PETALING JAYA: China men’s doubles pair Liu Yuchen-Ou Xuanyi’s stunning rise to ninth in the world rankings spell trouble to their rivals ahead of a pivotal year.
Yuchen-Xuanyi were only paired together at the beginning of this year after Yuchen’s former partner Li Junhui retired from the sport due to injury.
Yuchen had won a silver medal with Junhui at the Tokyo Olympics.
And he seemed to have brought the good form into his new partnership with Xuanyi after the duo capped a fine year by capturing the World Tour Finals crown recently.
Yuchen-Xuanyi had also won the Indonesian Open in June and Australian Open last month.
The pair had performed well in the German Open (March) and Korean Masters (April) where they finished as runners-up.
Ominously for their rivals, they are peaking at the right time as they prepare for a crucial year with qualification for the Paris 2024 Olympics set to begin in May.
“We’re very happy to win the World Tour Finals, it was one of our goals. This is a good ending for us for the year, and puts us in a good frame of mind for 2023. Our hard work has been rewarded,” said Yuchen on the official BWF website after brilliantly upstaging Indonesian veterans and world No. 5 Mohd Ahsan-Hendra Setiawan 21-17, 19-21, 21-12 in the final.
Xuanyi warned that they could get even better.
“This is the first year of our partnership. We played better and better in the second half of the year. We still have a lot of room for improvement,” said Xuanyi.
Besides Yuchen-Xuanyi, the other Chinese pairings who will be fighting for Olympic berths are Japan Open winners Liang Weikeng-Wang Chang (No. 20), He Jiting-Zhou Haodong (No. 24) and Ren Xiangyu-Tan Qiang (No. 33).
