Another semi-final of the year-end finals ended with Hook defeating Lin Zijun 4:1.
This is Hook's first victory over Lin Zijun after Lin Zijun mastered Super Speed. This battle is very important for Hook. It clearly proves the significance of Hook's choice to join Table Tennis Super League.
Hook made real progress while losing the possibility of defeating Luo Jiu.
No one can defeat Lin Zijun head-on in terms of speed. To win Lin Zijun must rely on strategy, tactics, skills and technical stability, rather than brute force.
Hook After winning this game, he is no longer a tough guy who relies on his body to play, but a truly smart person who relies on the comprehensive ability of his mind and body to play. He has an innate talent, but he lacked good enlightenment in the table tennis desert of Brazil, which caused him to grow crooked for twenty years. Now, he has finally been brought back and has become a seemingly healthy seedling.
The reason why it is "on the surface" is because many things cannot be changed. His fundamental problems will still be with him throughout his life, and his weaknesses will still be exposed when he encounters an opponent that is too strong.
He has just stabilized at a higher level, but he is not truly invulnerable.
But enough is enough.
Whether he reaches the finals of the year-end finals or gets Super League MVP Player of the Year, it is enough to make him the most successful table tennis professional player this year.
It was this unprecedented success that gave Hook unrealistic fantasies, allowing him to muster up the courage to say something in the interview before the finals, "I know I am at a huge disadvantage in the finals, but I will do my best to fight for that slim chance."
Doesn't it look quite modest?
But everyone on the Chinese table tennis coaching staff sneered after watching this interview. Then the most educated head coach Cai Guodong concluded with an ancient Chinese proverb. "Haha, it's really a summer bug that cannot be talked about."
Only the most discerning Chinese table tennis coaches know how strong Wang Chao is now.
In the past, all Grand Slams have gone through a very tortuous road, and there are basically competitors of the same generation, such as Liu Wen to Jin Ling, such as Xiao Fei to As with Sun Tianlong, it's just that Great Demon King have accumulated invincible confidence by winning championships one after another, and then turned their confidence into strength and achieved a unified spirit. Only then can they finally widen the gap with their competitors and achieve dominance.
But Wang Chao is not taking this path.
If other Grand Slam took the path of "seeking from the outside" and needed various incentives, then Wang Chao took the path of "seeking from within". He only had to practice behind closed doors and rely on such a single method, and he naturally relied on his unreasonable Unrivaled talent to reach a state that others could only achieve through comprehensive means.
And when he reached the Olympic Games finals, he actually didn't need any invincible momentum, and there were no real competitors. He was one step ahead of schedule and achieved theoretical invincibility. The finals was just a way for him to tell the world about this.
Such Wang Chao, Hook actually dare to say "the disadvantage is huge" and "the opportunity is slim". They really have no self-awareness.
He clearly has "a huge disadvantage" and "no chance at all".
In the finals the next day, Wang Chao easily defeated Hook 4:0.
Wang Chao didn't play hard in this game, because there was no shady coach like Sun Tianlong who asked him secretly, and Hook, as a coach who has made great achievements in the past year International friends who have been beaten badly by Luo Jiu do not need to continue to experience the unevenness of the world. On the contrary, Hook can be regarded as a good friend of Wang Chao.
After all, everyone beat Wu Li together. He can be regarded as one of the four irons in life.
So the scores of the four rounds are 11:6, 11:5, 11:3, and 11:7 respectively.
It seems that the gap is quite obvious, but it can't be said to be a beating.
Only Hook knows how miserable he is.
He couldn't even mobilize Wang Chao's real will to fight. He felt that Wang Chao was just playing calmly and step-by-step on the opposite side. He was neither excited nor serious, nor took it seriously. At the critical moment, once he started to fight hard, Wang Chao would even be appropriately soft-handed. It could be said that it gave him enough face and allowed the most successful year of his career to end in a more decent way.
Hook is a self-aware person. After the final, he accepted an interview with Brazilian reporter Tavares. Because Tavares was still at the scene at the time, he did not hear Qin Huachang's live broadcast commentary and did not understand the game at all. The guy said with great interest, "Hook, today we face the so-called most powerful player in the history of Chinese table tennis. Wang Chao, the Demon King, your performance was better than expected, and you even scored more points than Sun Tianlong in the Olympic finals. Does this mean that your strength has surpassed that of Sun Tianlong a month ago? Regarding the next encounter with Wang Chao, do you want to take this opportunity to express your determination to the fans in China who support you?"
Hook looked at him for a long time, and finally sighed and said, "Don't think about it, it's no longer possible. From now on, everyone should work hard for the runner-up place."
At that time Tavares was very surprised and wanted to persuade Hook to cheer up, but Hook was too lazy to pay attention to him and turned around and left.
So he was depressed and made some slight complaints into the microphone. The general idea was that Chinese player Hook was obviously too strong but lacked fighting spirit, while non-Chinese associations and his disciples such as Rohlskov were obviously very average but still very confident.
When Tavares watched Qin Huachang's live commentary the next day, he realized that he had completely misunderstood the situation. He blushed with embarrassment and hurriedly posted an apology to Hook and Rohlskov who had been mentioned innocently.
Rohlskov didn't say anything. After all, he is a famous coach. His jealousy will only be towards Huaping, who is stronger than him, and he will not seek a sense of presence on foreign reporters who can't understand a ball.
In short, there are many aftermaths of the year-end finals. For example, Fan Xiaodong lost to Little Lin in the bronze medal match. There are many technical issues worthy of discussion. Another example is that Lin Zijun is now trapped in the bottleneck of Super Speed, and has been somewhat restricted from the main force. He also needs a breakthrough in mentality and strategy.
For another example, after Bayer returned to China, he announced something as fast as Jingle Bells: He decided to retire, and a retirement ceremony was held in early March this year.
Later, he took the initiative to call Huaping and invited Wang Chao, Sun Tianlong and others to attend his retirement ceremony.
Everyone at Huaping readily accepted the invitation from this truly noble European veteran.
Humans are a strange animal. Sometimes, it takes many years to decide on a matter, but sometimes, just through occasional emotional impulses, a crucial matter will be decided. This is exactly the case for Bayer at this time.
More than a month ago, he cheered up and participated in the Open, hoping to grab points and enter the finals. He had a complete career plan, a future physical rehabilitation plan, and a complete analysis report on the current table tennis opponents. He actually planned to play until at least the age of 40 like Ochomirov.
Even though he was very unfortunate to encounter Fan Xiaodong in the first round of the year-end finals and lost to Fan Xiaodong again, his fighting spirit was still there.
He actually decided to retire after watching Wang Chao beat Fan Xiaodong in the semi-finals.
He suddenly felt deeply tired, and he saw the dark days ahead. Although he was sure that he could still occupy a place among the strongest in Europe, he was tired and didn't want to hold on anymore.
Destroy it, I'm tired.
He is very ambitious, unlike his country's Wolf and Sweden's Michel, who are content to dominate one place at a time. Although he is gentle and elegant on the surface, he always has great ambitions. The opponent he wants to defeat is always Huaping. The reason why he has been able to hold on is because he always feels that there is still a slim hope, but now he feels that there is really no hope, so he chooses to give up.
He left in an unseemly manner, as he lost miserably in the last few games of his career.
He used to be Wang Wendong's old rival, but later he lost dozens of games in a row to Sun Tianlong. Then he suffered repeated defeats at the hands of Sun Tianlong's junior, Wang Chao, and finally lost three games in a row under Sun Tianlong's disciples.
Bayer is a very smart person. When he won the first World Cup men's singles championship in his career at the age of 19, he understood the biggest weakness of Huaping: internal competition is too fierce, resulting in the careers of outstanding athletes being too short, and they must maintain competitiveness through overdraft and healthy methods.
Therefore, he has always had a good sense of proportion and ensured that his body was running on a good and healthy track. He did not expect temporary gains and losses, but looked at the overall outcome. For example, I can't beat Wang Wendong, it's okay, Wang Wendong will eventually retire, I can try to beat his successor.
I can't beat Sun Tianlong, it's okay, no matter how invincible Sun Tianlong is, he can't last longer than me.
I can't beat Wang Chao, that's okay, Wang Chao will retire in ten years, but at that time I will only be the age of Ochomirov now, I can still beat him.
No matter how strong Huaping is, there are ebbs and flows. It is impossible for every generation of Great Demon King to be invincible. For example, Jin Ling of the women's team, isn't it now the most popular Grand Slam? It can be seen that as long as you have patience, you can always wait until the day when Huaping weakens.
But Fan Xiaodong has risen again.
Bayer wanted to say "I can still endure it", but he calculated his age and found that he really couldn't endure it anymore.
If you want to wait until Fan Xiaodong retires, you have to wait until you are 50 years old.
In these long ten years, how many times will I be beaten?
Bayer is really tired of being beaten.
He almost burst into tears when he saw Fan Xiaodong being beaten by Wang Chao. It was really miserable, but what he felt at that moment was not pleasure and gloating, but a deep sense of vigilance.
If it was Fan Xiaodong, a young and proud young man, he would not be afraid.
But Fan Xiaodong was already so strong, yet he was beaten so violently that he was beaten to death and doubtful about his life. This made Fan Xiaodong inevitably break out crazily under high pressure, train hard, and seek to become stronger.
No matter active or passive, in short, Fan Xiaodong will definitely be forced to train like crazy.
How do you say something?
"Those who are better than you work harder than you."
How do you win?
The 35-year-old Bayer cannot train like a little boy for 16 hours a day. In fact, he only trains for two hours a day, just to ensure his hand feel. In fact, his hard power has not improved significantly since many years ago. Most of his homework over the years has been analyzing specific opponents and formulating targeted strategies.
So he chose to retire while he still had some dignity.
After the news of Bayer's retirement spread around the world, Belarus's evergreen veteran Ochomirov shouted to him from the air, "Thank you for your hard work."
When he saw this sentence, Bayer was warming himself by the fire and surfing the Internet in his big warm house. These three short words came into his eyes, and he almost shed tears.
He knows that Ochomirov understands him. After all, everyone is a veteran who has been supporting non-Chinese associations for so many years.
Ochomirov said he worked hard because Ochomirov always knew what his goal was.
Perseverance with the goal of Hua Ping will certainly be extremely hard.
Ochomirov, however, only aims to be number one in the country, which is a typical utilitarian thinking mode. He insists on playing just to ensure that he has enough reputation, status, prestige and exposure in the table tennis world, so as to ensure that he can get enough competition bonuses, advertising revenue and various professional and non-professional announcements every year. However, he has long forgotten his dream of "defeating China Table Tennis" when he was young.
Making salted fish will always make you happier.
Therefore, the 43-year-old Ochomirov will continue to play, while the 35-year-old Bayer chooses to leave.
This is the epitome of real sports, with various forms, all Ping-Pong Life. Compared with other industries, the life plan of sports athletes is relatively simple and clear. The weak may change careers, but the strong will continue to play until they can no longer play, then retire and change careers to become coaches. They still shine in the industry they like and use their own efforts to help the entire industry thrive.
Each Ping-Pong Life represents a professional player's deep love for his career. Although everyone has their own intentions, they still have no regrets. Even if there is an afterlife, if they still remember their obsession in this life, they will invest in it again in the next life to realize the dream that was once unattainable.
They may have also had a dream, in which they had unparalleled talent and wisdom, crushing all the super geniuses in the world, and reaching heights they could not even dream of.
Isn't this what Wang Chao did in this world? The difference is that others can only dream, but he has the opportunity to realize his dream.
I still remember that last year, Bay Island veteran Zhuang Huishen retired. Ochomirov and Grandma Ni of Luxembourg both spoke publicly. It was full of some kind of self-showing, but this time Bayer retired, Ochomirov rarely showed a bit of sadness for the death of a rabbit, and Grandma Ni did not speak from the beginning to the end.
In fact, this also means that everyone has a mirror in their hearts, so that they can see clearly in this complicated table tennis world. Everyone can see clearly who really has dreams and who just wants to settle down, who is hardworking, who is numb, and who is even nourishing.