As we all know, the northeast is a place where Chinese sports talents are born, and as of 2022, a total of 10 Grand Slam athletes have been born in the Chinese table tennis industry, of which Kong Linghui, Ma Long, Wang Nan, and Li Xiaoxia are all from the northeast, and the last 3 are from Liaoning.
If you want to win a Grand Slam, you must gather the singles champions of the Olympic Games, the World Table Tennis Championships and the World Cup, of which only the first competition is four years to wait, so the difficulty is naturally the greatest. But some athletes are very strange, even if they won the Olympic singles championship, they did not achieve a Grand Slam.
For example, the man we want to introduce today, he is from Liaoning like Ma Long, Wang Nan, and Li Xiaoxia, and has won the gold medals of the Olympic Games and the World Cup.
Unfortunately, he failed to achieve a Grand Slam.
The time was set back to 1980, and the location was located in Shenhe District, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province.
An employee of a glass instrument factory and his wife who worked in a textile factory ushered in their precious son, and the two of them at that time did not think about the impact of their children on the world table tennis world, after all, they were just one of thousands of ordinary working people, and they could not talk about any lofty ambitions and ideals.
But fate does not seem to plan to let this family continue to be ordinary, in 1986, the coaches of the Shenhe District Amateur Sports School came to the grassroots to select seedlings, and as a result, a coach named Yang Shenli fell in love with the protagonist of this article.
It was also from that moment that the child, whose original name was "Ma Lin", later changed his name to "Ma Lin", and later changed back to "Ma Lin", began to have an indissoluble relationship with China's national ball.
Yang Shenli wanted to take Marlene to learn table tennis, but not surprisingly, this decision was opposed by the child's parents.
As the old saying goes: poor people are rich in martial arts.
The children of the average family, honestly studying, college entrance examination, going to college is the "Kangzhuang Avenue", and competitive sports are like the past "martial arts", not only require a lot of time, energy, money, and the success rate is not high, especially in China, the competition in table tennis projects is too big, if the children do not grow up What to do? When the time comes, I am afraid that I will not be able to keep up with the road of cultural learning if I want to go back to study!
If Ma Lin's parents Ma Hui and Xia Jingru also like table tennis, it is reasonable, but the couple almost know nothing about this sport, it is said that they do not even know how to calculate points, how can they be willing to send their children to professional training?
Almost, Marlene was about to lose sight of ping-pong, just like the tall Shanghai boy surnamed Wang two years ago.
But fortunately, the coach named Shen Yimin at that time vigorously overcame the public opinion and brought a hope star named "Wang Liqin" to the Shanghai table tennis world, and now, the coach named Yang Shenli is also "three Gu Maolu", and finally persuaded Ma Hui and Xia Jingru to introduce Ma Lin to the professional team.
The only regret is that the child did not stay at home in the end.
In 1986, Marlene officially began her practice career, which was not officially announced until twenty-eight years later.
Like many table tennis players in that era, Marlene was also a straight beat from childhood, after all, the mainstream of the Chinese table tennis team was straight shot, and many coaches only knew how to teach straight shot, so even Wang Liqin also started with a straight shot, if it were not for the fact that the figure was too tall, and there was a problem of "chicken breast", then we might see a Chinese version of Kalinitz appear.
Note: Kalinic, the former Yugoslav table tennis world champion, is taller than Wang Liqin at 1.87 meters (said to be close to 2 meters, at least above 1.9 meters), and the left hand is straight to the punch.
And Ma Lin is different, although he is not short, but compared with Wang Liqin, he is a big difference. And more importantly, Ma Lin and Wang Liqin are completely different personalities, and from the perspective of a bystander, he is indeed very suitable for direct shooting.
Friends who pay attention to table tennis know that the traditional straight-slapping method pays attention to attacking, attacking, and then attacking (of course, it is not without exceptions, such as the just mentioned Kalinitz), and must win with ingenuity, try not to collide with the opponent, suppress the opponent with super control and near the stage, and end the battle with a quick knife.
Therefore, in general, athletes with extroverted personalities and more ideas are more suitable for playing traditional direct shooting, and introverted players like Wang Liqin, who are stable and meticulous in carrying out training tasks, are difficult to play the smart movement of direct shooting, on the contrary, it is more suitable for the horizontal shooting technique and tactical system of "heavy sword without edge, big coincidence and no work".
Marlene, on the other hand, is clearly a natural straight-forward athlete.
When Coach Shen Yimin first saw Wang Liqin, the child played tennis alone in a corner for more than 20 minutes, quiet and focused; but when Coach Yang Shenli first met Marlene, the child ran around with a football, lively and agile.
Some things seem to know the end from the beginning.
Facts have proved that Ma Lin is not only suitable for playing straight shots, but also very fond of straight shots, and when he was practicing balls, he was at the time of the unlimited scenery of the national table tennis straight beat playing method, following Guo Yuehua of the straight shot anti-glue play, the two major straight shot positive glue play masters - Jiang Jialiang and Chen Longcan rose at the same time, killed all four sides, and won gold medals in the World Table Tennis Championships, world cups and other competitions, and Ma Lin also looked forward to it and regarded them as her idols.
However, any personality is good and bad, the introverted Wang Liqin was even criticized for playing ball "without using his brain" when he grew up, and the extroverted Marlene often provoked criticism from the coach when she was a child, and many years later, another predecessor who once coached him recalled:
"Marlene didn't get cut by her coach when she was a child."
Criticism is criticism, but what coach would reject a gifted student? The mouth speaks harshly, but the heart is "true incense".
Unfortunately, this situation did not last long.
In 1988, the table tennis event was introduced to the Olympic Games for the first time, and as a result, the Chinese table tennis team suffered a disastrous defeat in Seoul, South Korea, and the two direct-shot fast-timers Jiang Jialiang and Chen Longcan actually did not reach the men's singles final four, losing to the European cross-slice arc players LinDe and Kranpal respectively.
In the 1989 World Table Tennis Championships in Dortmund, Germany, the national table tennis men's team lost "a pair of pants", the men's team, men's singles, men's doubles, mixed doubles were all destroyed, especially the men's team final created the most tragic defeat, was beaten by the Swedish team led by Waldner, and finally defeated 0-5 to eat a duck egg, for a time the Chinese table tennis circle mourned everywhere, and the traditional straight-pat playing method was challenged as never before.
It was in this case that a phenomenon that now seemed inconceivable happened:
Countless Chinese straight-pat players have been "suggested" by coaches to be changed to horizontal shooters, and even the national team has had such a situation, such as an athlete surnamed Li who later won the Olympic silver medal (although he was no longer in the national table tennis at that time).
I think that when Wang Liqin was a child, he was forced to change from a straight shot to a horizontal shot because he was too tall, but he was "crooked and straight"! But Marlene has been playing straight shots for several years, so do you have to give up now? He was not the little girl surnamed Hebei who had just learned table tennis, and it was impossible for everything to start from scratch!
At that time, Marlene was just a 9-year-old child, and it was indeed difficult for him to decide the future by himself. Is it to go with the flow, or to stick to yourself? This became a question that determined the direction of his career.
Seeing that their son was facing trouble, Ma Hui and Xia Jingru did not know what to say, because they were not table tennis players and were not familiar with the sport of table tennis. But fortunately, some of the universal truths, they understand, so the two said this:
"Since you love table tennis so much, you should stick to it, no matter what kind of play, as long as you train hard, you may achieve good results."
In the end, Marlene chose the straight-shot forehand anti-glue and backhand long glue playing method, which not only ensured the advantages of the first three boards of the straight-slapping method, but also made up for the lack of rotation and holding ability of the traditional positive rubber fast attack, and at the same time, it could also use the backhand long glue to "win with chaos", perfect!
Of course, the above text is only the ideal state of Marlene's playing style, if we engage in post-angle analysis, we can only see a deep helplessness: all kinds of techniques, playing styles, and equipment are mixed into a person, and it looks unreliable!
Because of this, within a few years, a coach who was not valued by everyone appeared in front of Marlene and then gave him a "death order":
You have to change the way you play!
Just like Wang Liqin changed from straight to horizontal shooting, Marlene initially questioned and dissatisfied with the coach's requirements, but it turned out that it would be an incomparably correct decision.
In fact, there were people who were more "tormented" than Ma Lin at that time, such as an older athlete who came out of Xinxiang, Henan, who even used a more "backward" straight-forward rubber to attack quickly, and suffered more doubts, but he kept going, and history is so dramatic: this athlete achieved a Grand Slam, and Marlene did not.
When also? Fate also?
In the years that followed, the men's players of the Chinese table tennis team were almost beaten by the top European athletes, whether it was positive glue or anti-glue, it seemed that they were not opponents of cross-cutting two-sided anti-glue. Everyone is thinking about a problem, that is:
Where is the way out of the straight-pat method?
At that time, with the innovation of organic glue and other equipment, Krampal and others have greatly improved the speed and rotation of the backhand near the platform, which also allows the cross-tapper players to no longer have to retreat to the middle and far platform to exert their arc ball power; Waldner and others have trained the first three boards and hair extension techniques of the horizontal shot to not lose the direct shot athletes, which also makes the gap between the strength of the two sides widen even wider.
Compared with the two-sided anti-glue horizontal slapping player, the straight-shooting athlete withdrawing from the stage is almost slag, the backhand push block is not right at all, can only use the "side" of the forehand to hit the other party's "two sides", how is this an opponent?
Whether it is the straight-shooting player in Xinxiang, Henan, or Ma Lin in Liaoning, everyone wants to create a new direct shooting system, but objectively speaking, they have failed; and the final "redemption" of the direct-shooting player will be found by a younger athlete born in Changchun, Jilin Province.
But unfortunately, he will have more regrets than the above two people - these, we will talk about later.
"National Table Tennis Two Kings and One Horse" serial is in progress, welcome interested friends to continue to pay attention to the full word, we will see you in the next chapter!