Harimoto team, watch out for destructive enthusiasm

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Hate to see a true prodigy not developed into be a player he should be, let the kid focused on strengthening his fundamentals, not tunneled towards a particular player for a particular style for a short-term gain. I see this as more and more of a problem for Japanese team in general and Harimoto in particular. Sad.
 
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拔苗助长 is an old Chinese saying and This is exactly how Harimoto has been handled thus far. Koki showed such a potential and yet still struggle to be as good a player as he can be. Japanese team really need to do some serious self reflection after this tournament.
 
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stupid comment.

Harimoto played very well against Jeoung. Until he choked. He had too much pressure. Skill-wise or tactics-wise he has been excellent.

Trust me, with fans like you, Harimoto doesn’t need any enemies.

btw, can you be a bit more creative in using words like stupid, idiotic, etc? It’s getting boring.
 
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I am calling you because you are creating a new thread on Harimoto while they are plenty, to make an unsubstantiated post [= giving no arguments]. Nobody cares about your provocative post, and you needed to answer to you own post to make it more provocative

Harimoto has made tremendous progress in the last months, beating almost every top player except for MA Long and XU Xin. So exactly the contrary that you are suggesting; He is on the right path

He got two defeats in WTTC but they are nowhere embarrassing. Pitchford is a soon-to-be top10 player and Lee Sangsu finished 3rd last year at WTTC. He had enormous pressure going into this tournament and yes, he did choke a bit because i think he was technically the better player, but mentally he failed a bit.

If anything he will learn from these hard defeats and will be even better in the next big events. Much better to get those defeats aged 14 or 15 than later on. Niwa also was already very good young but he was far from achieving what Harimoto did at the same age.

I think you should play baseball or american football; Its a more appropriate sport for you
 
Hate to see a true prodigy not developed into be a player he should be, let the kid focused on strengthening his fundamentals, not tunneled towards a particular player for a particular style for a short-term gain. I see this as more and more of a problem for Japanese team in general and Harimoto in particular. Sad.

I agree with you, Harimoto is still too inconsistent and he needs to be tempered more before he's 100% complete.
 
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For gods sake, Harimoto is only 14, why subject him to all these oohs and aahs from hot-headed fans? It’ll be much better off if he spend more time systematically training fundamentals. I’m always concerned that marketing and team bureaucracy would keep him from reaching the very top. Thus far, that concern has only increased.
 
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Give the KID a break. He's the biggest child prodigy of TT since Waldner. I have a real hard time understanding why everyone is constantly trying to bring him down. He's entertaining as f**k to watch which all of his theatrics and amazing gameplay.
 
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Harimoto reached a very high level at a very young age. More improvement means being a serious treat to the main chinese players, I don't think it's fair to pretend more from him considering his age. He still has a loot of time to improve his game, the thing is if he can do it, or if he will follow the steps of players like Mizutani and Fukuhara. They started competing internationally at a very young age but couldn't beat the chinese.
We can't know that, but i believe he'll keep playing better and become a top top player (i don't know if number 1, but top 5 for sure).
 
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Can't he continue to systematically train fundamentals while competing in highest level competitions?
Exposure to highest level opponents is one of the most important aspect to become top player.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk
 
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I actually think Free bird is making a good point even if I don't really like HOW he is making the point.

The Chinese often do hold kids Harimoto's age from too much international competition until they are a little older and their fundamentals are a little more complete. Exceptions to that are players like Ma Long and Fan Zhendong and even when those two started playing, their overall game was a little more complete in a certain way: read: more power on FH. And I am not sure the CNT let either ML or FZD play Tour events before 15.

But I am not 100% sure what would be the best way to develop Harimoto into the best player he can be. He is so young and I really don't think there has been anyone who has played as much on the World Circuit at his age. And certainly nobody had the kind of success he has had at such a young age.

But we will see how he develops. I think, for a 14 year old he is pretty darn amazing. But I can imagine all sorts of scenarios for him: some include him becoming one of the best players of his era; or, his technique flattens because of how much he plays close to the table and how he doesn't have the power to play mid-distance power loops, and as he gets bigger, older, stronger and slower, he stops being able to play the woman's game against the men because of the loss of speed and reaction time; or it could go even further the other way where he gets burnt out from all this exposure at such a young age and just stops playing.

I actually know a woman who was on a Euro National team and when she was 19 she had one lots of titles and got sick of TT and just stopped playing for 10 years. She was a prospect to be a top European woman and she just flat out quit playing. All that stress can do a number on a kid. So, I do hope that doesn't happen to Harimoto.

And I think, perhaps, some of what I just described might be what Free bird is focused on.
 
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Guo Yue competed internationaly at roughly the same age so China does that too sometimes.

That said, I'm not sure if spending less time on tour and more on fundamental practice would be the solution for him to become the best. He tours with his dad who is better coach than most in the Elite Academy so it's quite likely that he receives better coaching while on tour.

He's already achived beyond my wildest imagination so I'm happy to hang back and watch him develop though.
 
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I don't really know it would be fundamentals that would be worked on. But power, spin.

He does a great job of using other player's power against them. Generating more of his own power is going to have to happen at some point. I do think he has plenty of time for that to happen. But when ML and FZD came up to the Men's competitions they both did have that.
 
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For a 14-year old kid who is still growing physically and maturing mentally and psychologically, he needs to gain experiences in a controlled way. Over-exposure and too frequent emotional roller coasters of highs and lows associated with tournaments at this stage are detrimental to his long term development of a top notch player.
we’ve seen prodigies faded into also-rans. Harimoto is the most promising Star since fzd. We all are excited as tt fans. I just hope he’ll be developed into a complete player who can compete consistently against top-notch CNT players.
 
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Harimoto's amazingly good for his age. However, I also think Freebird has a point.

Harimoto has improved vastly but there are no new elements in his game for a while. Same few serves since we knew him and they are not effective as before. Not good enough for top 5/10. His BH is great and improving. But FH is still his weakness, when someone attacks his FH, he can only block passively most of the times, or smash the ball back trying his luck.
He doesn't have a quick off-the-bounce FH counter loop, which is strange because it's one of the most important shots in table tennis these days and IMO he's at the best age to learn it.

I'm no professional coach, but sometimes I wonder if he keeps playing and not learning new things, the weaknesses will be becomes bad habits (that are too hard to break) and he can never develop a complete game. He'll be top 10 for sure, but I (and many people) expect much more from him, so it's quite understandable if we has doubt in his development strategy.
 
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