After Zhang Zhizhen reached the round of 32 of the French Open, his footballer father told about his 26 years of nurturing heart
On the evening of June 1, at the Roland Garros Stadium in Paris, in the second round of the French Open men's singles, 26-year-old Zhang Zhizhen faced Argentina's Tilante, played steadily, and defeated his opponent 3-0 in straight sets, becoming the first Chinese mainland player to advance to the round of 32 of the French Open men's singles.
This is another historical breakthrough created by him. After his first-round victory over Serbia's Dušan Lajovic, he became the first Chinese mainland male player to win the main draw of the men's singles at the French Open in the past 77 years.
Just the day before the second round, Lazy Bear Sports contacted Zhang Zhizhen's father, Zhang Weihua. Veteran enough Chinese football fans may have an impression of this name - Zhang Weihua was a professional footballer when he was young, representing Shanghai Yuyuan, Guangzhou Songri, Qingdao Zhongneng, Shanghai COSCO and other teams in the professional league, playing central defender, known for his tough style. After retiring, he chose to focus on tutoring his son to play tennis.
He replied politely, "Can you wait until the second round is over before communicating?" During my son's game, I would be very focused, and my friends would push off when they arranged to eat or play football. If you have time, it's okay if we talk in the wee hours of the morning. ”
Late at night after defeating Tirant, Zhang Weihua arrived as promised, and he told Lazy Bear Sports about his son's upbringing, and how Zhang Zhizhen, who is opening up a new history at the French Open, was refined. In the end, he said that Zhang Zhizhen will challenge the No. 4 seed Ruud in the next match, and it will be very difficult to win, but he will still wait for the game and wait for the miracle as before.
In the context of parents paying more and more attention to physical education and investing more and more, this parenting process is of great reference significance. The following is Zhang Weihua's self-statement.
Moving for his son to play tennis
I played abroad for two years after my son was born, two years at Guangzhou Songri, and then four years in Qingdao Zhongneng Energy. His mom was also busy at work, and the two of us had very little time to take care of the children.
Even so, we don't want to give the child to the old man to bring, because we know that once the old man takes the child, he will spoil the child too much and spoil the child. It just so happened that I had a friend who taught swimming in kindergarten and could let the children stay there, so we sent Zhang Zhizhen over and learned to swim while going to kindergarten.
This not only solves the problem that we cannot take care of our children, but also allows him to feel the habit of living in a group from an early age and developing the habit of independence. The lover or the elderly in the family brings him back once a week.
For small children, swimming is a survival skill that must be learned, but they do not think about taking the professional route. He began learning to play tennis at the age of 5 and attended weekend classes with seven or eight children. To say that it is a study class is to play and cultivate interest.
After playing for a year or two, the coach felt that he had some potential, so he suggested that we send our son to a junior sports school in Xuhui District, where the training level is higher. In this way, he went to Xuhui District Primary School in elementary school. My family lived in Hongkou District at the time, and in order to better study and tennis for my son, I bought a suite near the school, and the whole family moved there.
When we lived in Hongkou, my lover only needed ten minutes to get to work every day. After moving to Xuhui, it takes about forty or fifty minutes. No way, for the convenience of playing ball for her children, she can only sacrifice some of her own time.
▲ Zhang Weihua and his son Zhang Zhizhen together.
Take a one-year break from school for basic training
After practicing tennis for a long time, my son began to participate in the same age group in Shanghai and reached the final.
He met the best player on the team in the final. I went to the scene to watch that game and the result surprised me, my son lost 2 0-6. Although I got the second place, the gap with the first place was too big to play.
Later, I learned that opponents usually practice more. His parents would give him extra classes on weekends, and we never did.
I asked my son, "Are you going to study or play tennis in the future?" He replied, "I want to play tennis." ”
I was already in the final moments of my professional football career, moving from Qingdao Zhongneng to Shanghai COSCO, and I was 36 years old and had the idea of retiring. At that time, I thought, anyway, football is like this, I should take my son with me. A year later, I retired from COSCO to focus on taking him.
I made the decision to take him off from school for a year to focus on tennis. Every morning, I take him to do pace, agility, light jumps, and small strength training.
Born professional, I know that the biggest fear of athletes is injury. If the strength and physical condition are not up to the requirements, it is easy to get injured. Once injured, it is difficult to return to normal levels, so physical fitness training is important.
After the physical training, I would take him to the court for an hour of serve. The morning training lasts from 8:30 to 11:30, breaks at noon, and goes to the sports school in the afternoon to practice with professional coaches for 3 hours.
There is no trick to sports, it is to see who pays more. You play 5,000 balls, I play 500 balls, how can I compare with you? To be successful, you have to practice more than others. This is also true in football, many players with good skills and talent in the past entered the national junior team and the national youth team since childhood, but then their health was not good, and they left while kicking. We were in our 30s at that time, even if we were veterans, look at now, how old are Ronaldo and Messi? People are still kicking.
I retired at the age of 36. Even when retiring, YOYO physical test and 3000-meter run can still pass steadily. Shang Juncheng's parents are also athletes, and they will always tell their son what to practice at the initial stage.
In addition to training hard, feelings are also important. Only if you have feelings for tennis, you are willing to give more and go further.
▲Zhang Weihua with Nadal coach Francis in Spain.
His future path is only tennis
People often ask, why didn't you send your son to play football, but tennis?
I remember when my son was very young, I said to him, "Wait for the day I will send you to Xu Genbao's base to practice football." "He was already playing tennis, and I wanted him to be flexible and fast, because the pace of tennis is similar to the pace of football.
I am 1.86 meters tall, and the bone age test results show that my son's height will exceed mine, which requires his feet to be more flexible and not bulky. Tennis is hit with feet, not hands. The player's anticipation, the use of footsteps, the running of the front and back, left and right are all key, and you can only hit the ball if you run.
As soon as I heard that I was going to send my son to Genbao Base to learn football, the coach immediately asked, "Is this true?" Are you really going to send him to play football? ”
I laughed and said, "No, that's just a joke." ”
Don't tell you, I already decided that my son's future path is only tennis, and there is no second way.
It's really hard to play football well, and the environment is not good. I was in it and knew what the problem was, better than anyone else, and the heart of "let my son play football" was dead from the beginning.
▲ Zhang Zhizhen, who participated in the competition in China.
After I took my son to practice for half a year, his level has further improved. The Shanghai tennis team was in the stage of alternating between old and new, and there was a shortage of players, so we asked if we wanted to train with the physical engineering team, and my son had just turned 10 years old.
The coach told us that after he came to the Shanghai team, he could go to Australia with the team to train, and the team was responsible for food and accommodation, and his family only needed to pay for the round-trip airfare. I readily agreed, raising my hands in agreement. In this way, his son followed the Shanghai team to Australia for three months of training, which was his first time going abroad to exercise.
Since then, his son's tennis path has begun to develop in a professional direction. At that time, he was also given some goals, such as preferably winning a Grand Slam title, or winning an Asian title, entering the world's top 100, and at worst, getting the first place in the country. Children always have to set goals, sometimes it is okay to set goals higher, which can motivate him to move forward.
If you want to play well, you have to go out
After training with the Shanghai team in Australia for three months, his son's level has been further improved. He later went to Spain, the United States, and France, where he trained and played with other clubs.
Football and tennis are both sports that come from abroad, so be sure to give your child away. Chinese football sent the Jianlibao youth team to Brazil to learn football that year, and a group of talents were produced. Japanese football is also something that learns from others, and no one in China learns it, so it is not good to play.
Back to tennis, we used to play most of the time at home, sometimes going abroad to play one or two tournaments, so we didn't get enough points and didn't even have the opportunity to play in the Masters. When Shanghai hosts the Tennis Masters, our athletes can only compete with wild cards, but that doesn't mean you're already a high-level athlete.
Several young tennis players who are now known to everyone, Shang Juncheng, Wu Yixiang and others, are all played abroad.
These kids play abroad all day, mix in that circle, and naturally blend in. They know what the most advanced playing style is abroad and know the characteristics of opponents in international competitions. To put it bluntly, you mix with them every day and are familiar with everything. To play internationally, you don't need a wild card.
▲Zhang Zhizhen when participating in the French Open.
We used to have such a misconception that Asians suffer physical losses in all sports, but this is not the case, and the 100-meter flyer Su Bingtian can compete with African athletes on the track. In ball games, we are no less flexible and responsive than others, but we have not been on the right path in the past.
Over the years, it costs about 20 million yuan to train a tennis player in the world's top 100. But I think the most important thing is the child himself, if he is not motivated and does not like this sport, he will not be able to invest 200 million.
After the economic conditions improved, some Chinese parents sent their 10-year-old children to foreign clubs to practice tennis, and the cost of food, accommodation and training cost about 1 million yuan a year, and if the parents kept following, it would cost 5.6 million yuan.
If you want to succeed, you need to invest, and even take the risk of not being able to fight. Zhang Zhizhen has been playing in Europe for the past year. If you don't play well, there will be no more bonuses and sponsorship support, and you will have to bear the cost of one or two million yuan. Fortunately, his results were acceptable and we did not suffer financial losses.
Aim to work towards the top 20 in the world
When my son played abroad, I never followed, everything was solved by himself and the team, playing was his own business, and he had the ability to deal with all kinds of problems.
Over the years, I have rarely been to watch my son play. He was in Suzhou one year for a challenge, and I drove from Shanghai alone to watch him race – I went secretly, my son didn't know.
I lost the first set of that match, and I thought I couldn't win it and left early. When I drove back to Shanghai, I found that the game was not over, and he won when I left.
Another time he played an open tournament in Zhuhai, where he scored five match points. The guys at their club said to me at the time, "This one is winning. "But in the end, I lost.
I watched him live two games in total and the results were not good. Since then, I've decided never to watch my son play live again, except in the Grand Slam final or Masters Cup final. Because even if you lose, you are the runner-up.
I talked to my son about whether or not to go to the game and he didn't approve of me going there. I can understand what he thinks, just like I don't want my parents to come to see when I play football. Since my going to the game will affect him, it is better to let him prepare quietly alone.
▲ Zhang Weihua said that his son should work hard to become the top 20 in the world.
Now I rarely communicate tennis with my son. He has reached that level, and I can't catch up. When the child is older, he has a family, and the instructions of life are also said by his parents, and I know this. The affairs of life will be handled by him and his lover, and we can rest assured. I can say at most encouraging words when I talk to him now, and that's it.
The son set himself a goal last year to enter the world's top 100, and this year's goal is to work towards the top 50. He is now ranked 54th and is one goal away from completing his goal. He is in this circle, knows himself and the internal situation better than me, an outsider, and can set more precise goals for himself.
As a father, I hope he will be in the top 30 or top 20 in the world in the future, and that's pretty much it. The higher up the more difficult it is, the success of an athlete often requires various factors, personal continuous efforts, good physical condition, some luck blessings. Injuries are a natural enemy of athletes, and I hope he will not be injured in the future and get better and better.
Disclaimer: This article is original by Lazy Bear Sports and may not be reproduced without authorization.