Chinese Dominance

[RidTheKid]

FZD has really been struggling in the CSL lately. He seems to be out of shape mentally.

[yoass]

FZD has really been struggling in the CSL lately. He seems to be out of shape mentally.

Really? In that Calderano defeat he seemed simply outgunned. That must have been a shocking new experience.

[RidTheKid]

Lost to Sun Wen, very narrow win against Shang Kun. The pattern is a lot of misses that he usually gets on the table.

Really? In that Calderano defeat he seemed simply outgunned. That must have been a shocking new experience.

[RidTheKid]

Coincidentally Fzd looked real sharp in his last match vs Yan An

[I have 2 balls]

well said. Apart from international games, ITTF may also introduce competitions that allow players to form their own teams and play. That way nationality will not be the main concern.

[Bardock]

I love watching and following the Chinese players its real fun to watch skilled players. In fact any kind of race and lot of Chinese players have distinctive styles too. I don't see why so many people think other countries winning will make the sport grow look at basketball mostly Americans and african americans dominate in it but it has a huge following because people are familiar with it vs. TT where less people play it as recreation as well as it isn't really supported in schools.

[Bardock]

One of the things I think with the subject is that, it is a bit problematic and odd that people look at the sport from the lens of National Team instead of players.

I like to see good play. When two players are competitive with each other, I like to watch. When one player is significantly better than the other, it is not as interesting to watch. I feel that is the case with lower levels as well as the top levels as long as the players in the match can play. So, even with decent club level players, if there is a match that is a good contest and you are not sure who is going to win for a decent amount of the match, it can be fun to watch.

But of course, when two of the best players in the world are playing against each other, and they are fighting toe to toe, that is quite often epic and poetic.

If you remove the idea of national teams and which country/team a player is from, the issue in this thread becomes much less of an issue. In Tennis they don't spend countless hours talking about which country a player comes from. The players that stand out, stand out. Their nationality may be mentioned on occasion. But it does not become a central focal point. Nobody is talking about how Serbia is so good regardless of how good Djokavic is.

This has to do with how table tennis is structured as a sport. But I just try to ignore it and like to watch good matches. When a match is an obvious blowout, which does happen a lot in TT, I am not sure it is worth watching.

Why are there so many blowouts at the top levels? Because TT is a game of levels. If you are one or two levels above someone you are playing, you can beat them easily and the win can look bad or ugly. And the players at the very top are really just fundamentally so much better than everyone else. They are trained right from a young age and have thousands of more hours of table time with good coaching and superb fundamentals. So, it makes sense they are better. But I don't really care what country they are playing for. I know. But I try and watch the play rather than watching the flag.

See I agree I don't know why people look at nationality. I'm personally from America and I don't even know any famous players from here but I like watching TT to look at the players and their amazing skill which is how it is usually in most sports. I don't know whats the odd culture in TT to where people actually care about nationality.

[BlipBlop575]

See I agree I don't know why people look at nationality. I'm personally from America and I don't even know any famous players from here but I like watching TT to look at the players and their amazing skill which is how it is usually in most sports. I don't know whats the odd culture in TT to where people actually care about nationality.

I guess it depends on the type of person you are. I personally find it interesting and exciting whenever someone wins against someone from the dominant nation. It's not something you see very often and it shakes things up. We see most of the time the top chinese players steamroll almost any foreigner they play against, so it's a breath of fresh air whenever we see otherwise, at least for me.

[FruitLoop]

See I agree I don't know why people look at nationality. I'm personally from America and I don't even know any famous players from here but I like watching TT to look at the players and their amazing skill which is how it is usually in most sports. I don't know whats the odd culture in TT to where people actually care about nationality.

It's not a TT thing. It's a sport thing. Even in eSports it's a thing.

[usualsuspect]

FZD has really been struggling in the CSL lately. He seems to be out of shape mentally.

That maybe true, but I've noticed FZD is transitioning to a new style. Before, he would bend his body in unnatural ways to execute powerful shots close to the table. Now, he is doing much less of this. I believe he is realizing that he aggressive style is taking too much toll on his body, particularly his lower back (with all the bending). FZD is now attacking less, and instead he incorporates more techniques to control and surprise his opponent. For example, in his recent CSL match with Ovtcharov, he did three chop blocks intentionally. He chop blocked in the match with Yan An too. This is a sign that FZD is evolving from plain fast & furious to a style with more variety. Whether this is good for him or not remains to be seen.

[Suga D]

That maybe true, but I've noticed FZD is transitioning to a new style. Before, he would bend his body in unnatural ways to execute powerful shots close to the table. Now, he is doing much less of this. I believe he is realizing that he aggressive style is taking too much toll on his body, particularly his lower back (with all the bending). FZD is now attacking less, and instead he incorporates more techniques to control and surprise his opponent. For example, in his recent CSL match with Ovtcharov, he did three chop blocks intentionally. He chop blocked in the match with Yan An too. This is a sign that FZD is evolving from plain fast & furious to a style with more variety. Whether this is good for him or not remains to be seen.

I think this is pretty much spot on. Far more as people might realize.

I would believe his coaches know very well what they're after.

He also might have got tired of being seen as a onedimensional player who's steamrolling everything except a very few where his steamrolling tactics didn't work out and he got outsmarted.

So now he seems to be using his brain more than just raw powerplay.

That rollerball in the match against Gauzy showed there was some kinda wind of a change. He also stopped bananaflipping everything and has become more stabile in the short game.

For now he might lose a few games and even might drop a few ranks in the WRL, but in the long run i think his game will benefit from this.
Not only that it's not as taxing to his body as before, it will make him a more complete player which makes it even much harder to beat him than before.

But what do I know?

[UpSideDownCarl]

I guess it depends on the type of person you are. I personally find it interesting and exciting whenever someone wins against someone from the dominant nation. It's not something you see very often and it shakes things up. We see most of the time the top chinese players steamroll almost any foreigner they play against, so it's a breath of fresh air whenever we see otherwise, at least for me.

To me, this sounds like you like seeing underdogs win. This does not need to be tied to nations. There are many people who like to simply root for the players who seem to be the best and seem almost unbeatable. And then there are the types of people who root for the underdog.

An example from another sport. When Mike Tyson was undisputed heavy weight champion, many people thought he was invincible. When he fought Buster Douglas, the Las Vegas odds were something like 50/1 that Tyson would win. (I think it was actually 46/1 but it was a long time ago). Douglas made history by knocking Tyson out. That was the biggest upset in boxing history. And that was quite an exciting result. So, there were many people upset that the indestructible Mike Tyson was beaten so badly. And there were others who were gleeful that the machine had been broken. And none of it had to do with the nationality of either fighter.

It's not a TT thing. It's a sport thing. Even in eSports it's a thing.

It is not ONLY a TT thing. But it is not something that NEEDS to be in all sports. It is in futbol with the World Cup. It does not seem to be the case in Tennis which is an international sport and people are not thinking quite so much about what country the players play for.

These are 2018 major tennis tournament finals: In the first two videos, the nationality is not listed next to the name of the player in the score. Nationality may be mentioned. But it is not something that is fully focused on.

Here at the US Open, the nationality is listed. But it does not seem to be a large focus here either.

So, even while nationality is mentioned and present in tennis, people are not focusing on which national team won the final. They are more focused on which PLAYER won or was in the final.

Leaving team competitions aside, in TT I think it would help people's ability to enjoy the sport if, in tournaments the fans focused a little more on the players and a little less on the nationality. It is just my opinion. But, I do hope it helps some of the people who get stuck on feelings about China's dominance in the sport.

I guess, in the USA, sports seem insular. As a kid I grew up watching baseball, basketball and football (American football). I never really thought of them as "American" sports. They were just the sports I watched and played. That they were USA sports was never focused on or even mentioned. Which team I rooted for, that was an issue. But not nationality. And I was used to knowing that there were players from all over the world playing in each of those leagues. So, even though they were US based, they had an international flavor to them in my eyes.

Perhaps it was not as true as I thought it to be. But I never thought of where the players I liked came from. They were good. I liked how they played. I never considered Hakeem Olajuwon a Nigerian basketball player. I thought of him as an awesome center. I did not think of Sadaharu Oh as a Japanese baseball player. He was a great player.

[zeio]

It is not ONLY a TT thing. But it is not something that is in all sports. It is in futbol with the World Cup. It does not seem to be the case in Tennis which is an international sport and people are not thinking quite so much about what country the players play for.

These are 2018 major tennis tournament finals: In the first two videos, the nationality is not listed next to the name of the player in the score. Nationality may be mentioned. But it is not something that is fully focused on.
...
So, even while nationality is mentioned and present in tennis, people are not focusing on which national team won the final. They are more focused on which PLAYER won or was in the final.

Leaving team competitions aside, in TT I think it would help people's ability to enjoy the sport if, in tournaments the fans focused a little more on the players and a little less on the nationality. It is just my opinion. But, I do hope it helps some of the people who get stuck on feelings about China's dominance in the sport.

I wrote a post exactly about the flag thing last year.

https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/for...l=1#post237010

...I don't know if people have noticed, but the ITTF has stopped putting national flags/country codes next to player names on livestream/TV broadcast for the World Tour since India Open 2017, which was in February. They do it only for the WTTC and World Cup now.

In an interview in Mar 2017, Frank Ji talked about how the national identity in China is actually a hindrance to the global development of table tennis.
...
"Sports like football and basketball use the market-economy approach, and for the market in China, their own models are more mature in all aspects. Table tennis, OTOH, is dominated by China, but we value national glory more than commercial development, which has hindered the development of business value for the sport around the globe" said Ji Wenyuan. "As the rest of the world becomes weaker and weaker, that'll also hurt us. Hence, the reform is systems engineering. Seamaster is also willing to work with the ITTF to build the system together."

[UpSideDownCarl]

I wrote a post exactly about the flag thing last year.

https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/for...l=1#post237010

There is a reason I enjoy what you bring to the forum Zeio.