In the early hours of this morning, Shang Juncheng took a wild card to the ATP500 Rio race. After a 1-hour and 43-minute battle, the 17-year-old Chinese player finally lost 3-6, 4-6 to Spain's Pedro Martinez, who is ranked 62nd in the world.
Shang Juncheng issued 2 ACEs in the game, and the scoring rate of the first and second shots in the whole game was lower than that of the opponent. He was broken once in each of the two sets, while he had won 3 break points from his opponents but failed to cash in. In terms of total score, it is 52 to 71, and it is clear that there is still a relatively obvious gap in strength between the two sides.
However, in the scene, Shang Juncheng Ming did not obviously fall behind, and even had a lot of remarkable performances. Putting aside our Chinese our own "calf protection" mentality, some foreign tennis journalists have also followed Shang Juncheng's performance on social media.
Some reporters believe that Shang Juncheng, as a 17-year-old young player, performed very well today and played his first ATP Tour game quite well. In terms of my own viewing experience, this evaluation can be said to be very pertinent.
To be honest, this was also the first time I carefully watched the complete competition of Shang Juncheng, and I found that he was a left-handed player, who probably inherited the left-handed genes of his mother Wu Na, and also showed a certain left-handed advantage in line and rotation.
First of all, the bottom line of the business completion process is very good, the foot distance is very fast, and martinez's multi-shot rounds are not left behind. And the small businessman's line is very accurate, the rhythm is also very fast, especially the straight line of the forehand and inside out are very dare to play, and also get a lot of beautiful winning points.
Of course, strength is still the biggest problem in the current business process. This is evident in the serves, martinez has a lot of simple points from a strong serve, but most of the serves on the side of the business are stuck in long rounds. This is still in the case that Martinez did not rush to the shang juncheng serve, if you encounter a more ferocious player, today Shang Juncheng may not play so calmly.
In terms of technology and tactics, Shang Juncheng is more adapted to clay, after all, two of his three M15 championships last year were won in the dirt field. Shang Juncheng's batting feel is relatively good, and his technique has changed, but he does not seem to love the Internet much, and he has not seen his performance in front of the net.
All in all, the potential is certainly there. But it's still too hasty to predict a player's future with a match, and I think there are two big variables in a young player's future:
The first is the psychological quality of the players. This game is completely a mentality of challenging strong opponents without baggage, so the whole game is quite brave to play. But what kind of state is presented in the game with close level, more competitiveness and greater pressure, these things can show the psychological characteristics of the players, and looking at the performance of some excellent players after 95, you will find that psychology is the watershed between excellence and top.
The second point is more important, and that is growth. There are not only factors of individual effort, but also many external objective conditions and resources of players. This has to make me mention Wu Yixun again, just yesterday checked the information found that Wu Yixun also played this Martinez in the Liuzhou Challenge in 2018, when the score was 5-7, 2-6.
At that time, Wu Yiyu was favored by everyone, which was not unreasonable. Wu Yiyu began to participate in adult competitions at the age of 18, and from 17 to 19 years, he beat the TOP200 players 10 times, including 2 of the TOP100 players, which are also solid results.
But the problems that Wu Yiyu subsequently faced were not only the problems of personal efforts but also the disagreements of his team on coaching philosophy, injuries and epidemics, which were not things that Wu Yiyu could really control on his own.
Including looking back at Wu Yifu's adulthood, he only had a long-term experience of competing in foreign countries for 17 years, and most of the other times were to participate in domestic hope competitions and challenges, and 17 years was exactly the year in which Wu Yiyu's ranking improved the most. So now shangcheng has been participating in foreign competition routes in the past two years, and contacting more diverse players may be a step forward.
At the beginning of this year, Shang Juncheng participated in both races and was out of the second round, and many people may feel that Shang Juncheng's results have declined. But in fact, last year's small businessmen participated in the M15 level competition, and this year's two competitions were M25 and challenges, and in these two competitions, the opponents defeated by the small businessmen set a new high.
Overall, through this game and the recent performance of the business completion, I am full of expectations for the Chinese youngsters. Even Wu Yiyu, who went to Mexico alone this month, I did not lose confidence in him. The ability he has shown in domestic competitions suggests that his ceiling must be more than that.
Of course, my expectations for Chinese men's tennis are certainly not Grand Slam champions, top 10s and the like, in fact, I think that having a stable male player who is in the top 100 and can actually support himself with bonuses is already a huge success in Chinese tennis.
We need to understand that success in professional sports is systemic success. Don't use meritocracy to think of sports simply as a matter of hard work, there are too many people in this world who work hard but can't reach their dreams. Of course, not working hard will definitely only get farther and farther away from the dream, and I hope that The Chinese boys can make unremitting efforts in the right direction and in the right way