Thoughtfulness | It costs 20 million yuan to cultivate Zhang Zhizhen, but Zhang Zhizhen of Chinese tennis is increasing

Behind the history created by Zhang Zhizhen, a rising star in the Chinese tennis world, is a new path for the cultivation of Chinese sports talents: the sustained and rapid development of the economy has created a large number of wealthy middle-class families, who are often willing to spend huge investments in the education of their children, cultivate a variety of interests and hobbies, especially in sports, and do not hesitate to send them abroad for training, and start docking advanced professional sports echelon education from an early age. This means that in this field, more and more top players will appear in the Chinese, and the Chinese army will also have a high probability of occupying an extremely important ecological niche in such projects.

Written by 丨 Horsen

Editor丨 Feng Xiao

Chinese tennis has ushered in another milestone.

In the second round of the US Open men's singles, China's Zhang Zhizhen defeated the previous runner-up and current fourth ATP ranked fourth in the ATP after five sets to successfully advance. This is not only the first time that Chinese mainland men's tennis players have defeated the top five ATP players, but also the first time that Chinese mainland men's tennis players have defeated the top 10 ATP players in a Grand Slam tournament, writing a new history for Chinese tennis.

Caption: Zhang Zhizhen beat the ATP top 5 opponents to set a record.

In addition to Zhang Zhizhen, this year's US Open, the performance of the Chinese Legion is also very eye-catching, 7 male and female players joined hands to enter the second round, among them, Wang Xinyu reached the round of 32 for the first time, Zhu Lin swept the famous Azarenka, Wang Yafanlik tournament No. 7 seed Garcia... This strong performance can't help but exclaim, is the "Chinese era" of tennis coming?

This is not impossible.

Perhaps in the near future, we can see that tennis and golf, which require a lot of money investment, will inevitably have more and more top players in the Chinese, and the Chinese army will also have a high probability of occupying an extremely important ecological niche in such projects.

01 Professional good hand economic foundation

For the education of the next generation, our country has had the saying of "poor culture and rich martial arts" since ancient times, and it is clear that compared with reading, the cost of learning martial arts, or polishing the body, will be higher.

In China, however, the situation is different.

In the mid-90s, after the State General Administration of Sports set the Olympic glory plan, the entire national sports resources were concentrated on the key projects of "small and difficult girls", and thus quickly became an Olympic gold medal country, but this national system also brought corresponding drawbacks, that is, these projects supported and cultivated by the state almost do not have commercial prospects, and if they leave the state's financial subsidies, athletes can hardly rely on the project itself to support themselves, about this, You can refer to the previous article in this column, and the sadness behind the 7-year-old young player, 5 gold and 2 silver, may indicate that we are not a sports country.

Therefore, for a long time, domestic sports stars were almost equivalent to Olympic champions, and most of them were born in poor families, and everyone was familiar with Quan Hongchan, Zhu Ting, Chen Lijun, Liu Yang, Wang Manyu, Wang Junxia... Almost nothing.

It can be seen that for the vast majority of ordinary people, reading is a road that is far better than sports in terms of prospects and trial and error, and only when the family is so poor that even compulsory education cannot reduce the burden on the family, parents will consider sending their children to sports schools.

However, in the past decade or so, this situation has changed a lot.

The sustained and rapid development of China's economy has created a large number of wealthy middle-class families, who are often willing to spend huge investments in the education of their children, cultivate a variety of interests, especially in sports, and do not hesitate to send them abroad for training, and start docking with advanced professional sports echelon education from an early age.

Now, the melons are ripe and the fruits are finally gradually appearing.

Zhang Yuning, Gu Ailing, Zhou Guanyu... Almost all of these young talents in their respective project fields are professional talents born in this elite training model.

Caption: Gu Ailing.

In tennis, the well-known Chinese players currently active in ATP events, Zhang Zhizhen, Shang Juncheng and Wu Yixiang, are all like this.

So, how much does it cost to cultivate a professional tennis player like Zhang Zhizhen who is in the top 50 of the ATP? Zhang Zhizhen's father Zhang Weihua gave the answer in an exclusive interview with reporters:

"Over the years, it costs about 20 million yuan to train a tennis player who ranks among the top 100 in the world (no special instructions are all in RMB, the same below)."

"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 keep following, there will be an additional 500,000-600,000 yuan."

And Ms. Wu Fang, the mother of another men's singles player, Wu Yixiang, also admitted that Wu Yixiang spent a lot of money to learn football when he was a child, and the cost of training and competition before the age of 15 exceeded 1 million, and the training and competition expenses over the years since then added up to more than 10 million.

Caption: Wu Yixiang, a potential star in the tennis world.

Zhu Lin, who just defeated Azarenka, her father Zhu Jianming used to be the head of a private enterprise, after the freedom of wealth, gave up his career and accompanied his daughter to train and fight, although the money invested is not explicitly stated, but it will not be a decimal.

According to the current domestic market conditions, the tennis court fee is at least thousands at a time, the personal training fee starts at 500, and the annual investment of three times a week has exceeded 200,000, and if you want to train and compete in Europe and the United States, I am afraid that this number will be increased to more than 500,000.

Although this number is not necessarily universal, for example, if the children receiving training do not show the corresponding talent, they will naturally not always increase continuous investment; For example, the cost of practicing in foreign clubs and accompanying parents, which will also fluctuate accordingly because of the different conditions of their respective families...

But it is clear that no matter what the magnitude of this fluctuation is, the cost is definitely not affordable for the average family.

Zhang Yuning's father sold eight houses for his and his children's football dreams; Gu Ailing's training expenses from childhood to adulthood are astronomical amounts that ordinary people dare not imagine.

It's a path to professional sports that has been watered with money.

02 The road to becoming a talent is getting more and more

Since Zhang Zhizhen's model of achievement is not affordable for ordinary families, does it mean that this road is not suitable for the mainland's national conditions?

That's not all.

Tennis is actually a very special sport, highly professional has brought countless tours, and any professional tennis player who is interested in making a career difference needs to face an intensive and intense schedule.

While technical training is important for a tennis player, physical preparation, tactical preparation and medical rehabilitation for a long season are crucial.

In the tennis program, experienced full-time coaches, targeted technical guidance, strength and conditioning coaches and rehabilitators, and other support personnel, these people make up a team of coaches, they play a crucial role in the performance of the players.

Unlike the "national team" model that prevails in the system, all members of the coaching team in this highly professional project must be supported by professional players themselves. Therefore, although the prize money of various tennis tours is not low - for example, Zhang Zhizhen has reached $190,000 after defeating Rude to advance to the next round - but there is not a lot of expenditure on the coaching team, such as the famous tennis player Djokovic, who spends nearly ten million dollars on his coaching team every year.

In other words, in tennis, if you are strong and can consistently win tournament prizes, then you can hire better team members; But if you are not so strong, as long as you are willing to throw money, you can also find a good coach, and maybe you can achieve good results.

Caption: Chinese tennis star Li Na hired a coach to guide her skills to improve.

Tennis is a small-ball project, the requirements for skills are extremely high, compared to football and basketball, which require a lot of physical confrontation, it is more suitable for yellow people, and since throwing money can throw good results, to some extent, it also reduces the uncertainty of adolescent trial and error.

In the early years, Chinese tennis did not get rid of the traditional three-way training model, although there were special cases such as Li Na, but on the whole, it was still incompatible with the development trend of world tennis.

It was not until Sun Jinfang, the former meritorious captain of the women's volleyball team, took office as the director of the network management center that he encouraged players to fly solo and supported them to get rid of the shackles of the system and go to a higher stage to temper, which led to the situation of hundreds of schools of thought in China's tennis since then, but overall, it is still the traditional improvement model of "provincial team and national team + special players flying alone".

But now, under the development and guidance of a group of successful predecessors, the spring breeze of tennis professionalization has unknowingly blossomed with bright flowers that are expected.

According to the "Global Tennis Report" released by the ITF in 2021, the number of tennis coaches in China has exceeded 11,000, accounting for about 7.6% of the world, ranking fifth in the world, second only to traditional tennis powers such as the United States, Germany, France, and Spain. The number of tennis courts has reached nearly 50,000 (49,767), ranking second in the world after the United States, and there are more than 100 Chinese players in the ITF youth ranking, ranking 11th in the world...

Caption: Zhang Zhizhen, Tezhigele, Wu Yixiang, and Buyun Chaoket are all potential future stars in China's tennis world.

This market popularity and talent reserve are enough to support the general framework of professionalism.

As far as the junior tennis talent training system is concerned, from Zhang Zhizhen's growth experience, talented junior tennis players can choose to start from domestic sports schools, cash in a certain talent, and then turn to overseas training, so as to embark on an independent career path, which is a plan that is completely in line with China's existing national conditions, and it is also a tentative answer to the domestic professional sports reform handed over by tennis projects.

03 Conclusion

Zhang Zhizhen's success is not only a personal accident, but also the inevitable development of the mainland and the exploration of professional sports reform, and the rising trend of Chinese tennis today depends not only on the unremitting struggle of individual athletes and the perseverance of family members, but also on the foundation of traditional physical training models and the kneading of modern professional sports.

This also shows that as long as the path is found, even if it does not require too much administrative intervention, modern professional sports programs are enough to find the most suitable path for their popularization and development through various commercial means.

Of course, as an "aristocratic sport", the successful path of tennis popularization may not be completely applicable to other sports, but compared with domestic football and basketball, after years of marketization and professional reform, it seems that the small successful shoots of tennis are precious.

When the traditional talent training path of relying solely on sports schools at all levels is broken, through diversified models such as public-private partnership, private office assistance, private sole proprietorship, and combination of sports and education, social forces are encouraged to join, so as to realize the dual prongs of the national system and market mechanism, and finally move towards complete marketization and professionalism - this may be the most important enlightenment brought to us by the "Zhang Zhizhen" model.