I would hardly call 19 and 15 "trashing them badly" But the MD draw is full of surprises this year - both Ko/Lee and Liu/Qiu exiting early, and sadly, Kim/Kim meeting Yoo/Shin in the same round....only pair of the three favorites to prevail until now is Ahsan/Setiawan.....Cai/Fu don't really seem to be back to their best yet imop, so I didn't include them in the favorites. They sure won't be beaten easily though.
What happened to this pair now? They keep losing to lower ranked pairs. They don't seem to have the same speed that they used to.
Their weaknesses have been discovered and exploited. Qiu is not as fast since his knee injury and has a weak defence. Liu continues to be unstable with his footwork and his unusual crouch defence is easily countered. And they seem to lack chemistry together.
Looking at what is happening at the Malaysian SS, it is not a good time being a seeded pair edit: that reminds me, I saw them in real life at the last French SS, owning BoMo, it was quite enjoyable ... too bad they got eliminated the next day
Qiu Zihan let us ahead of him in the queue for the 'food village' at the AE on Thurs... sure he wasn't eating athlete's food from there... He's not a small guy already and extra weight certainly won't help a knee injury.
Even his smash is nothing special compared to his peers. This pair has been very disappoint this year. I know they have had injury problems but they really have a lot of work to do to catch up.
unexpected... the CHN No.1 'Dark Horse" Qiu/Liu enter the World Championship final match, can say Qiu as aggressive giant and Liu as China version "Jeremy Lin"...!!!
Is it my imagination or is this pair playing even faster than before? Very unexpected to see them make it into the finals. Will be very interesting to see how they'll fare against Ahsan/Setiawan tmrw. If anything, Liu still has this unusual tendency to crouch forehand defence, which is often effective but can be his weakness too that can be taken advantage of.
On paper Ahsan/Setiawan is the hot favourite for gold tomorrow. I'd say Liu/Qiu are not without any chances but probably less than 50%, maybe 40% is realistic. Whatever the outcome, Liu/Qiu have already performed beyond expectations, consider it mission accomplished , anything more is a dream come true.
With the way they were playing I believe they can beat Ahsan/Setiawan. Sad not to see the Japanese advance, but now I'm rooting for this pair...
Problem with this pair is their inconsistency. They're either really good, for one or two tournaments, or so-so for the rest of the time. Other than their AE 2013 win, they really haven't won much. Mind you, same can almost be said of Ko/Shin.
One of their frailty is that Liu is often out of balance in the front, as he bend his legs so much. If one alternate fast drive and drops, he could be in trouble.
