Isn't there a difference between saying, "Harimoto is a kid and he is pretty good even if his FH isn't perfect" and saying "Harimoto's FH is terrible" or "Harimoto has the best FH"?
It is interesting to me that people who want to frame arguments seem to want to put people who don't agree with them into extreme categories and seem to become unable to understand any kind of nuance.
Harimoto is a kid. He is young. For how young he is, he is pretty impressive. We will only know how good he can become when he is in his prime. He is nowhere near that yet.
Can he work on and improve his FH? Of course. He can also improve his BH. He is not fully developed.
And I believe, part of the issue that was being talked about with China is that, even though China does have the best players in the world (I feel comfortable saying that), even if they have the best training system (I feel comfortable saying that as well), they also have the most money to spend, the most people to choose from and a government funded machine that starts scouting children for talent by the age of 4. By the age of 12 most CNT prospects have already been training for 8 years. By the age of 8, the ones who show the most talent go to a special school where they train TT 6 hours a day and that is the bulk of their "schooling".
So, by the time they are ready for the CNT, or the Provincial teams, they have been vetted, trained, weeded out from thousands of prospects who all have hundreds of thousands more hours training than any prospects from any other country.
No other country puts this kind of effort or priority on training TT players. None.
BTW: I am not sure. But I have a feeling that was some of what NL was referring to when he used the term "Darwinian" was how kids are selected and trained. There is a vast pool of entrants. There is a long vetting process. And there is a survival of the fittest aspect to how China developed talents like Ma Lin, Wang Hao, Ma Long, ZJK, FZD.......They end up with the best of the best. To me, that does sound a little "Darwinian".
All the while, Harimoto was one kid who was trained part time by his parents. We will never know how good he could have been if he was brought up through the Chinese system.
So, yeah....CNT players often have great FHs. Harimoto's isn't perfect. Interestingly, ZJK's FH wasn't perfect in 2010 and there were a lot of people back then who I remember saying he could never be a top player because, even though his BH was amazing, his FH was awkward. Maybe he never fully fixed the FH. But within a year he got it a lot better, and good enough to do some amazing things.
So, all I would say is, give the kid a chance to grow up. All he is, is good for a 16 year old. But he is very very good for a 16 year old. Thank goodness his FH isn't as good as ML's or Ryu Seung Min's. If it was, we would never hear the end of his screaming.
