i have watched chai biao/hong wei match against lee/ko in swiss open, usually when the koreans up against other pairs i always impressed with ko sung hyun's smash especially the power. but in swiss open final the korean smash nowhere near chai and hong in term of speed, power and angle. might be because the chinese have extra height in them however i do more favor chai/hong partnership more than chai/zhang.
It seems that chai biao is playing with hong Wei from now on. So the ZN/CB pair may be no more. I really hope zhang nan keeps playing MD though because I think he is still extremely talented. Who could he pair up with though? The only player I could think of is Liu Cheng. Definitely not guo zhendong or Shen ye.
Yeah....you must've seen another MD match than the rest of us. Chai Biao was the one fluffing practically every second shot at the net....
Yup, Chai Biao tends to be very error prone in matches, many unforced errors. He's a huge power smasher, and I personally like the way he executes them. However, like Volcom said, I think he's a massively wasted talent. He did so well when he was a junior player but the Chinese management doesn't seem to know who to partner him with. Over a short period of 3 years, he has played with 4 different partners, liu xiaolong, guo zhendong, zhang nan and hong Wei. Unfortunately, he hasn't been exceptionally good with any of them. I liked the way he and hong played in the Swiss/German opens but they seemed to be stuck in a rut after that, losing so early in Indonesia/Singapore. Also, I'm abit surprised that there's no move to make him play mixed, cause he was a successful junior mixed player and his hard smashing style might work there better. But that could be cause china already has two strong mixed pairs. Sometimes I do feel the Chinese team picks who they want to focus on/develop, and just leaves the rest alone. I'm not a fan of theirs in general but I do like certain players and think they do have incredible talent. Just that it seems to be going to waste. It's one of the reasons I feel that their men's doubles for instance, seem to be in a rut. After cai/fu who's really gonna take over as their number 1 pair? I just don't see any particularly strong contenders.
Hm he has indeed talent where back court play, especially smashing is concerned, but in every partnership he displays a huge weakness around the net. I'm pretty certain they're working on that, but he just doesn't seem to be able to improve on it....
Nah. Zhang Nan certainly didn't shine in that match, but Chai Biao was worse for sure. Errors around the net, even smashing into the net without pressure....but who can blame him if he plays with a different partner every tournament...imop they should decide whether ZN is to play doubles or not, and then decide who to partner him and CB with and keep those pairings for more than 6 months. There will always be odd results (either too bad or too good), but if you play 6-7 tournaments you'll have a good idea of where these pairs stand and then the coaches can evaluate how much further they can go. Hong Wei/Chai Biao had an outstanding first two tournaments, but didn't get anything done after that - maybe because both have definite weaknesses around the net and opponents started to exploit that. Whatever the case, I personally don't see CB as such a wasted talent - he had a couple pretty good tournaments, but whenever his pairing went out early, it was not caused by his partner. Guo Zhendong was not the second coming of Cai Yun, sure, but he was very stable and a good partner for CB as he was more experienced and stable, and there has been a lot of unfair comments about him as to how he allegedly dragged CB down...
CHN MD is in a crisis situation again, esp when Cai/Fu pair is going downhill and may retire soon. Liu/Qiu not a solid pair yet, the rest seem neither here nor there, even Chai Biao/Hong Wei.
