Picking against your obvious picks lol ...
The man masquerading as a child (my joke, not doubting his age, but he has been big for his age even as a kid)has been ready for this for a while but he has been unable to surpass Lin Shidong or dominate the juniors (lost to a Japanese prodigy at the last U19 and while he won the Asians, he has struggled against Kuo from Taiwan. He also has some injuries at bad times. That said, his ability to control Hugo's power speaks a lot to his rallying ability and his height allows him to flick a lot of balls that others would need to push or take risks to attack. But he still has to deliver against more opponents. And of course beat the players in front of him in China.
Tough to stomach but he usually doesnt comeback like this so it builds character which he needs if he is competing to play at the next Olympics after being robbed of the opportunity to play at the last one
"Significantly"? Regardless, what a player likes is individual, and that weight, whether significant or not, might make the racket feel better to her. But it is quite possible that it was a different rubber, just not different enough to trouble her opponent but different enough to make her miss the block.
I did not add value judgement to that statement, but thanks for placing judgement on my curiosity? Adding a sandwich rubber would objectively add significant weight to an overall setup compared to OX LP, and if that was a deliberate choice by Shan then so be it.
Maybe. As a double inverted hard sponge player, I struggle to find the weight of pimpled rubbers with thick sponge significant, I do understand your perspective, but I do think that the extra weight depends on the power of the sponge and it might not be as much as you think. And also, it is quite possible that you are right and that the sponge is relatively thin or even OX even if it might have appeared to you to be the same. We just have to wait for the data or hope someone asks her. Her lack of control on the block was telling.
She uses short pips on both sides now. Bobrow mentioned during one of her matches last year that both of them are in max thickness. You are correct that they're very similar. One is Rakza PO and the other is Speedysoft D.Tecs, both of which are horizontally aligned shortpips. It's definitely an odd choice and I'd be interested to hear her explanation for it.
I never found Speedysoft particularly spinny for a shortpip but it has been almost a decade.
