‘Daddies’ Prove Elusive to Germans Once Again
Having fallen to their third straight defeat this year to Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan, Mark Lamsfuss and Marvin Seidel were deep in thought at how the No.4 seeds had eluded their grasp yet again.
· Dev Sukumar
At their last encounter in Switzerland, the Germans had taken a game off the Indonesians. Yesterday they did well to erase an 8-14 deficit, but Ahsan and Setiawan – called ‘Daddies’ by their fans - again drew upon their considerable range of skills to close it out 21-16 21-17.
“Hendra especially is very good at the net, he’s reading the game well,” said Seidel. “Even when you make the net cord he’s right there and putting it back with high quality. That’s where we struggle a lot, especially when there are good shots we cannot recover from them, but they can, and that’s why it’s three-four points in the end.”
The pressure the Indonesians apply at the outset of every rally is hard to counter, said Lamsfuss: “They’re very good at the serve situations, so sometimes it’s for us the key, and they’re better and we cannot get positives out of it. They’re (also) better in the drive situations, that’s why they’ve now beaten us thrice in a row.