How This 19 Year Old From France UPSET The World Number One

in the semi-finals of the 2024 Japan open the 19-year-old from France Alex Lan pulls through in a huge upset match against the world number one shiu Chi world number one well how exactly did he do it first we want to go over some adjustments that Alex's coach gave to him the first adjustment made by Alex was to focus on a shorter swing in the back the reason for this was to make sure he can follow up quickly after hitting a shorter swing enables you to recover quicker after you swing as you are using less of your body this is crucial for following up on shots and allows you to take the shuttle earlier look how the shorter swing enabled Alex to put pressure on shiqi in the midcourt and front Court often initiating the spin net and the drive battles [Music] rubber the second adjustment said by the coach was to play more deceptions the reason why you play deceptions is to break your opponent's Rhythm the more you can break their Rhythm the more effort they have to spend to get that Rhythm back if you look at this rally you can see that she makes the correctional split step [Music] [Music] this is very energy sapping especially when you start to account for the loss of body control from shei when lunging deep into the front [Music] Court the Foy looked at the L probably together was [Music] out and this is all on top of the fatigue that she has already built up from the Olympics and the rounds prior to playing Alex at the Japan open in this rally you can really see how low she takes the net big push SP these men the same can be said for Alex though in the first game Alex makes many Correctional split steps in anticipation of the back but seeing this shiu Chi plays back to the net many times with deception got enough on that one this time this breaks Alex's footwork in Rhythm and causes him to lose many points however in the interval between the first and second game Alex's coach tells him that if he Nets stay at the net because the most dangerous shot is if they play back to the net and when you play to the net stay there stay there yeah because the biggest like danger is when he plays back to in men's singles if you control the net you will win the game that is why in these rallies you can see Alex netting and ready to move back to the net here Alex is not too worried about his backc court if he continues to take the net high he can control shiu Chi watch him repeatedly Target she's forehand and anticipate the net if you take a look at his feet he is always ready to move forward this is the same as 2008 lindan [Music] the final adjustment is mental toughness while it may not be the most exciting it is the most important this is because the pace Alex is playing at is very difficult to sustain it requires a great deal of physical effort but also needs a lot of mental effort to tell yourself to keep the pace up when you get tired it is also very easy to make unforced errors however in this game Alex keeps his errors to a minimum and makes the points very difficult for she to earn because Alex was making these points difficult to earn and he was constantly playing these rallies at a fast pace making Shi Yuki chase the shuttle he was gradually dwindling down the Chinese players stamina thus leading to more unforced errors good call that from him there's also another point we want to mention that influenced the coach's decision- making and that was the drift based on the commentary the drift seemed to be blowing from the side nearest to us to the other side this made it harder for the player on the side closest to us to control the depth on their shots there was also a significant side drift going from right to left on your screen however we will mainly focus on the front to back drift we can see in the first set Alex loses because of his play style he is trying to control and move shiuchi around on the side that is more difficult to control due to the drift that one this time however in the third set he makes a significant adjustment before the 11 points interval Alex is on Full attack he's back in front by the way yes you Che a big push about these men did he notice the difference between these two styles the drift increases the speed of the shuttle exchanging control for more power and that is exactly what Alex did to get the lead on the worse end this ultimately gave him confidence on the other end [Music] these are the three points that stood out to us from Alex coach but we also want to give a little insight of our own into this there was a difference in shot speed between the two players especially in the back court Alex Lan had very fast shots that made it difficult for shiu Chi to control the bird the faster your shot the more difficult it will be for your opponent to control the shuttle W this played a big role in Alex's ability to control the net so easily in this match because she had to defend further back these men did he need to go for that I'm not sure he did thank you guys for watching 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