My goodness, after watching the replay of the He Bingjiao vs Nozomi Okuhara Tokyo Olympics quarterfinals match, the second time better than the first time I watched live on zhuafan.tech - I must say I'm impressed with He Bingjiao's game, the way she came back from one set down and then a slow start in the decider to power past Nozomi in style was exhilarating.
The new look HBJ, lean and mean, dictating the rallies now and then as she stepped up her game and suddenly injecting pace to finish it off is reminiscent of Lin Dan, I mean the more all-rounded LD post-2008 rather than the young fast and furious LD - to me, a joy to watch. That against one of the two very best retriever cum runners in the circuit, the other being her compatriot, Akane Yamaguchi, is certainly no mean feat, at the same time a testament to HBJ's remarkable improvement in physique, noticeably stamina.
As I didn't get to watch HBJ's with Zhang Beiwen where the later was one game up and trailing by 7-9 in the second set when she suffered a left ankle injury and conceded the match, I'd venture to say that I believe had ZBW not injured herself , HBJ would probably still go on to score a come-from-behind victory over her opponent in three games, if the way she disposed of Nozomi the next round is any indication.
I suspect that ZBW went all-out from the get-go instead of pacing herself well for the entire match, and in G2 when HBJ was moving her around forcing her feisty opponent to twist and turn, it strained ZBW quite a bit and contributed in no small part to her spraining her ankle as a result. Yes, I'm speculating as I couldn't find the match anywhere to watch as I missed the live telecast and the replay isn't available on the Internet for viewing (please post it here if you find it. TIA.).
For those who think Chen Yufei's playing style is boring or just not exciting enough, then watch the "new and fitter" HBJ's game among the CHN WS players, apart from the usual suspects in WS, namely, Tai TY, Intanon R, C Marin. For HBJ , I have in mind her games played the last one year during the pandemic with practically no international tournaments held but internally in China, such the national championships, the quadrennial China National Games, and some specially arranged simulation matches in CBA, eg, her matches with CYF, Wang Zhiyi, and the younger cohort, mostly shown on
www.zhuafan.tech.
Come to think of it, in fairness to CYF, I was originally sympathetic to those who complained of CYF's so-called uninteresting playing style but I now realised it's not quite representative of CYF's game if we based our opinion largely on that Tokyo Olympic gold medal match versus Tai Tzu Ying, where, in hindsight, it dawned on me that CYF was specifically adopting a particular game plan to wear down TTY by throwing everything back at her opponent as far as possible and keeping mistakes to the minimum, in the hope that her opponent would lose patience, overpress herself and start to commit both forced and unforced errors, which was what eventually happened.
In other words, the way I see it, CYF came ready and well-prepared to fight a war of attrition on that momentous occasion and it worked, thanks in no small part to her ability to read her highly fancied opponent's game by anticipating most of her strokes, including her trademarked deceptive shots, thus frustrating her into making a fair number of uncharacteristic errors.
By the way, I just finished watching the replay of Chen Yufei vs An Se Young quarterfinal match in the Tokyo Olympics - don't they play a similar style? Not too strangely, I even think CYF's fellow junior, Wang Zhiyi, seems likewise.
