National coaching director Rexy Mainaky attributed the opening match losses to Aaron Chia-Soh Wooi Yik & Chen Tang Jie-Toh Ee Wei as the main reason for their premature exit at the World Tour Finals (WTF).

Both pairs crashed out in the group stage after only notching one win between them in a total of six group matches for both the men’s and mixed doubles.

That win came through Chen-Toh who did well to stun top Japanese pair Yuta Watanabe-Arisa Higashino, but they failed to make it to the semi-finals after losing their opening and final group match.

Chia-Soh, meanwhile, lost all three group matches after playing in the rubber game in all of them.

Rexy pinpointed a slow start for both pairs which led to their early exit.

“For Aaron-Wooi Yik, it was a pity as I thought they could have done better in their opening game (against Takuro Hoki-Yugo Kobayashi). Should they have won, it may have changed how their tournament went after that.

“I thought they were too defensive, and they did not transition faster from defence to attack.

“It was the same for Tang Jie-Ee Wei who had a poor first match (lost 10-21, 13-21 against Feng Yan Zhe-Huang Dong Ping). They seemed to have run out of ideas and were not playing like a team.

“They played well in the second match to win, but couldn’t take the deciding match after Toh looked tired and Chen was undecided about what shots to play,” said Rexy.

The Indonesian former shuttler nonetheless reiterated that their performance will not affect their participation in tournaments at the start of next year.

January kicks off a gruelling month with the Malaysia & India Open before heading to Indonesia and Thailand for the Masters events.

The Asia Team Championships taking place in Selangor will be one of the highlights of February, before the French Open & All England comes along in March.