Dongguan "Little Wade", CBA "Little Tank", King of Death... Looking at these nicknames raised by basketball fans, you can vividly imagine Meng Duo's style of exploding on the field. However, when it comes to the golf course, the 30-year-old is very gentle and quiet.
"Golf taught me to be quiet." Meng Duo said.
After retiring, there are many basketball stars who like small white balls, from Jordan Barkley to Curry JR Smith. But around us, on the court of the Volvo China Open, it is quite a novel scene to see a 1 meter 93 basketball flying flyer waving a wooden. Especially when Meng Duo's side, standing on the professional champion of the Central Tour Chen Guxin, and the CLPGA beauty star Liu Wenbo, this painting style, more or less has a little magic...
In this way, in the sunset of the midfield club with a warm halo, the former Chinese men's basketball player who was invited to the pre-match match of the China National Open chatted about his story with golf.
Golf: From healing to true love
In Meng Duo's circle of friends, there is a message that reads: "I haven't returned to Longgang for a long time after the epidemic, and when I return to the place where I fought, I am still particularly kind, the time is too fast, and I didn't expect to return to Longgang to participate in golf activities." ”
Meng Duo and chen guxin liu wenbo (photo Liu Zhuang/Wang Liming)
As the captain of the Shenzhen men's basketball team, Longgang, where the golf club is located, is where he has fought.
The beginning of the Mondor Golf Trail did not have too many pink bubbles, and it was more like a prescription for life seeking the right medicine than a preference. "At the end of my career with a lot of injuries, I needed some competitive, but not too intense, to continue my competitive state and spirit." Mention the reason why he picked up a golf club, he said.
It doesn't sound like a very romantic beginning, but in the process of walking to the fairway, a new emotion brews up, like a slow but solid love affair, which is his transformation from hot-blooded youth to calm middle age, and the transition from one life to another.
Two years ago, just after his career as a professional basketball player, the 30-year-old Meng Duo felt like an overrun machine, in his view, competitive sports, basketball is a true youth meal: "Everyone says that we are thirty years old, sixty years old knees, we are indeed like machines to wear, to the end of the sports career, everyone has accumulated a body of injuries." 」 ”
Meng Duo's suppression of Xinjiang was once a classic battle of the CBA
When he started playing golf, his original intention was simple, hoping to "heal" himself. "Golf taught me to sit down and think about what to use for each hole and how to play it, which is a complete process of fighting with myself, which is very different from the fierce physical confrontation of basketball."
Meng Duo on the basketball court, fast, good bounce, with the signature mid-range precision jump shot, and Wade is indeed a bit similar. Another similarity with Wade is that they both need golf (woods was the same player in the group the day before Woods' crash) to get through the tough moments of their careers – dealing with a chain reaction of declining athletic ability.
"Playing basketball in the early stage is because of love, and in the later stage, there are many injuries, and the pain leads to a very bad wear and tear of the mentality." Basketball players will encounter similar problems at the end of their careers, the previous game was dominated by you, and now you have to give way, and the same team needs to take on different roles. Many people began to accept it, I couldn't accept it myself at the beginning, my heart was very painful, I used to play more time in the team, and now I occasionally go up, or even can't play, and the internal blow is very big. ”
The advent of golf helped Meng Duo through a psychological difficulty — in his own words, "smoothed out the scars." In the process of swinging again and again, he fell in love with the sport, no longer worried about winning and losing, and began to enjoy the essence of sports, which was a rare life experience in the past.
Meng Duo in the match (Picture Liu Zhuang/Wang Liming)
"After I was exposed to golf, I felt different and challenged every time I went to a course. The green arena, the birds chirping... The feeling is too different, the previous life is too boring, competitive sports is selfless, and golf is more courageous and aggressive, the more mistakes will be, it is a particularly different thing. ”
After playing golf for two years, Meng Duo said that he slowly got used to thinking, "Golf is more like a life philosophy on a step, basketball is more enthusiastic, golf is more gentlemanly, bringing me a different sports and social experience, and many older people's understanding and communication, harvested a lot of different life experiences." ”
Give Chen Guxin a little advice for them
With a bit of noise and batting on the side of the driving range, Meng Duo's golf love story is very graphic.
In the distance, professional players also began to pack up their clubs and prepare to end the day's practice. Meng Duo, who was once in the CBA, at this time, turned into a "star chaser" - a few steps ago, and Li Haotong, who had just finished training, took a group photo.
Meng Duo posted a photo with Li Haotong on Weibo
Hearing that the other party is a basketball player, Li Haotong "returned" a cuteness, put on the golf shoes he had just taken off, stood up straight, and made the height of the two look a bit "evenly matched".
When it comes to competing with professional golfers, Meng Duo frankly said that he has gained a lot: "Playing with the profession is particularly fast, and their actions, thinking, and watching the line are really strong. However, compared with most people, Meng Duo's road to learning ball is halfway out of the house, not even to the driving range a few times, "I have not found a coach to learn ball, and rarely go to the practice field, playing for more than two years to go to the practice field less than 10 times, has been a field exercise." ”
They are all professional athletes, are masters of controlling their own bodies, meng duo when he first came into contact with golf, he also had a little "contempt" for golf, but once he got started, he felt that the life of this small white ball could not bear the difficulty.
"I started to feel that there were very few technical moves in golf, it was very simple, and it was very difficult to really play and find it very difficult to maintain a stable level. It's quite possible that it started well, and then suddenly it won't, and the whole muscle pattern will go haywire. In his opinion, golf emphasizes the order of force, "I have just reached the stage where I have just noticed the details." ”
Like other crossover stars, Meng Duo also realized that golf is difficult
Unlike most people's pursuit of the process of breaking hundreds and breaking nines, Meng Duo has not looked for a coach to learn to play so far, more like the process of golf learning as an exploration and experience of spirit and flesh: "I like the process of exploring myself very much, and finding a coach to progress very fast at once will lose the fun of the process." I'm not going to play professionally, and it's not interesting to progress so fast. In his opinion, golf needs to be slowly improved and slowly experienced.
At the matchmaking competition, the organizing committee specially arranged for Meng Duo to form a "star group" with Chen Guxin and Liu Wenbo. "On the par five hole, I played red T, and they used no. 7 iron, but I still didn't win." Despite this, Meng Duo still enjoyed it, "Golf is a child's skill, and it is difficult to get out of the house halfway to grab other people's jobs." This is not a shortcut thing, people learn to practice for more than ten years from a young age, you can come up and compete with the profession, which is an insult to sports and players. ”
But when it comes to the two professional golfers, Meng Duo does not hesitate to give advice, as he has always wanted to do - he hopes to share his experience with more young people.
"When I first said that Chen Guxin was born in 2003, I felt that it did not fit this age, his logical thinking, ideas, and understanding of golf exceeded his age, and he was relatively young and old, very thoughtful and thoughtful, and there was a lot of space in the future. However, in my opinion, his physical fitness needs to be strengthened, some young athletes in China still do not pay enough attention to physical fitness, as a person with sports experience, I see that many international players have better muscle strength, and the domestic top player Li Haotong's muscle fitness looks good, but I feel that the strength is not enough, it can be better. He has played for many CBA teams in Dongguan, Xinjiang and Shenzhen.
Meng Duo and Liu Wenbo Chen Guxin take a selfie
"But Liu Wenbo, she is obviously a systematic and professional physical training. Feeling a ball down, her technical movements are relaxed and her control is very strong. But I believe that both Chen Guxin and Liu Wenbo will go out of their own way. ”
For future career choices, Meng Duo has a sense of responsibility as an athlete, he hopes to work on content, starting with basketball commentators to explore more expression possibilities, and soon he will record a reality show featuring him.
"Times are improving, I'm very touched by media and operations, there's a lot of new ways of thinking, and I've seen a lot of NBA players like O'Neal have their own talk shows. I also hope to do some crossover shows, do some shows with CBA players and golfers, and show a side that their fans usually can't see. ”
In addition to falling in love with a new sport, last year, Meng Duo and his wife, WCBA number one beauty star Liu Geting ushered in the birth of their daughter, which made him more responsible: "I am now retired, married, have my own children, and need to think about how to look at things from a different perspective and engage in what kind of things to cultivate my next generation." ”
Meng Duo is changing the new fairway of his life
For the cultivation of his daughter, Golf is also not absent, like a true love.
"I want to continue the spirit of my own golf enthusiast and make my daughter fall in love with golf too." Meng Duo said.
(Text/Li Xin)
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