T2 Diamond 2019 | Malaysia

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Having following Lin and meeting his father and chatting to his head coach every time I visit Taiwan (I'm there again in a couple of week), Lin has really blossom the past 12 months

in 2018, he just entered the senior league (before he was only playing U21)

I think if Harimoto was to do the same, maybe that is better.
16 year old playing seniors vs 13 year old would allow the player to be more mature in general.

Hope Lin can hold it in and get a or few medals in Tokyo.
You guys didn't point out that he already won 3 world tour mixed doubles medals this year - beating some top seeds to get there too.

[Dr Evil]

The only problem with the commentators was that they're comically bad. Conservative had nothing to do with it. Their comments were inane, ridiculous, or both, and the guy wouldn't shut up. Bobrow's vastly better in every way except that he also talks too much. A few other excellent tt commentators out there but for some reason (probably money) ITTF doesn't use them very often.

[ttmonster]

so the target audience is old white guys making sexist statements ? oh I forgot that’s the new definition of conservative in the era of Trump and Boris

[Dr Evil]

so the target audience is old white guys making sexist statements ? oh I forgot that’s the new definition of conservative in the era of Trump and Boris

The ridiculous sexist statements were the only entertaining part of the commentary. It was like a Monty Python sketch.

[ttmonster]

The only difference is that is he completely oblivious and since he sucks up to ian marshall he will be allowed to keep doing this ... that’s what is outrageous !!!

[Loopadoop]

The commentators for the US Nationals, Yue Wu was having trouble with a chopper, basically a pushing game, the non technical announcer asked the other, once a top player and now a coach, what strategy should a player use vs a chopper, the coach avoided the answer, guess he didn't want to divulge any technical secrets.

[ttmonster]

aah I totally missed this great insight ... Jill is a coach for chinese national team and did not want to analyze Yu and Ding's game so as not to divulge strategic secrets ... I am truly enlightened by your reasoning so far !!

The commentators for the US Nationals, Yue Wu was having trouble with a chopper, basically a pushing game, the non technical announcer asked the other, once a top player and now a coach, what strategy should a player use vs a chopper, the coach avoided the answer, guess he didn't want to divulge any technical secrets.

[JesperStef]

all I can say seeing his progress for the past 3 years, his BH is very strong now.
his Jia A team mate was saying he will be Top 20 before end of 2019.
He got there in half the time.
He only played in the adult circuit from last year. Prior to that, he was only doing Junior and then U21

According to the ITTF stats that’s not entirely true: he did play both U21 and senior at the World Tour/Challenge events he attended in 2016 (2) and 2017 (5). He also participated at the WTTC in 2017.

https://results.ittf.link/index.php?...resetfilters=1

Sure, it was a limited participation on the Tour - especially compared to 2018 and 2019 where he has played pretty much every World Tour event there is. But still, he did have some senior event experience before 2018.

[Loopadoop]

I suggest you guys criticizing the commentators start a new thread which discusses them at any tour event.

[Michal_Z]

As much as I dont like Zhu Yuling, I wish and hope, almost prey, she beats Sun Yingsha tomorrow..
But I am afraid thats just a dream..

YES!
And she even won whole tournament, wov!

Ma Long is not happy with the loss LOL. But it was not a real match and they both know it.

In my opinion its clearly ML was injury. He almost couldn't move. He barely move and bend his right leg

Lin Yun Ju obviously outplayed Ma Long this time, give him a credit !

Anyways - to the Ma Long match - I saw .. from the round one .. he just couldnt care less!
Still .. Lin played really great.. I liked it pretty much..
But one thing I do not understand..
WHY EVERYONE JUST KEPT SERVING SHORT INTO HIS FOREHAND???
Its like noone even tryed long serve into his BH .. weird..

[Shine]

YES!
And she even won whole tournament, wov!



Anyways - to the Ma Long match - I saw .. from the round one .. he just couldnt care less!
Still .. Lin played really great.. I liked it pretty much..
But one thing I do not understand..
WHY EVERYONE JUST KEPT SERVING SHORT INTO HIS FOREHAND???
Its like noone even tryed long serve into his BH .. weird..

Doesn't even have to be long serves, just serve to the backhand with varying degrees of spin and speed, Lin mixed up his serve a lot especially in the last 2 sets and he was successful, Fan's touch was good against Xu Xin and LGY, today it was poor and error prone,
The CNT guys play too one dimensional against lefties, serve to the forehand and attack the backhand, The serves to the forehand wasn't working- reverse pendulum or pendulum, I thought he'd mix in some backspin and long serves but he kept serving to the forehand and LYJ is not HT. Against Lin receives Ma kept blocking passively to the forehand and he lost, Fan blocked passively to the backhand and lost, Fan was especially bad in his placements and was even outgunned in the rallies. LYJ played better in all aspects today.

Funny thing is this is the FZD that kept saying he wanted more responsibilities in this Olympic cycle, Times when they've needed him to step up like in the WTTC, Today He's not. Anyway the way I see it, even if China manage to make Tokyo a success which will be so difficult, There's not much in ML left, his mood and his body is getting harder for him to control, The men's team will really struggle post 2020 , that's certain, The big contenders have to make sure they're at their peak at the Majors and it'll happen definitely.


Now I realize what NL said, LYJ shots are really hard to defend, so much quality.

[Tony's Table Tennis]

According to the ITTF stats that’s not entirely true: he did play both U21 and senior at the World Tour/Challenge events he attended in 2016 (2) and 2017 (5). He also participated at the WTTC in 2017.

https://results.ittf.link/index.php?...resetfilters=1

Sure, it was a limited participation on the Tour - especially compared to 2018 and 2019 where he has played pretty much every World Tour event there is. But still, he did have some senior event experience before 2018.

yeah, you are correct
however the focus from his coaching staff was shifted from U21 to Senior in 2018.
I didn't check your link, but I guess same time didn't take part in U21 again as 2018 was his year of transition.
this is also the same time where he started to move up the world ranking

[Tony's Table Tennis]

3 years ago, he was really a junior, now he is ready to take on the world

[ZhouZhekai]

Overall i would say T2 has done what it was supposed to do: create a exiting commercial tournament for the viewers. Kato upsetting Ito and CM, Franziska beating LJK, Wong Chung Ting doing great upsetting Harimoto and beating Franziska, while giving a run for Xu-per-mans money, Calderano having a good outing, DN raising her level, FZD and ZY coming back to their 2018 forms, and of course Lin literally destroying Mizutani, ML, WCT and FZD, (which deserves as much hype as Harimoto in 2018 Japan and Asia Opens), made it very watchable, especially if you consider that athletes could gain 10-50k USD in the later rounds depending on their results.

[Michal_Z]

Doesn't even have to be long serves, just serve to the backhand with varying degrees of spin and speed, Lin mixed up his serve a lot especially in the last 2 sets and he was successful, Fan's touch was good against Xu Xin and LGY, today it was poor and error prone,
The CNT guys play too one dimensional against lefties, serve to the forehand and attack the backhand, The serves to the forehand wasn't working- reverse pendulum or pendulum, I thought he'd mix in some backspin and long serves but he kept serving to the forehand and LYJ is not HT. Against Lin receives Ma kept blocking passively to the forehand and he lost, Fan blocked passively to the backhand and lost, Fan was especially bad in his placements and was even outgunned in the rallies. LYJ played better in all aspects today.

Funny thing is this is the FZD that kept saying he wanted more responsibilities in this Olympic cycle, Times when they've needed him to step up like in the WTTC, Today He's not. Anyway the way I see it, even if China manage to make Tokyo a success which will be so difficult, There's not much in ML left, his mood and his body is getting harder for him to control, The men's team will really struggle post 2020 , that's certain, The big contenders have to make sure they're at their peak at the Majors and it'll happen definitely.


Now I realize what NL said, LYJ shots are really hard to defend, so much quality.

For FZD I am not sure why he played so "stupid" ..
But for ML I am SURE he just didnt take the match seriously.
I am sure that being this WTTC or OG it would be quite different match.
We all know that for rhythm change, tactics, Ma Long is the best.
The fact he didnt do it must say something.
SO - all he wanted is to get out from the tournament. He got some points, mission completed.. and some 100 000 dollars?
Whatever..
OTOH FZD seemed much more hungry for the win, he just was not able to deliver..

[JesperStef]

E

yeah, you are correct
however the focus from his coaching staff was shifted from U21 to Senior in 2018.
I didn't check your link, but I guess same time didn't take part in U21 again as 2018 was his year of transition.
this is also the same time where he started to move up the world ranking

Correct, he hasn’t played in U21 since Bulgaria Open in August 2018.

So you’re right about the shift in focus. But I also think that it was difficult for JNT to use the same gradual progression for JNT with Harimoto seeing that he was already very competitive at senior events 2 years ago (like winning the 2017 Czech Open and making deep runs in other senior tournaments at that time).

Lin has been getting a lot of hype this year - very well deserved, I might add

Whether he is a bigger talent than Harimoto and has greater potential remains to be seen. Given that Harimoto has also had a meteoric rise over the last few years, I’d say it’s near impossible to judge how both of them are going to develop going forward.

Much of the debating about this exact issue - the future potential of Harimoto and Lin or other young players like Möregård - also seems to be clouded by heavy bias especially for/against Harimoto.

No matter what, I am personally very thrilled about the state of international table tennis at the moment:

- the new World Ranking system has meant that the top players are playing more tournaments now, which means that we get to see an unpresidented number of top level matchups. It also means having to play more matches and travelling more, so it can be hard to perform at top level at every tournament/match and may have contributed to the large number of upsets that we’ve seen this year

- a number of YOUNG male and female players are now posing serious threats (or potential threats) to the CNT dominance.

- the CNT are still the best, but not at all unbeatable anymore. All core CNT players have suffered one or several defeats to foreigners this year. The CNT B/C-team players are getting to play many more international tournaments now than before, but they are not yet good/stabile enough, so quite a lot of them are losing out in the really strong qualification events. So now many “foreign” players have beaten one or more Chinese players in 2019 which should make them and others a lot more confident when facing a CNT opponent next time.

- below the top CNT top players we now have a really large group of international players who are pretty much able to beat each other on any given day. I exaggate, I know, but the results this year have generally been quite unpredictable with many upsets.

When you put these things together, you get a lot of really STRONG tournaments with a great sense of EXCITEMENT and UNPREDICTABILITY

I don’t know about all of you, but I love and cherish it

[purpletiesto]

Oh Geez yet another pitiful embarrassment to China and the CNT. Goodbye FZD, you're done! Go sit with Fang Bo in the corner.

[perham]

The year was 2019 and people were still triggered by Harimoto's cho.

Utter lack of decency and respect never gets old. For that matter, it’s not only Harimoto, but most new generation players are like that. Manners is something that’s just going extinct.

[ttmonster]

why ? dude , you first joined the conversation, tried to take an opposing point without any valid reasoning and when you see its not working .. you want it to be a different thread ? This is thread is about T2 Diamond 2019 , there is no rule here that we only have to discuss about the players and their performance ... if you don't like my posts feel free to put me on your ignore list .. don't tell me what to do ...

I suggest you guys criticizing the commentators start a new thread which discusses them at any tour event.

[NextLevel]

why ? dude , you first joined the conversation, tried to take an opposing point without any valid reasoning and when you see its not working .. you want it to be a different thread ? This is thread is about T2 Diamond 2019 , there is no rule here that we only have to discuss about the players and their performance ... if you don't like my posts feel free to put me on your ignore list .. don't tell me what to do ...

Loopadoop is very old and has a crappy phone so he can't follow threads which aren't strictly on one topic.

It is very obvious to me that the commentators are part of the event.