The 2024 Table Tennis WTT Incheon Championships has come to an end, and the Chinese table tennis team has mixed feelings, happy that they finally took the title, but worried that Fan Zhendong, an important candidate for the Paris Olympics, suffered a defeat in a foreign war, and crashed out in the semi-finals against Brazilian Hugo in a 2-4 blowout, and if not for Liang Jingkun’s 4-1 win in the finals, the title of the tournament would have been lost to someone else.
Many fans have questioned why Hugo, whom Fan Zhendong could not handle, was taken down by Liang Jingkun, who is not as good as him in terms of performance and ranking. Personally, I think there are three main reasons.
Firstly, the quality of Liang Jingkun's hold-to-hold play is more secure than that of Fan Zhendong.
Since the second half of last year, Fan Zhendong’s attacking quality in the hold has declined significantly, and he has been putting more effort in controlling the first three strokes. We are not sure whether this is a deliberate change or a last resort due to the decline in his own strength, but it is undeniable that in the semi-final match with Hugo, Fan Zhendong’s hold was not an advantage.
On the contrary, Liang Jingkun has maintained a very high quality of veneer in recent years, and always insisted on a hard-hitting strategy in the face of Hugo in the final, even if he was once suppressed by his opponent’s powerful looping, he still rose to the challenge, and the sense of oppression he created for his opponent was stronger than that of Fan Zhendong: it is not an exaggeration to say that, if you can make this kind of athlete, like Hugo, less comfortable with his power to attack, you’ll have half of the match won.
Secondly, Liang Jingkun's tactics in dealing with Hugo were more varied than Fan Zhendong's. In the match between Fan and Hugo, Liang Jingkun's tactics were more varied.
In the match between Fan Zhendong and Hugo, we could see that he was continuing the Chinese table tennis team’s usual method of dealing with European and American backhand athletes, which is to rub and swing the opponent’s forehand short near the table, so as to prevent the opponent from using backhand banana flip attack quickly, however, this time, Hugo’s performance was surprising, not only could he force a backhand attack, but also his forehand grabbed the punch with the control of the first three boards was also a great improvement compared to the previous one. These changes have caught Fan Zhendong off guard.
On the other hand, Liang Jingkun, while insisting on a strong confrontation, was also using different methods to disrupt Hugo, not sticking to a fixed template, and looked relatively calm no matter whether he was leading or trailing, and was more prepared in all aspects of serving, receiving, in-form boarding, and holding in the middle and far end of the table, which is something that Fan Zhendong did not do.
Finally, the two encountered Hugo at different points in time in fact, in the objective also has a certain impact.
Fan Zhendong is the semi-final first encounter Hugo, at this time his impression of the latter may still be stuck in the past few years have never won their own record, but ignored the Hugo this tournament in the forehand, on-stage control and other aspects of the game have improved greatly, and the state of the very good, even won the Hayasuke Togami, Leblanc brothers, so there is a clear lack of preparation, came up to the loss of three consecutive games, and then want to catch up with the pressure on the score will be very big.
And Liang Jingkun is after a final with Hugo, at this point he already knows that the opponent is not what it used to be, at least can Fan Zhendong to pull down, so absolutely can not be viewed with the old eyes, on the difficulties of the preparation of the natural and more adequate: a typical encounter, a is prepared, the two people’s mentality is completely different, if you switch their positions, the result may not be the same.
Overall, also facing Hugo, Liang Jingkun is better than his teammate in terms of both technical and tactical use and willpower, so I hope that Fan Zhendong will learn from his mistakes and strive to beat his rival and prove himself again in the next tournament!
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