This was said in an understatement, coupled with the gesture of him deliberately holding his arms and raising his head slightly, it actually seemed quite confident.
"What on earth are you thinking?" The coach of the team complained secretly afterward, "Obviously you made a good promise to me before the expedition, but suddenly you started acting stupid again. Are you keeping a low profile in singles as you promised?"
Faced with his old partner for many years, Mizutori Hato put aside his arrogance and sighed, "I just boasted, but I am also riding a tiger..."
"Don't come here." The coach glared at him. "Mixed doubles is mixed doubles, singles is singles, what's so easy about it?"
Mizutori Hato was exposed, so he spoke his mind, "I didn't dare to say nonsense at first, but in this group... I really think I have a chance to enter the finals."
There are not many Men's Singles contestants this time. Basically, all the strong players are from China Table Tennis. Together with Mizutori Hato, Liang Kunpeng, Fan Xiaodong and Xiao Fei are placed in the lower half. Mizutori Hato has carefully calculated. First of all, Liang Kunpeng doesn't need to think about it, because Liang Kunpeng will play Xiao Fei in the first round in the afternoon, and he will probably be eliminated by Xiao Fei.
And Mizutori Hato played Fan Xiaodong in the first round.
Is Fan Xiaodong strong? He is obviously very strong. Although he has only participated in one world competition since his debut, his performance was so amazing that he was compared with Wang Chao and became the twin stars of the new generation.
There are a lot of people in the world table tennis world who believe that Fan Xiaodong is already stronger than Xiao Fei Lin Li Bai Feng and is the favorite to win this year's championship.
But Mizutori Hato is not a follower of others. After careful analysis, he believes that Fan Xiaodong may really be able to beat Xiao Fei Lin Li and Bai Feng, but he should not be able to beat himself.
This is not blind confidence, but an objective conclusion he came to after watching all the game videos of Fan Xiaodong.
Mizutori Hato believes in style restraint, and he believes that he is Fan Xiaodong's nemesis.
The strongest point of Fan Xiaodong is its strength, followed by its feel, then its balance ability, and finally its lack of obvious shortcomings.
As for these four advantages, Mizutori Hato believes that they can all be resolved.
The first is strength.
Fan Xiaodong's violent style of play is most restrained by his opponents who share the same violent style of play. The reason why he played so amazingly in his debut match is precisely because the two powerful opponents he encountered before the finals, Sissifield and Hook, are both typical violent turtles.
A violent duel is like a spark crashing into the earth. There is no need to fake it. The side with a slightly lower level of violence will definitely be shattered to pieces. But in fact, this kind of duel itself does not have much technical content.
Therefore, Mizutori Hato believes that Fan Xiaodong's current fame is partly due to luck. He drew the lots well and arranged the lineup well.
When facing the non-violent play style of Wang Chao in the finals, Fan Xiaodong clearly showed his timidity. After losing in all non-violent battles, he was forced to enter the full defense stage, but he couldn't even defend against full defense, so he lost miserably in the end.
Facts have proved that Fan Xiaodong's violence is not very effective against cerebral players.
It just so happens that Mizutori Hato is a typical cerebral player.
Then there's the feel.
Mizutori Hato admits that his feel is slightly inferior to Wang Chao, but compared to Fan Xiaodong, he thinks he still has some advantages.
The feel advantage doesn't matter how big it is, only whether it exists. Since it exists, Fan Xiaodong doesn't dare to compete with itself, that's enough.
Next is the ability to balance.
This is indeed the strength of Fan Xiaodong, which is almost unmatched by anyone in the world, but Mizutori Hato does not need to compete with him for balance, because Mizutori Hato is tall and has long legs, and is naturally equipped with a large protective platform. In addition, with his high awareness and good golf IQ, he moves less than ordinary players during the game, and it is easier to maintain balance.
For balance, as long as it can match his own attack power, it is enough. It is not necessary to be that good. After all, his old waist cannot withstand too intense a fight. Instead of worrying about the body being unbalanced, it is better to worry about the body slipping to the waist before losing balance.
Finally, there is the issue of shortcomings.
Of course, Mizutori Hato has no obvious shortcomings. Like Bayer, one is known as the European Little Sun Tianlong and the other is known as the Asian Little Sun Tianlong. They are both masters of the technical stream. At best, they have not reached the master level. If he really wants to compete with Fan Xiaodong in terms of technology, he thinks he has a great advantage.
To sum up, Mizutori Hato feels that he can completely copy the way Wang Chao beat Fan Xiaodong and win easily.
And once Fan Xiaodong is defeated, the only remaining opponent in the second half will be Xiao Fei.
Xiao Fei is a perennial World Ranking Second. Logically speaking, it should be more difficult to deal with than Lin Li and Bai Feng. However, in fact, the history of fighting in the past many years shows that Mizutori Hato has a slightly higher chance of winning against Xiao Fei.
This is because Mizutori Hato has an excellent feel. It is good at mobilizing large angles, good at hitting landing points, and good at focusing on the opponent's weaknesses.
However, Xiao Fei's play style has extremely obvious loopholes.
This flaw is exactly what I mentioned many times before, regarding his Great Python Turn-like forehand kill.
This kill made him invincible in doubles and became the absolute main attacker, but it also made him suffer from speed and rhythm countless times in singles.
To put it simply, if you can't block him, he will immediately fall into absolute passivity.
And if you can't stop him, then he is a towering and unconquerable mountain.
The extreme situation of polarization is vividly reflected in Xiao Fei.
Xiao Fei is probably the most afraid of being kicked back among the top players in the world.
But Mizutori Hato is quite good at returning the ball.
One of the most famous bad-mouthed incidents of Mizutori Hato was that in the team stage of the three major tournaments in a certain year, he first defeated Xiao Fei head-on, then openly mocked him, and then raised his middle finger to provoke. This behavior completely angered the Chinese table tennis generals.
The person in charge of leading the team at that time was Cai Guodong. Old Cai got mad on the spot and shouted at the main players of the Chinese Table Tennis Team: "Fight him to death, beat him 11:0, shave his head, don't let them live!"
Then Old Cai was politely kicked out by the referee because he was too emotional and disrupted the order of the field.
Then Sun Tianlong played and gave Mizutori Hato a beautiful bald head without any outside guidance. In that era when no one shaved their heads in international competitions, this bald head directly made Mizutori Hato a laughing stock in the world table tennis world.
After the event was completely over, Mizutori Hato accepted an interview and ridiculed Sun Tianlong's racket sponge for not complying with International Table Tennis Federation's competition rules. The equipment was cheating and he could not win. Sun Tianlong simultaneously accepted an interview and said that he would try his best to give Mizutori Hato a bald head next time he meets him.
This is the whole story from when Mizutori Hato was hunted down by Sun Tianlong to the present day.
When most people talk about this story, they talk about Old Cai's temperament and Sun Tianlong's domineering attitude, but very few people notice one thing: Mizutori Hato, who was still ranked in the 30s in the world at the time, was able to defeat Xiao Fei, who is World Ranking Second. This is a very amazing thing in itself.
In fact, Mizutori Hato's style is indeed somewhat restrained than Xiao Fei's.
"So, I really have a chance to enter the finals." Mizutori Hato is quite hopeful, because he has been troubled by Huaping's pursuit order, and he really hasn't had a good ranking for a long time. "If nothing else happens, my opponent in the finals is either Lin Li or Bai Feng. Both of them have been sluggish in recent years. I even have a chance to win."
Mizutori Hato's dream was very beautiful, but two and a half hours later, at 1:30 that afternoon, the cruel reality slapped him hard, completely waking him up from his sweet dream.
In just 20 minutes, he was beaten to death by Fan Xiaodong 4:0.
Fan Xiaodong This kid looks low-key, but he actually has a fierce spirit.
He listened to Mizutori Hato's interview, but his focus was not on Mizutori Hato's desire to win singles runner-up, but on Mizutori Hato's statement that Wang Chao was vulnerable.
Although Swedish Open lost to Wang Chao, he is convinced by Wang Chao. The two of them have a very good relationship in private, especially in After Qin Huachang left the team, there was no one to listen to him every day and tell him to be careful about Wang Chao, so he followed his inner instructions and directly showed his heart to Wang Chao.
These days, although Wang Chao has been practicing mixed doubles, he still communicates with Fan Xiaodong, and even made a lot of suggestions on Fan Xiaodong's singles training. These suggestions were eventually fed back to his temporary coach Sun Tianlong by Fan Xiaodong, and were recognized by Sun Tianlong one by one and implemented into his actual training.
Therefore, Wang Chao has a very complicated identity for Fan Xiaodong. He is also a teacher, a friend, and a rival. He wants to defeat Brother Chao in his heart, but he does not allow others to say bad things about Brother Chao.
Especially a notorious guy who was ordered to kill him by two generations of Huaping leaders more than ten years ago.
What else is there to say? Shoot him to death!
Fan Xiaodong started very hard.
At the beginning of the game, Mizutori Hato was quite confident. As analyzed before the game, he felt he could win.
But the first ball blindsided him.
He was lucky enough to get the right to serve, and he sent a solid short backspin. He planned to imitate Wang Chao's playing style and teach Fan Xiaodong how to behave with the small ball in the table.
But Fan Xiaodong immediately picked it up, which shocked Mizutori Hato.
Fortunately, the challenge failed.
So Mizutori Hato sent short backspin again, and still wanted to teach Fan Xiaodong how to behave in the short game.
As a result, Fan Xiaodong challenged him again and successfully beat him to death this time.
At this time, Mizutori Hato hadn't realized the seriousness of the problem. He thought, well, the young man is angry, so come up and do two hard ones first. It doesn't matter. We will fight you after you vent your anger.
Then Fan Xiaodong serves, also with short backspin.
Mizutori Hato is very satisfied, the short swing is perfect, and I still plan to teach people how to be a good person.
But Fan Xiaodong challenged again and failed.
Fan Xiaodong's second serve, short backspin.
Mizutori Hato swing short.
Fan Xiaodong backhand twist, successful.
Four balls passed, 2:2 tied, but Mizutori Hato was a little anxious.
He plays technical ball, and he hopes to tie up Fan Xiaodong's offensive hands and feet in a reasonable way and play artistic table tennis with technical content.
But Fan Xiaodong obviously just wants to have fun and do it as soon as he comes up. It doesn't matter whether he succeeds or not. He has to hold on to the board first. Anyway, whether you win or lose, it all depends on my board and has nothing to do with your skills.
This makes Mizutori Hato feel helpless.
But he still didn't realize the seriousness of the problem at this time. What he was thinking was, it won't last long, if you want to fight, just fight. When you get tired of fighting, it will be my turn to get angry.
What's more, your success rate in fighting is only mediocre. Four balls turned into two, which is only 50%.
On the fifth ball, Mizutori Hato served short backspin, and Fan Xiaodong scored with a direct backhand twist.
In the sixth ball, Mizutori Hato served short backspin, and Fan Xiaodong scored directly with a forehand.
In the seventh ball, Fan Xiaodong sent short backspin, Mizutori Hato swung short, and Fan Xiaodong directly scored with a backhand twist.
On the eighth ball, Fan Xiaodong directly Sneak Long Serve, Mizutori Hato stepped back from the table and pulled back, Fan Xiaodong followed the table and scored directly with a forehand blast.
In the blink of an eye, 2:2 turned into 6:2.
At this moment, Mizutori Hato suddenly realized something: isn't the guy opposite him slow to warm up?
So, the reason why the success rate of the first four fighting balls was 50% was actually because he was in poor condition?
And now with these four goals, he is in better condition, so the success rate is directly 100%?
Mizutori Hato In an instant, he broke into a cold sweat.
He has always boasted that his serving skills are very good, but for him to serve such a good ball and his opponent would pick it up casually, this is a big problem and can be said to be unreasonable.
Although contemporary table tennis technology nominally means that the whole Taiwan can attack without blind spots, after all, there are still very few serve attacks. If even the short backspin that you send out in the most cautious way can be directly kicked off, then how can you hit the ball? What other advantages does the server have?
Mizutori Hato decided to change his tactics. Since short backspin is dangerous, let's try sending the ball to the baseline.
Then he received an even more vicious blow.
Theoretically speaking, any professional player can directly force the ball to attack the ball. The only difference is that those who are not skilled enough to pull the ball are prone to backspin, while those who are not strong enough sometimes cannot pull the ball with too much spin.
And Fan Xiaodong has this kind of natural power, and also has good enough skills and feel. He can pull this kind of ball really accurately.
So the game directly entered the stage where Fan Xiaodong attacked wildly and Mizutori Hato defended fiercely.
This is actually the expected pattern of Mizutori Hato. According to his plan, he wants to learn from Wang Chao and make Fan Xiaodong collapse on its own after being unable to attack for a long time.
But he never expected that he would be unable to stop it.
Yes, he can't stop it...
He thought he could perfectly block every blast of Fan Xiaodong like Wang Chao, but in fact, he still overestimated himself.
Wang Chao's defense is based on a lot of prediction, and this prediction largely depends on his understanding of Fan Xiaodong and his analysis of Fan Xiaodong's ball path.
Mizutori Hato thought that he could analyze all of Fan Xiaodong's shots and make all predictions correctly, but in fact, he overestimated the huge gap in strategic and tactical vision between himself and Wang Chao.
He's just a smart player, that's all.
Wang Chao was an extremely famous commander in his previous life. Even the disciples he trained could beat up Mizutori Hato.
Mizutori Hato feels that he can imitate Wang Chao. In a sense, it is because he does not know how big the gap between the two sides is.
To put it simply, the ignorant are fearless.
The most important thing is that Fan Xiaodong is also making progress.
Fan Xiaodong was defended by Wang Chao in the finals of Swedish Open. Of course, he has to make improvements after returning, and the simplest change is to add more routines to the offense.
Attack actually only consists of a few factors, strength, placement, rotation, deception. No matter how smart Fan Xiaodong was in the past, he lacked competition experience after all, and if you don't really suffer from many things, you won't feel the pain. And when Fan Xiaodong officially lost in the Swedish Open finals, the regret of losing the gold medal will strongly stimulate him and make him determined enough to improve those incurable diseases that he was unwilling to improve before.
So Fan Xiaodong has learned a lot of particularly awkward playing styles in the past two months.
For example, I am obviously very comfortable rushing to a certain point, but I don't want to. I want to turn my wrist over and twist my arm. I would rather weaken a little bit of strength, but also change the ball to a place you can't expect.
For example, I can obviously pull out a left spin easily, but at the last moment I have to swing my arm in the opposite direction, twist my wrist, and pull out a completely unconventional right spin, even though this kind of pulling the ball makes my own arm hurt.
All in all, even if I am uncomfortable, I will not make you comfortable. When my landing point is not logical, then your prediction will also be wrong.
It can be said that even if Wang Chao and Fan Xiaodong were to fight now, they would not be able to make correct predictions so easily like last time.
So Mizutori Hato was completely fooled, and the final score in the first game was 11:4.
In the second game, Mizutori Hato tried to resist. He began to use fake moves and changed the way he served, trying to bully Fan Xiaodong, who was young and inexperienced in the game.
But the result was that because there were too many tricks, the quality of his serve declined, and Fan Xiaodong beat him to death more easily.
So in the third game, Mizutori Hato learned from the experience and decided to fight Fan Xiaodong.
The ending can be imagined. When Mizutori Hato temporarily transformed into a violent turtle, Fan Xiaodong made him understand what a real violent turtle is.
He only scored 1 point in this game.
By the fourth game, Mizutori Hato completely collapsed.
He himself is not strong, and before the start of the game he was full of a sense of superiority. This huge gap was unacceptable to him. He simply could not accept such a result. Halfway through the fourth game, he was lucky enough to score a point through a side kick, and then he directly raised his hand and announced that he would give up because his waist injury recurred and required emergency treatment.
This point is crucial, as it can prove that he has not had his head shaved, and that his act of raising his hands and abstaining has not been ridiculed too much by the world table tennis community.