Haha Justin, such an expected answer. So devoid of any objectivity anytime a chinese player is involved -and loses- (as outlines time and time and time again by other posters on this forum). Whenever a chinese player loses, it's always -in your mouth- a variation of "she/ he made too many errors" or "he/ she was so tired", it's strangely always about them losing their match rather than the other players winning. More surprising, or odd, is that you don't even seem to realize your own bias.
Btw Tai Tzu Ying WON her match against LXR today, + she has obviously improved her skills and evolved her game over the years (and notably cut down on the errors) ,and yes LXR was genuinely caught by surprise many times in this match, and finally yes TTY has shown in their recent encounters that she was able to dominate her as her 3 win over their 4 last encounters shows
Clearly, you're the one who is not objective, not seeing beyond the surface,and making conclusions based on superficial observations. And instead of countering my argument with reasoning, you resort to making accusations of my supposed bias, generalizing with " Whenever a chinese player loses, it's always -in your mouth- a variation of "she/ he made too many errors" or "he/ she was so tired", it's strangely always about them losing their match rather than the other players winning." - when you know jolly well that could not be the case as I only mentioned certain specific cases, not or never all Chinese players, eg Wang Zhengming of whom I've been critical for some time, Qiao Bin, sometimes Tian Houwei, occasionally Wang Yihan and Wang Shixian, a number of times Sun Yu, and even a few times none other than Li Xuerui's earlier defeats, but obviously you are blind to all of them.
In your previous post, you used the term 'dominate' - a strong word - not just played better. I'd go so far as to argue that in this match, it's not so much TTY playing better, but LXR playing much worse than normal, for some strange reason, and it has happened once before. We are all fully aware (I believe you are too) of LXR's attacking prowess and equally her defensive abilities no less - how often did we ever see LXR unable to move or left stranded as if she didn't see the opponent's shots coming time and again, if not because of some reasons revealed later or best known to herself ?
As for TTY, we're also quite aware of her strengths and weaknesses, deceptiveness is her speciaslty, no doubt - therefore, if she can dominate LXR as you claimed, then how come she doesn't have the results to show yet and instead often lost to players she is fancied to beat ? Talking about deceptiveness as a forte, I'm sure Intanon Ratchanok is no less impressive, yet nobody would say she dominates LXR (their H2H is 7-4 in LXR's favour), much less Wang Yihan against whom their H2H is still overwhelmingly in WYH's favour, 12-1.
Don't get me wrong, I've always held a high regard of TTY's game, just that I also believe she is one of the most error-prone and inconsistent players among the top 10 WS for the last 5 years or so. And that's exactly what's holding her back, and ,sorry to say, I don't believe she can suddenly improve by leaps and bounds, not for a once child prodigy who has been in the circuit for so many years already, esp when her weaknesses, such as her propensity to play overly fanciful, disguised or trick shots, being error-prone, etc, is like second nature to her. Well, perhaps, she may prove me wrong in future, but, at the moment, I'm doubtful.