|---|---|---|---|
| China | Japan | Indonesia | Denmark |
| South Korea | Chinese Taipei | India | Malaysia |
| Canada | Germany | Thailand | Hong Kong |
| Australia | Czech Republic | England | Algeria |
Next is the same table, but with the results of the matches.
| Pos | Team | Wins | Losses | Games For | Games Ahead | Points | Qualification |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 3 | 0 | 28 | 5 | 3 | Advance to quarter-finals |
| 2 | South Korea | 2 | 1 | 25 | 8 | 2 | |
| 3 | Canada | 1 | 2 | 8 | 24 | 1 | |
| 4 | Australia | 0 | 3 | 4 | 28 | 0 |
| Pos | Team | Wins | Losses | Games For | Games Ahead | Points | Qualification |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Japan | 3 | 0 | 30 | 4 | 3 | Advance to quarter-finals |
| 2 | Chinese Taipei | 2 | 1 | 20 | 17 | 2 | |
| 3 | Germany | 1 | 2 | 12 | 23 | 1 | |
| 4 | Czech Republic | 0 | 3 | 8 | 26 | 0 |
| Pos | Team | Wins | Losses | Games For | Games Ahead | Points | Qualification |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | 3 | 0 | 28 | 9 | 3 | Advance to quarter-finals |
| 2 | India | 2 | 1 | 23 | 14 | 2 | |
| 3 | Thailand | 1 | 2 | 15 | 20 | 1 | |
| 4 | England | 0 | 3 | 5 | 28 | 0 |
| Pos | Team | Wins | Losses | Games For | Games Ahead | Points | Qualification |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Denmark | 3 | 0 | 27 | 7 | 3 | Advance to quarter-finals |
| 2 | Malaysia | 2 | 1 | 25 | 9 | 2 | |
| 3 | Hong Kong | 1 | 2 | 14 | 20 | 1 | |
| 4 | Algeria | 0 | 3 | 0 | 30 | 0 |
While there are plenty of highlight reels on BWF’s Youtube channel, they didn’t cover all matches and not all of the highlights were as exciting as others.
So I took the liberty of going through everything that I could find to share the most exciting highlights — those that are more exciting than your typical good smash or dramatic rally. I’ll cover the following categories:
- Dramatic situations with umpires
- Surprise wins + shock exits + advances to the next round
- Cool rallies and tricks that stood out
Highlight 1
Jan Louda from the Czech Republic wins the first set against Nishimoto from Japan and nearly the second set too!
Highlight 2
Surprisingly, Thailand did not advance from the group stage (but all the other teams that did are the usual suspects, so there’s just one team “too much” with only eight spots)
Highlight 3
Incredible defense from Lee Zii Jia (Malaysia)
Highlight 4
Around the back defense shot
Highlight 5
Kento Momota’s defense and net touch (it’s crazy how sensitive and skilled he is at the net considering his Yonex Astrox 99 Pro racket is so head heavy).
Highlight 6
Two highly entertaining rallies between LJZ and Axelsen
If you want to watch future matches live (i.e. the Olympics), bookmark this guide on live streaming badminton.
The quarter-finals: will the last non-Asian nation get knocked out?
The quarter-finals took us through four exciting matches:
- China vs India (3-1)
- Malaysia vs Japan (3-1)
- Denmark vs Chinese Taipei (1-3)
- Korea – Indonesia (1-3)
While the games were intense and entertaining, there weren’t any major headlines worth noticing besides Denmark, the favorite in the match against Chinese Taipei, losing out on the semi-finals.
Sadly, Kento Momota (Japan) didn’t get to play the last singles game against Malaysia as they won in the fourth match. That means the last match of his career during an international tournament was at the group stage.
Highlight
The semi-finals: will the two powerhouses make mistakes?
From the quarter-finals, we’ve come to the final four teams:
- Indonesia – Chinese Taipei (3-0)
- China – Malaysia (3-1)
Highlight
The final: the battle for the title
Finally, it was down to the final two teams to battle it out.
- China – Indonesia (3-1)
Highlight
Thomas Cup 2024 players’ badminton shoes
Before ending this Thomas Cup 2024 summary, let’s dive into the shoes the players have used during the tournament.
This is possibly the only event (except for the Olympics) that allows the players to wear gear from multiple sponsors. You see, each country’s national team has a gear sponsor and each individual player has their own sponsor.
That means that the clothes they wear on court is their national team uniform, sponsored by the national team’s sponsor rather than the individual player. On the other hand, it’s unreasonable to expect players to learn to use new gear just for one tournament, so they are still allowed to play with their usual racket, strings, handle grip, and shoes.
That’s why you’ll see some players wear competing sponsors like Victor apparel with Yonex gear, as is the case with Viktor Axelsen as shown below. Here he’s wearing Victor apparel as Denmark’s national team is sponsored by them, while playing with his Yonex Astrox 100ZZ and Yonex SHB 65z3 shoes.
During my extensive research in preparation for this guide, I attempted to find the rackets for each player, but it turned out to be a huge undertaking as most players don’t have updated information about their gear, even on their sponsors’ websites. I was able to find some which I’ve included below.
Before diving into the overview showing each participating player and their current badminton shoes, here are my observations from looking up the badminton shoes of more than a hundred pro players.
Observations
To my surprise, Yonex’s ultra-lightweight performance shoes (the Yonex Aerus Z2) aren’t as popular among the pros as you’d expect, despite it being meant for speed, performance, and tournaments at least based on its marketing. Only 2.6% of the players use it.
Without knowing for sure, I figure it’s due to the pros preferring slightly more cushioning for longevity instead of going all-in on raw speed and less injury prevention.
The most popular shoe by far is the Yonex SHB 65z3 with 63% (72 players out of 115 used it) of the players using it during this tournament. That surprised me as I didn’t find it particularly amazing compared to other flagship models.
| Country | Player Name | Shoes Used | Racket Used | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Korea | JEON Hyeok Jin | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | |
| KI Dong Ju | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| KANG Min Hyuk | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Arcsaber 11 Pro | Link | |
| SEO Seung Jae | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Nanoflare 700 | Link | |
| Lee Yun Gyu | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| KIM Won Ho | Yonex Aerus Z2 | Yonex Nanoflare 700 | Link | |
| Canada | Brian YANG | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Astrox 100ZZ | Link Link |
| Joshua Nguyen | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Nyl YAKURA | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Astrox 88S Pro | Link | |
| Victor LAI | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Kevin LEE | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Ty Alexander LINDEMAN | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Imran WADIA | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| China | SHI Yu Qi | Li-Ning Invincible ACE | Yonex Astrox 100ZZ | Link |
| LI Shi Feng | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Astrox 100ZZ | Link Link |
|
| LIANG Wei Keng | Yonex Eclipsion Z3 | Yonex Nanoflare 800 Pro | Link | |
| WANG Chang | Yonex Comfort Z3 | Yonex Nanoflare 800 Pro | Link | |
| LU Guang Zu | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| LIU Yu Chen | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| OU Xuan Yi | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Australia | Ricky TANG | Victor A970ACE | Link | |
| Jacob SCHUELER | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Astrox 100ZZ, Astrox 77 Pro, Astrox 99 | Link Link |
|
| Kenneth Zhe Hooi CHOO | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Huaidong TANG | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Jack YU | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Rayne WANG | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Japan | Kenta NISHIMOTO | Victor A970 Nitrolite | Victor Thruster Ryuga II | Link |
| Kodai NARAOKA | Victor A970 Nitrolite | Link | ||
| Koki WATANABE | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Astrox 88D Pro | Link | |
| Akira KOGA | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Taichi SAITO | Yonex Eclipsion Z3 | Link | ||
| Kento MOMOTA | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Astrox 99 Pro | Link | |
| Kenya MITSUHASHI | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Hiroki OKAMURA | Mizuno Wave Claw 3 | Link | ||
| Hoki | Yonex SHB 65z3 (Special Orange/Yellow team edition) | Link | ||
| Yugo Kobayashi | Yonex SHB 65z3 (Special Orange/Yellow team edition) | Link | ||
| Czech Republic | Jan LOUDA | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | |
| Jiří KRÁL | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Ondřej KRÁL | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Adam MENDREK | Victor S82III | Link | ||
| Dominik KOPŘIVA | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Tomáš ŠVEJDA | N/A | N/A | – | |
| Chinese Taipei | CHOU Tien Chen | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Duora-Z Strike | Link Link |
| LEE Yang | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Arcsaber 11 Pro | Link Link |
|
| WANG Chi-Lin | Yonex Aerus Z2 | Yonex Nanoflare 1000Z | Link Link Link |
|
| LIN Chun-Yi | Yonex Eclipsion Z3 | Link | ||
| Ye H W | (Unsponsored) | (Unsponsored) | Link | |
| LEE Jhe-Huei | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Nanoflare 1000Z | Link | |
| Chia Hao Lee | Victor A970 Nitrolite | Link | ||
| YANG Po-Hsuan | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Astrox 88D Pro | Link | |
| WANG Tzu Wei | Victor A970 Nitrolite | Victor DriveX 10 Metallic | Link | |
| Germany | Kai SCHAEFER | Victor A970 Nitrolite | Link | |
| Bjarne GEISS | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Neumann | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Jan Colin VOELKER | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Fabian ROTH | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Marvin SEIDEL | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Astrox 88D Pro | Link | |
| Matthias KICKLITZ | VICTOR SH-A920 blue | VICTOR Thruster F | Link Link |
|
| Indonesia | Anthony Sinisuka GINTING | Li-Ning Blast JF-01 | Li-Ning Axforce 100 | Link |
| Fajar ALFIAN | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Astrox 88S Pro | Link | |
| Muhammad Rian ARDIANTO | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Astrox 88D Pro | Link | |
| Jonatan CHRISTIE | Li-Ning Yun Ting | Link | ||
| Muhammad Shohibul FIKRI | Li-Ning Blade Pro (needs confirmation) | Li-Ning Calibar 900i | Link | |
| Bagas MAULANA | Li-Ning Saga SE (needs confirmation) | Li-Ning Turbocharging 75 Extreme | Link | |
| Alwi FARHAN | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| England | Harry HUANG | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | |
| Ben LANE | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Nanoflare 1000Z | Link | |
| Sean VENDY | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Astrox 100ZZ | Link | |
| Nadeem DALVI | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Callum HEMMING | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Astrox 88S Pro | Link Link |
|
| Ethan VAN LEEUWEN | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Cholan KAYAN | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| India | PRANNOY H. S. | Victor A970 Nitrolite | Victor Auraspeed HS Plus | Link |
| Satwiksairaj RANKIREDDY | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Duora Z-Strike | Link | |
| Chirag SHETTY | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Arcsaber 11 Pro | Link | |
| Lakshya SEN | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Nanoflare 1000Z | Link | |
| M.R. ARJUN | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Dhruv KAPILA | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| KIDAMBI Srikanth | Li-Ning Blade Pro | Link | ||
| Thailand | Kunlavut VITIDSARN | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Astrox 88D Pro | Link |
| Peeratchai SUKPHUN | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Pakkapon TEERARATSAKUL | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Tanadon PUNPANICH | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Wachirawit SOTHON | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Saran JAMSRI | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Malaysia | LEE Zii Jia | Victor A970 Nitrolite | Victor Thruster Ryuga Metallic | Link |
| Aaron CHIA | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Arcsaber 11 Pro | Link | |
| SOH Wooi Yik | Yonex Power Cushion Infinity | Yonex Nanoflare 800 Pro | Link | |
| LEONG Jun Hao | Yonex Aerus Z2 | Link | ||
| GOH Sze Fei | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Nur IZZUDDIN | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Justin HOH | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Hong Kong | LEE Cheuk Yiu | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Astrox 99 Pro | Link Link |
| LAW Cheuk Him | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| YEUNG Shing Choi | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| NG Ka Long Angus | (I can’t tell) | Link | ||
| LEE Chun Hei Reginald | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| TANG Chun Man | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| CHAN Yin Chak | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Link | ||
| Denmark | Viktor AXELSEN | Yonex SHB 65z3 | Yonex Astrox 100ZZ | Link |
| Anders ANTONSEN | Victor A970 Nitrolite | Victor Auraspeed 90K | Link | |
| Rasmus GEMKE | N/A | Forza FZ – Aero Power Masters | Link | |
| Kim ASTRUP | Likely Li-Ning Yun Ting or Li-Ning Blade Pro (difficult to confirm) | Li-Ning Tectonic 7C | Link | |
| Anders Skaarup RASMUSSEN | Li-Ning Yun Ting (new orange color scheme) | Li-Ning 3D Calibar 900C | Link | |
| Rasmus KJÆR | Victor A930 | Link | ||
| Frederik SØGAARD | Victor P8500II | Link | ||
| Algeria | Adel HAMEK | N/A | (No highlights of Algeria’s games) | |
| Youcef Sabri MEDEL | N/A | |||
| Mohamed Abderrahime BELARBI | N/A | |||
| Koceila MAMMERI | N/A |
3 comments
I have the Aerus Z3 model but only wears it during gameplay. For training, I wear the Comfort Z3. You’re right, as a woman on my early 40’s I prefer all the cushioning I could get. The Aerus shoes gave me a lot of blisters and black toenails.
Funny that you should mention that, I’m testing the Aerus shoe now. How long have you been using it?
I changed thrice within 19 months. The last shoe gave me black toenails that’s why I shifted to Cushion Z3. Been wearing it for only 1 week so I can’t fully comment yet.