Wang Hao has been retired for many years, and whenever he talks about him, he is always inseparable from the theme of straight board horizontal play; whenever it comes to straight board horizontal play, it is inseparable from Wang Hao, a great athlete.
Many times, an overly prominent feature will obscure a person's other strengths. Take Wang Hao, for example, he can achieve so much, can he really rely on horizontal fighting?
Feature 1: Extremely high quality forehand ability
Wang Hao's forehand is seriously underestimated by many fans.
Due to the characteristics of Wang Hao's playing style, he tends to "stand pile" output, and relatively speaking, he runs less, which also causes Wang Hao to use the forehand to pull less in the MIDDLE AND FAR PLATFORM, so many people are not optimistic about Wang Hao's forehand.
However, if we pay attention to Wang Hao's use of forehand in the game, we will find that the quality of Wang Hao's forehand rushing down the spinning ball near the platform is quite high, whether it is ball speed or rotation is top-notch. With a seemingly ordinary but very threatening hooker serve, once the opponent receives the serve of low quality, the forehand bursts directly over the board.
This routine was often used in the face of Xu Xin and Ma Long after 2010, and the "little dragon" and "little python" of that year suffered a lot of losses.
In addition, Wang Hao's violent arcing ability of the forehand is also reflected in the face of the chipping ball. Generally speaking, playing the ball requires a strong forehand as a guarantee, after all, it is still quite difficult to continuously pull the ball through the backhand, because the upper limit of the backhand quality is lower than the forehand. Wang Hao's record for Zhu Shihe, the most powerful chipper at the time, was 19 wins and 1 loss, and the only loss was in commercial events.
Feature 2: Delicate in-stage capability
Wang Hao's strength is also reflected in the handling of small balls in the stage.
It can be said that in addition to the bonus of horizontal playing backhand twisting, Wang Hao also gave full play to the natural advantages of the straight board in the stage and formed a complete set of small ball processing system in the stage.
From the current table tennis scene, among all the active straight board players, Xu Xin is basically recognized as the athlete with the strongest control ability in the stage, and other athletes such as Zhao Zihao, Xu Haidong and others have some characteristics in the small ball in the stage, but there is a certain gap overall.
When Xu Xin fought wang hao at that time, from the perspective of competing for small balls in the stage, Wang Hao was obviously better. Typical battles such as the 2013 National Games men's team final - Wang Hao defeated Xu Xin 3:0 in the game, almost completely suppressing Xu Xin's play in terms of stage and offensive and defensive conversions.
It is undeniable that Xu Xin's ability in the station has been further enhanced in the following years, reaching the current achievements, but through comparison, Wang Hao's delicate in-stage technology can be seen.
Feature 3: Competition ability
Wang Hao, who lost to liu chengmin in the 2004 Olympic Games, has long been labeled as a lack of ability to compete in the competition. Coupled with the later Olympic Games, people seem to be more firmly believed that there is a certain gap in Wang Hao's ability to compete.
However, in the past 10 years, he has been selected for the Olympic singles three times and won the runner-up three times, which is not proof that Wang Hao is reliable and trustworthy in the competition?
The weak ability of the big game should be described as a good performance in the team game or small game, and once it enters the three major competitions, it is possible to lose a lot of goals that should not be lost.
In contrast, Wang Hao has won a total of 18 world championships in his career, including the world championship in 2009, such a competition result is already among the best in the history of national table tennis, and it is difficult for many young talents to reach the great achievements.
When the straight board horizontal play became synonymous with Wang Hao, and Wang Hao became synonymous with the straight board horizontal play, people deeply remembered the advantages of his backhand and powerful technology. Under the aura, Wang Hao's other advantageous technologies and brilliant competition results seem to have been forgotten by many people.
The young generals took Wang Hao as an example and hoped to learn from Wang Hao's backhand, but they were bitter that they could not achieve Wang Hao's achievements. Is the gap really in the backhand? Is it really just a backhand? These questions are worth pondering.