In the table tennis Asian Cup women’s singles final that ended in February 2025, the world’s top-ranked Chinese table tennis team Sun Yingsha did not play well, did not win a game, 0-4 lost to teammate Wang Manyu (world No. 2), triggering a heated debate among fans, in which some people put forward such a point of view, that is, the height of Sun Yingsha’s development is limited, and at the same time also led to the tragic loss of her defeat in the Asian Cup against Wang Manyu important reason, the Asian Cup, and the Chinese table tennis team is the best team in the world, and the Chinese table tennis team has been the best team. So is this argument reasonable? Let us analyse it in depth.
First of all, it is an objective fact that height does have an impact on a table tennis player’s technique and tactics.
Any athlete has to create his or her own tactical system according to his or her specific physical condition, not only in table tennis, but also in other sports, and height is undoubtedly one of the most important considerations, for example, Lionel Messi does not have an advantage in terms of height, but also has to make use of his strengths and avoid his weaknesses in the course of the game.
Table tennis, no matter how tall or short, have been born world champion, Olympic champion, we can also obviously see that their technical and tactical system is very different: usually taller people have more power, guarding the table area is wide, so the defence is relatively easy, the two big angles are also more threatening, but the middle position is relatively weak, the action of the restoration will also be affected; shorter people action is more flexible, faster, but guarding the table area is small, so the It will be more difficult to be mobilised for defence.
Secondly, as the player grows older, the shorter player does add some trouble.
As said before, the advantage of short players is that they are faster and more flexible, although the defence is relatively more disadvantageous, they are more likely to enter the active attack section, and as we all know, the best defence is attack, so we can see that many athletes with a small stature choose to play pellet fast attack, for example, Wang Tao, Liu Guoliang, Deng Yaping, and ito mima, etc., and they believe in the principle of attacking instead of defending, which can give full play to their advantages.
However, with the passage of time, it is true that the above athletes are relatively more prone to go downhill, because the older they get, the slower their body’s reaction function will be, and the slower their speed of attack will be, which makes it easy for them to fall into passive defence because their attack is not as threatening as they used to be, but defence is not their own advantage, and thus they fall into a passive situation, and examples of this abound.
However, it should be noted that Sun has two advantages that traditional fast break players do not have.
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First, the traditional fast attack athletes career ‘early rise and early fall’ is the root cause of the playing style decision, not height, just because their height is more suitable for fast attack route; but Sun Yingsha is not a traditional fast attack athletes, but a real two-sided reverse rubber looping playing style players, essentially with the tall Wang Manyu, Hayata Hina and others, so she can circumvent many of the shortcomings of the traditional fast break.
Secondly, Sun Yingsha just not tall, but definitely not very short, if she is as tall as ito mima can not manage the two-side backglue looping technology, and the facts have proved that she can be very good to play out the advantages of their own style of play, but also come out of a different from the development of Wang Manyu, Hayata Hina and others, this is obvious to all.
Looking ahead, Sun Yingsha will still have ways to circumvent the limitations posed by her height, and there is no need to overemphasise this issue.
Although Sun may experience situations such as slower reactions and speed as she gets older, this is not an insurmountable problem for her. After all, taller players also slow down, only that they can defend more comfortably, but Sun can still be a relatively more proactive player.
In addition, proactive athletes will pay more attention to tactical planning, and as she grows older, Sun Yingsha will be able to learn more efficient tactics through her experience – she may not have thought about it so much when she was young and ‘relied’ on her good health, but she can still be a proactive player. When she gets older and has more experience, she may have more mature tactical thinking, which can make up for her deficiencies in defence and table protection: In summary, I think the impact of height on Sun Yingsha is definitely not as big as many netizens have speculated.
