Bbn
Regular Member
Marc might not be player of LD's quality but he is a good player. He beat Hafiz and Chen Long enroute to the final of Denmark Open 2009. And he did beat Kashyap(the current Indian no 1) and CJ to reach the semifinal. Surely, he must have something in him to be able to beat these players. I do not know what exactly you expect MArc to do but he did also stretch players like Gade to 3 sets before(and beating Gade in some Euro championship before if I remember correctly), proving that he is not a player easy to play with.
LD is much more vulnerable than before? Can you highlight to me on which era of Lin Dan are you comparing to? 2009, when LD looked almost invincible just because he was well rested, have more time to train and only play less than 9 tournaments in a year(surely, participating less means that you will have less chances to lose for player of LD's calibre, was it not?)? If you are talking about LD in the era of pre-2008, my gut feeling said that LD in 2011 will most likely beat the LD of that past era as he is so much more a complete player than he was before(more crafty as well).
Regarding about some BCers claiming that LD losing his touch, I personally don't agree with that. I found that his touch around the net was exceptional during recent matches and I was quite surprised to find that LCW can't keep up with LD's netplay although the general consensus is LCW used to have better netplays years ago. LD definitely is one of the best around net if not the best(I don't think even Hidayat can beat him in this department). Which is why he rely less on his jumping smashes to score nowadays, because there's simply no need to.
Another thing is most of the players(especially the lower rank players) including Nguyen Tien Min/Chen Jin do not like to take LD on the net these days. From recent matches, they always lift or drive LD off the net. This is exactly when LD did his jump smashes because he knew these players won't want to play him at net. Probably that gives you an impression that LD was much more faster and more explossive when playing against lower rank players. The only few players that I see who dare to take LD on net was LCW, SS (this two did reasonably well although I still think LD has the better touch from AE or KO 2011) and Marc(I don't think he did quite well, but he knew he has no choice but to take that one chance in AE semifinal. Surprisingly, LD helped him by making some errors on net during the second set).
And I am not quite sure where the weak in the legs claim came from. I saw LD did plenty of jump smashes in AE finals, it's just that it wasn't as effective as before as LCW's defense was made of steel(or maybe thick lead) on that day. The struggle back to the court was partly due to LD's not being able to read :CW's shots as mentioned by my previous post and LCW kept the tempo very high in this game(even Ian and Gill mentioned that). So again I am not sure why there is a claim that those 2 was playing a slow tactical game came from. At least it didn't look like that to me.
That was what the match statistics show in AE 2011,LD won most of the net encounters, LCW won most of his points from overhead shots.
LD has to play tactically more than ever whilst LCW is still improving in skills and tactics.
let's hope that we dont have to wait too long to see it.. 
