Beijing Olympics part 3

I watched the table tennis final where Singapore played against China on 17 Aug 7.30pm.

The results were kind of expected; how can we expect to beat a big brother unless a miracle has occured?

I have mixed feelings. On 15 Aug, our team fought from 2.30pm till 6pm+ against South Korean team and finally won and got into the finals. Our players were armed with great determination and will to fight on till the last minute.

On 17 Aug, our team barely spent 2 hours and was already "booted out".

I learnt something from watching these games.

You can earn points (or marks) by 2 ways, namely (1) create chances to attack our opponents successfully and (2) creating chances for your opponents to make mistakes. Our players consistently made many mistakes and thus "giving" away points freely and easily to our opponents.

Our opponents did make some mistakes but being much more experienced and skillful than ours, they were able to minimize such occurrences. Thus our chances of getting points from their mistakes were greatly reduced.

Is our opponent such strong such that our flaws and weaknesses were all exposed?

I am not a table-tennis player. I merely shared my personal views.