I suspect it is the dramatic way they won. But if she wants to ahe will be back, even if it is XD, she will be only one year older than LSW at the next games.
This really tells how close the game was, and how important the national game gold medal is. During the timeout of the last set, you can tell the Shandong team handled pressured much better than the Hebei team. And I could see that Shandong would very likely win.
I see it slightly differently, I call it the problem with pips, your opponent can look really bad playing against them initially, but once they figure it out, once their level is otherwise similar to yours, you are a sitting duck because their ability to hit the ball hard with inverted is greater than yours with pips.
Either way we may not see ML vs FZD. If Huang and ML play doubles then it would probably make more sense for Huang to play FZD anyway.
When I said only one will play FZD I meant it is more likely that only one of Wang or ML will play FZD. Wasn't clear in my last post. I don't think ML will play FZD because they have played him consistently in doubles and the third singles slot when he pairs with Huang unless he pairs with WCQ (in which case WCQ plays that third singles slot while Huang plays the two singles slot). And I don't know if Zhou Kai can do any better against WCQ than he did vs ML.
I think Beijing team will most likely do what you’re suggesting. It makes perfect sense cause ML and WCQ would most likely get own by FZD and even though ML has a better H2H against FZD I believe in the last few years FZD has got a better H2H against ML.
I don't think ML and WCQ being owned by FZD would be the main driver, since FZD would likely play both WCQ and HYZ if the order remained normal. The main argument for it is that Xu Xin and Zhou Kai were able to win the last doubles match over ML and HYZ even if it did go 5 games. That would have been enough to win with FZD as their ace delivering 2 matches. They had ZZH and he beat HYZ but lost to WCQ. So the key is pretty much the doubles. Obviously, there is also the real possibility of FZD losing, but that is up to Beijing to analyze and decide whether they want to go that route.
Absolutely agree. Also the coaching team of Saarbruecken is not as big (also as good) as Shanghai's coaching team. in Shanghai, FZD has every kind of players that are ready to help him preparing for some opponents he would have to face, and he also had a month to do it. Notice that Chinese players are developed under a unify system, so the game plays are not very varying. While in Germany, not everyone will sacrifice their times for him. And even though there are someone who were willing to do it, he can't prepare for matches against unknown guys like Romain Ruiz in just less than one week lol.
Putting Xu Yingbin in doubles and losing that was pretty much waving the white flag.
I notice Lin Gaoyuan didn’t even go practice during the last game. That’s how confident he was that the team could win the whole match.
Yeah, they gave it their best shot, that is all they can ask for. The second game of the last match was funny, getting it from 2-10 to 10-10 then losing the last two points after all that...
Chen Meng loved the sport
I thought it'd be obvious to everyone that she'll never be known as one of the best all time because she's never won a World Championship.
