WYH v JS and XC/MJ v CPS/GYL SF matches will be, in a way, a repeat of the LNCO 2012 matches where JS beat WYH in 3 games in the QF and XC/MJ beat CPS/GLY in the final. Who will come on top this time round?
Went to the Coliseum for the afternoon session only yesterday and watched the following matches: 1. Hoon Thien How/Tan Wee Kiong vs Liu Xiaolong/Qiu Zihan - this was probably the most entertaining match yesterday and I was glued to this match for the first 2 sets. I think Hoon/Tan have potential if they cut down on their errors. I was actually quite impressed by Tan's attacking display. The MAS pair wasted valuable set-pts in the first-set and also 2 match pts in the second-set at 20-18 as the CHN pair simply refused to give up! If only the MAS pair was a bit more careful, they could have won it in straight-sets. I switched to watching the XD match later on, so, couldn't comment more. 2. Fran Kurniawan/Shendy Puspa Irawati vs Joachim Fischer-Nielsen/Christinna Pedersen - the INA pair has to be split. Period. Shendy in particular was so awful, missing shots and making so many errors! I think they were able to catch up in the first-set as Christinna Pedersen was not fit (her back was slightly injured I think). They could also had game pt at 20-20 but Fran's smash lack bite and they couldn't kill off the DEN pair in that rally! The second-set was practically a give away as the DEN pair raced to a quick lead and only allowed 8 pts for the INA pair. 3. Hendra Setiawan/Mohd Ahsan vs Fu Haifeng/Cai Yun - despite not at top form, the CHN pair was able to beat the error-prone INA pair easily yesterday. Hendra Setiawan, in particular, looked not sharp at all and was making all sorts of errors in both sets: serving to the net, weak defense, etc. The INA pair didn't look aggressive at all! Ko Herry IP really has a lot of work to do if he wants to mould this pair to be a world class pair. I also went for coffee with Hau-Ge after the matches and he was so furious at some of the players. Also bumped into several players (Zhang Nan/Zhao Yunlei, Tao Jiaming, TPE players), Park Joo Bong, etc in the mall next to the Coliseum as they were having dinner before the night session.