Fikri/Maulana won the Hyderabad Open. In the final, they beat the Korean pair that had beaten Ou/Zhang. Tomorrow is hence a repeat of the Hyderabad final, since Na/Wang beat the Germans. Both are made up of good players but certainly not household names. Same goes for Ou, no matter how famous Zhang is.
So far Ou Xuanyi is still far from being a reasonably stable and consistent MD player yet partnering Zhang Nan, probably feeling the pressure to live up to his legendary senior's expectation in the race to qualify for Tokyo 2020. Apparently, playing one tournament after another practically non-stop in a desperate attempt to garner as many ranking points as possible in the shortest possible time is beginning to take a toll on this relatively new pair. In their match with the INA Fikri/Maulana earlier today at the Viet Open, I noticed Ou still making easy mistakes now and then.
I'm not sure it's the pressure to live up to expectation with Ou. I have seen him played with his former partner Ren previously. It's just his level of quality or playing style. ZN is probably the oldest CHN MD player, but he is by far the better than the rest. All CHN MD players are more or less the same in their approach. Only ZN and LYC to some extent are playing good quality MD. Other than that, everyone's all power and speed. Rather than finding ZN a better or more appropriate partner when he is still very much able, they just set him aside and give random leftover players for him to mentor and to experiment (while wasting both his time and talent). I suspect it was just a gamble by the coaches if somehow ZN could pull some miracles off his hat with Ou in a short time (for Olympics at the least) again like he did with LC at WC 2017. I suppose CHN team realized and doubted the quality of their MD pairs, so much that they hired Korean coaches to help them "fix" it.
Still don't get why they don't partner him with zheng siwei. Double duty was never a problem for Zhang Nan. Why should it for zheng siwei.
This is basically true. However, when Zhang Nan was at his mixed doubles peak and at the same age as Zheng is now, he was playing very little men's doubles. In 2010, he played 13 tournaments in MD, but then in 2011, he was down to 5, 6 in 2012, 6 in 2013, and then in 2014, he became a MD specialist again and a major factor may have been the needs of the men's doubles squad. Also, Zhang Nan always exhibited some talent in MD. Zheng has had lots of opportunities, although they haven't kept him in a pairing for very long. Still, he hasn't made much of an impact when he has competed. His last MD title was when he was 18, at a GPG. Also, Zheng is playing at a time when all but 3 of the top XD men have stopped playing MD. For Zhang, there was a noticeable change from 2010 to 2011. In 2010, there were only 2 or 3 top ten XD men who specialized (Laybourn, Mateusiak, and Natsir's tag team partners). By the end of 2011, you had Xu Chen, Shintaro Ikeda, Joachim Fischer Nielsen, and Chan Peng Soon, in addition to Laybourn, and Ahmad and Zhang Nan was basically joining them.
Part of that might have been that almost all the specialists you listed had no chance in hell of forming a tournament winning MD pair idk, maybe Laybourn. But the others had significant weaknesses that were too exposed in MD. Zheng probably can't do double duty well. He relies very heavily on his speed. If he were to play two events, I suspect that not only would his performance drop through a tournament week, he also would start experiencing wear and tear rather quickly. I think CHN may see ZN as a lesson in not overworking their players and want to prevent a repeat - he never seems to play without some sort of tape anymore, his elbow seems to be a constant problem and his knee is also a bit wonky from the looks of it...
Ou/Zhang will play Kim/Park today for qualification. If they made it through, they will play Fajar/Rian tomorrow. I remember Kim Won ho been playing with different partners before, is Park his steady partner now?
Ou/Zhang Denmark Open draw R1 : Chew/Chew R2 : He/Tan or Fajar/Rian Will update the QF match after R2's result is out.. Judging from their performances so far, I'm not confident they will make it through R2
Ou/Zhang survived Huang/Liu and the final match both in 3 games to win the Yuzu Indonesia Masters Super 100 title here. Second Super 100 title for this pair. Nothing much to add about this pair's development, just admire ZN's patience and tolerance level. They have withdrawn from FO, guess we'll see how they fare in DO next. Before that, Ou/Zhang will play in Dutch Open Super 100. They sure are flying everywhere and are playing in all tournaments available to gain enough points for.. what? I wonder if this partnership would be a longer one or just a temporary senior guiding the junior thing.
Any news why they have withdrawn from FO ? There were hardly any mistakes in his game today, the Japanese targeted Ou for larger portion of the third game (read as 90% ) yet it was Zhang Nan's patience and class that set them apart. Nevertheless, there were a few excellent lifts from Ou and a few sparks here and there, but talk about the consecutive service errors in G3 towards the end. At Match point you make a service error,especially immediately after your opponents made a service error is inexcusable. Wonder why aren't the Chinese pairing him up with Zheng Si Wei will be interesting.
A source said that some CHN players withdrew from FO to participate in some Military Games. Wang/Huang, He/Tan, Huang/Liu, Ou/Zhang and some others. Yeah, Ou could be pretty good in flat exchange, yet I haven't seen any improvement or difference in Ou's game since they started partnering up. I don't have ZN's patience which seems to be bottomless. I suspect they don't want to risk their chance of getting XD gold medal in Olympics next year by having ZSW doing double duties like ZN did in 2016.
As mentioned, they probably don't want to jeopardize the XD chances by having ZSW play 2 events - but also, he's not that great at MD. He's very fast, but his weak points get more exposed in MD, and he's really one-dimensional, which already gets exploited from time to time. He would not do well against the current 2 best INA pairs imop, both Kevin and Hendra are excellent at changing the pace and blocking softly, and ZSW tends to struggle when the pace is low.
Personally, after watching Huang Kaixiang played a few times on and off, I'm toying with the idea that he could be a better partner for Zhang Nan than Ou Xuanyi. Of course, it's too late now for the Tokyo OG QF. No doubt, he doesn't have a power smash at the rear court, unlike Ou Xuanyi, but I feel he is an intelligent, thinking player and can become a doubles partner closer to Zhang Nan's style and strengths. In fact, I've previously mentioned HKX as one of the possible candidates for Liu Cheng's replacement as Zhang Nan's MD partner. Perhaps, if Ou XY turns out to be not too promising during the OG QF cycle, Huang KX may be considered for experimentation in the future. Just my opinion.
Ou/Zhang's rank has risen up to 37 this week while Liu/Zhang's still 19 after all this time If they win this Dutch Open, there is a high possibility they will reach within top 30. Still a long way to go..
The higher you go, the harder the progression...they need results in big tournaments soon if they want to even have a chance (remember, they need Top8). Liu/Zhang will decay something fierce as soon as 1-2 bigger results drop out
Yeah I know At least now they can qualify to Super 1000 which have highest ranking points (besides WC and WTF) so higher chances to score more points. But they are pulled out of FO Guess the team need Han/Zhou to defend their title there, still..
Ou/Zhang lost the SF in Dutch Open. So I guess they won't reach top 30 yet next week. Hope they will do better in DO.
Nope, they didn't do better in DO. They lost in R1 to the Chews. Guess flying around the world to play in all available tournaments finally tired ZN out. He hadn't played that well since Dutch Open Oh, come on Ou, step up!!
