It never mattered much, with the slight exception that guys of 1,90m or more didn't use to be very prominent in MS, now there are a few very successful ones.
SOme perceive Gideon as the weaker link, but what opponents forgot is that Gideon work hard even on weekend when he come home to his house from PBSI Cipayung dorm. He would put hours on training with his veteran coach dad, Kurniahu. He also do weight exercises with private trainer. So their "perceived" weakness backfired when Gideon is having a good day, they are the one to beat. If they start slipping away from training hard like they're doing now, thinking they're already the best, that will be their weakness. They have to stay title hungry and aim for Olympic title.
I guess the Danes Boe and Mogensen kinda revealed their weakness is high lifts to the back, without the angle, it appears that their smashes are easier to defend than their net and counter-offense which the Chinese doubles pair showed ChiaBiao and HongWei demonstrated during the WC in Glasgow playing a style unseen from this pair to beat Gideon and Kevin.
Fernaldi is a fairly single-minded and technically weak player. It can be exploited, but it is quite hard to do so as their intensity is very high and most players cant defend high with consistently good shot quality (against them). Its also very hard to keep Sukamuljo at the back as they have very good rotations and even though he doesnt have a really good smash, he is the creative one of the two and will almost always succeed in provoking a weak reply or at least set up a rotation so that Fernaldi can go to the back and increase the pressure.
Sukamuljo currently 21 years old as he can do fast movement and consistent, just like the young Lee Yong Dae, but what if he getting older like after 25 years old over...
I wouldn't say Fernaldi is technically weak, he just isn't very creative and sticks to a game plan that's safe and repetitive. Sukamuljo is in stark contract to this, but to be as creative as Sukamuljo you need to play with someone predictable, and that's exactly what Fernaldi is in his play style (for better or for worse), but overall i personally think Fernaldi is good and he had admirable work ethic.
Fernaldi has a better smash than Ahsan. Ahsans smash is actually not great on a good, high lift, but he has very good follow-up movement and can smash with a good amount of power even on slighrly awkward return shots, so he can keep the pressure up. Regarding Fernaldi - his technique is fairly bad compared to other pros. Look how much he swings the racket on drives and defensive shots.....wayyy too long of a racket movement. He gets away with it most of the time, but it's similar to Kido keeping his racket around shin height at the net....sometimes the opponents punish it.
I don't really rate Fernaldi that much on his own either, but with Kevin he plays well and sets up his partner to win a lot of rallies. Sent from my SM-J500FN using Tapatalk
He was also a good partner for Kido at the time, since Kido lacked any real athleticism at that point and couldn't move enough in the back court, but still had his reading of the game and technical abilities to make a decent front court player, especially for an inexperienced player like Fernaldi at the time.
I think most people will think its Sukamuljo that make Fernaldi a good player. Its kinda true, Sukamuljo is special player. He has hands of thunder and lightning thought process. and when Kevin is 25, maybe he will be slower and Fernaldi as well. Maybe they wont win olympic, most likely they wont. Probably Kevin will get a new partner after TokyoOlympic. But who cares as long as they keep winning Superseries. and its their Bread&Butter , they knew this perfectly.They know SS is the livewire of athletes career and as long as they win, money will keep flowing. We get entertained too. Thats why they dont feel disappointed losing at WC, to bounce back at Korea&Japan. and luckily they were not the no 1 seed at that time. Maybe in the end its fair, to win many titles but the not the first seed. Even though the ranking was wrong at that moment. Too bad for Li/Liu who maybe cant recover from that mental. Its bad when first seed lost at (technically) first round. Bao/Tang never recovered after the 2014WC.
You get this completely wrong. As for the Indonesian concerns, winning olympics is much much much more important than having various SS titles. I don't think their performance will drop significantly until the olympics though and as for now, they should be the favorite to get the gold medal. They are the one who has the most SS in the past few years compared to other competitors, still at the initial phase of being at their peak, and overall has good H2H against all of the other contenders. It is just a matter of maintaining their form and confidence, as well as the help from the Indonesian back-up player to losen the pressure on them later on at the big events. I think they lost at WC (and Sudirman Cup) because people already start looking at them and expecting results. This is what they have to work on before Tokyo.
But the truth is you dont define your career on 1 olympic title. Bao/Tang is the best WD pair at 2013-2014 yet they didnt win Olympic. We are not future reader. We dont want them to be dissapointed when they dont win Olympic. Its not everything, its just one tournament. If can win it of course great. and yes they deserve it. By 2020, they will be the pair with the most SS (only left BoeMogensen now).
No no, you dont define a career from one olympic. But a failure will certainly a big disappointment in for an Indonesian when you are already at that spot that Kev/Gid having at the moment. It will be like Liliyana Natsir before she finally won it in Rio. Furthermore, Indonesia has a gold medal tradition in badminton, and you can expect them to be at the forefront to lead the Indonesian to win a gold in Tokyo. It is more than a tournament, it is place where you bring honour to your nation and make them proud and it is more than their career. That is the olympics for the top Indonesian shuttlers.
Yeah no he isn't. Underrated, that is. He is a very, very good fit with Kevin, but on his own merit he just isn't great. Huge technical flaws, no exceptional reading of the game or creative plays, he is solid, fast and aggressive - a perfect complement to Kevin's aggression and exceptionally fast play style. Put Fernaldi with any other of the current Indonesian MD players, and they wont win a single PSS/WC/OG type event, and probably not even one of the worse SS ones (like...how is the French Open still a SS? It's been worse than any number of GPG events for years now...). Side note, can Fernaldi please serve just a bit higher? I want to see whether service judges are gonna call a service fault when he finally manages to catch his racket on his chin. Or if they're gonna continue sitting there in their deluded fantasy where the waist is somewhere 5-10cm below the shoulders.
He did win an SS with Kido though. But yeah it's not now and it's the one you called worse SS. #Tapatalk
Yeah, although the field that year was ridiculously weak for a SS tournament. Its the one those guys who cant win anything else tend to win (Hidayat, D. Liew,...). Also, I do think he (and random Indonesian player X) could upset once in a while, but never be consistently Top4. The difference maker is Kevin Sukamuljo all the way, and even he may not be this successful with someone else or in 1,5 years....these guys remind me a lot of Koo and Tan and how they burst onto the scene and played great aggressive badminton, only to cool off quickly and fade into obscurity less than 4 years after their first tournament win (with inconsistency setting in way earlier, already a year after iirc. Cmiiw).
