Great match to watch, but had to mute it. Could not handle the italian’s service shriek. My wife asked me “is she yelling ‘f*ck’ when serves?”
Great to watch though
sports are truly the last meritocracy. The Chinese will work and work and work ntil they produce champions.
I had a work colleague about 10 years ago who grew up in China until he was 18. His parenst sent him to a government run school just for table tennis (ping pong). He went to that school for over 5 years. Played ping pong up to 10 hours a day.
I used to think I was a good ping pong player. We had a table in the break area at work and had some great little tournaments. Then the Chinese guy shows up. He was just dominant. He could use either hand at will. Once or twice i would score a point of him. He was gracious about it. Back home he was justa average. After 5 years in the school they knew he wouldn’t be a world class player so he stopped.
The point is I bet they have thousands of youngsters in schools like this for tennis. Give them some time and you’ll see dozens of world class players crowding out westerners.
I’m bummed at the decline of tennis in the US (from a fan’s perspective). Growing in the 70’s and 80’s the major matches were appointment viewing. Connors, Borg, Lendl, MacEnroe, Becker, Agassi, Sampras, Everett, Navratalova (I know I may have spelled some names wrong...)
My wife and I play for fun and exercise and my 6 and 4 year old boys are showing interest. But trying to wrap my head around sending my sons to a school to exclusively play tennis for hours and hours a day year after year...it’s just insane. I know people do it. Thousands of Chinese kids are probably doing it. Oh well....