I'm serious. Before Rio2016, ZJK was already plagued with injuries and his level dropped to #10-20 ranked player. China took a great risk making him play, and no i don't know why they didn't let FZD or XX play instead in singles. XX did lose to Mizutani in the team's even finals, but really nobody expected this to happen, and it was a miracle win (that i enjoyed very much watching
). FZD despite his young age had already an outstanding record to foreign players.
How did ZJK get to the singles final ?
He beat Chen Chien-An 4-0 (with 2 tight sets), Crisan 4-0 , Niwa 4-1. Niwa is a #10-20 player, and we all know it depends on his mood ! So not an abnormal result.
ZJK had much more difficulties against Samsonov 4-1 but he won his sets only with 2 points margin and twice at deuce.
Samsonov was indeed playing very well in this tournament, but he injured himself (back injury as well) during his match against Ovtcharov. You will never hear Samsonov complain too much about injuries, but its a fact if you research. If Samsonov had been playing ZJK in QF, i really think he would have beaten this ZJK. But we will never know.
In the team event, ZJK played only one singles against Jeong Youngsik and beat him 3-2. a good win for ZJK. I don't remember this match. it was close anyway. The pressure was perhaps on JYS side because it was the 1st match and the rest of the line up suggested Korea badly needed this first match ?
#10-20 means I think ZJK would have lost with more than 50% probability the likes of (a non-injured) Samsonov, Boll , Ovtcharov or Mizutani for example, and a 20%+ chance to lose the likes of JYS, LSS , in-form Niwa, WCT. the ZJK from 2011-2013 would have crushed all those players without any problem.
I think XX or FZD were robbed of their chance to play and they had a real chance to win against MA Long even though MA Long was the favourite, it was not 100% skewed in his favour like against ZJK