Well, they both were struggling with their serves really, but LYD more so. This is perhaps their biggest weakness at the moment, they are conceding so many points off the serve it's like having a handicap. It's difficult to be sure but I suspect LYD may be a little too conservative on the contact height of his low serve. YYS seems to be getting better but still not quite consistent enough. I’ve always considered there to be two main types of serves (for the low serve), one which is slightly deceptive, difficult to read/anticipate, making the receiver a fraction slower to react but sacrifices a little bit of consistency in doing so. This doesn’t need to be as tight to the net or have the absolute perfect trajectory as the receiver is a little slower to meet the shuttle so is often played with a little more margin (but only very slightly). Someone like KSS would fall into this category for me. The other type is the conventional serve that is far easier to read and relies on being tight to the net and have the perfect trajectory every time to prevent being attacked. This is the category where I would place LYD’s serve. He has a more “honest” looking serve that he must get millimetre perfect both in terms of trajectory and tightness to the net. But the new service height rule has played havoc on this as there is no room for error with this type of serve. This places even more pressure on his serve than before and causes him to make errors. So to counteract this he has been serving more flicks not just to keep his opponents guessing (as there’s no point given his serves are relatively easy to read) but to take the pressure off his low serve. I think the only way he can improve on this is to make adjustments to his service action and where he serves from as no matter how many times he practices his current serve, it won’t be under the same high pressure conditions as a real match. He needs something reliable under pressure that will deliver the shuttle consistently below tape height as the receiver contacts it. I think he should develop a newer less readable serve and experiment with serving from slightly different positions.
Not sure "old" is the right world to describe YYS. He seemed out of form and perhaps his fitness was questionable. I lost count of the number of times he fell to the ground mid-rally which probably suggests a lack of fitness. But yes, they are both slower and less consistent than before.
Funny you bring this up because I always thought LYD started this tumble serve KSS now uses regularly.
he did, but lyd was serving so blatantly illegally high when he was doing it. i don't think he can do it from the current legal height.
Certainly not a sure thing but with over 25,000 notional points, it would have been more than enough last year. On the other hand, of all the Super 500 events so far this year, 25,000 would only get you onto the qualifying list at 2 of the 5 and those 2 were before the Olympic qualifying period began. I wonder if they will bother flying to Hyderabad, given they are 6th on the reserve list. That's their last chance to pad their notional ranking before the Korean qualifying deadline.
They probably won’t and set their eyes on Akita and Chinese Taipei and hope it’s enough to get them into the European leg.
"Olympic gold medalist learns from another gold medalist" Also, now I understand better why Tony Gunawan was so successful. It's difficult to see his skill from old grainy videos.
Any chance of LYD partnering with Choi after the Olympics? They play together in national tournaments right? Play hard. Train harder.
better for lyd specifically? based on what? age, age difference, specific skill set, complimentary skill set, future career path as a pair, club affiliation, nat'l team standing...?