Hopefully LC will feel less pressure with them being unseeded. Most will depend on how well LC could cope with pressure. Gonna be a long grueling year for me too.. I will follow ZN's suit to scratch my head as often.
LMAO, ZN's pain is your pain too. Just how often will you scratch your head? Every mistake committed by either ZN or LC?
Indonesia Masters will be Liu/Zhang first tournament of this year. They are not playing in Malaysia Masters because of CBSL I presumed. I know at least Zhang Nan's team Qingdao is going to SF next week. Looking at their draw, seems like it's going to be a tough one from the start. In R1, they will play against Han/Zhou and the last time they faced each other, Liu/Zhang lost in 3 games. Why do they almost always struggle playing teammates, I wonder. Hopefully they will have better form this year than last year.
I haven't calculate their ranking points. But, that match can be a proof who are worthy of being CHN MD2.
Han/Zhou ranking points will be unaffected by the match. On the other hand, Liu/Zhang need to get at least to SF in Indonesia Masters to keep their points. They are losing about 2k from skipping Malaysia Masters next week.
So, they can't possibly overtake Han/Zhou this month? If that's the case, they won't become seeded pair in AE.
No, even if they won the tournament they would be about 800 points behind. I just hope they won't be drawn to face minions in R1 haha.
This will be tough for ZN. Zhang/Liu are no longer seeded pair. I have checked their ranking points and it looks like He/Tan will surpass them. It is hard for him. Zhang/Liu need to produce bigger results in the later tournaments while being unseeded pair.
I don't think it would matter. Even being seeded they hardly passed R1 or R2 last most of the time last year. The problem is how they would perform or in this partnership case, how LC would perform. They managed to jump into top 8 within a year in 2017 when LC was still more or less in better form.
Oh, okay. I didn't know he withdrew from XD too. He seemed to be just fine on CBSL final day. I hope he is okay. Thanks for the info, guys. Just wondering how did you all get so well informed? haha
In the earlier Indonesian Masters press conference (live footage was on Instagram!) with foreign shuttlers, Han Chengkai mentioned that he won't face Zhang/Liu because Zhang Nan withdrew...
I see. That's unfortunate. Whatever it is, I hope it is not serious. So his next tournament will be All England then... Well, now that Zhang Nan is no longer playing in Indonesia Masters, I am 100% rooting minions for the title!
Looking at the M&Q list in German Open. Liu/Zhang are registered to play there. After skipping both Malaysia Masters and Indonesia Masters they had lost a lot of points. And with uninspiring results last year it's no surprise that they have dropped in their world's ranking. Part of me want to (and actually fully) blame his almost always struggling partner for the terrible year they had last year, but to be fair, Zhang Nan had been struggling too with his serves after the new service rule started last year. Which really makes me wonder, could some change of service height rule really affect some players that much? ZN used to be a very strong and solid server. But after this new service height rules, he seemed to be having difficulties to get his game going as well as he used to. Someone with skill like ZN, it shouldn't be much a problem, should it? Anyway wishing him and his partners a (much) better year. I'd like to see them in the Sudirman Cup team this year too.
