I'm guessing he wants him to play slow so he can recover some strength for later (he was also instructed to only play 80% smashes before the 2nd).
I wonder if that would guarantee anything. If you look carefully in the last 15 odd points, the attacker has actually lost points. Could be due to them trying fine margins due to their defensive excellence, more often than not they over do it. KN hasn't taken much of initiative to reach early for attacks, either he doesn't trust his attack or knows he has a better chance prolonging it. The only thing going KV's way atm is the crowd, I am wondering if the crowd's sudden change in mood in celebrating KV's points has impacted KN at all. He has tried (by his standards) do win their attention back by increasing the pace
This does look a little like London Olympic matchfixing. Every point pattern looks the same and Kodai playing it casually make it quite irrits With one shot glory.
I personally beleive the crowd won it for KV or butchered it for KN The latter suddenly felt the need to win the crowd back increased the pace, lost his script (which was working pretty well) KV on the other hand got a second wind. Mentally speaking, I beleive KV should take it from here.
Before the match started, I already told myself to expect a one-and-a-half hour struggle, and at the end of G2, it's 1 hr 20 mins now.
All of a sudden, KV is injecting pace ! Good to see, that's the way but the question is, for how long, will he tire first ?
Exactly what I am thinking. That's a lot of energy usage to win those points. But KN's defense has been marginally compromised due to fatigue, and now
