The temporary shake almost made a miracle, Zhang Zhizhen and Wang Xinyu won the Olympic mixed doubles silver medal, making history

Lead

On July 28, 2024, four days before the opening of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, tennis will be officially released on July 27, 2024, and officially start on July 28.

Chinese players Zhang Zhizhen and Wang Xinyu joined hands to win the silver medal, writing a piece of history for Chinese tennis.

This is the first medal won by Chinese tennis in the mixed doubles event at the Olympic Games, and these two post-80s athletes can be regarded as the pioneers of Chinese tennis.

In 2024, they will be 36 and 30 years old respectively, but their competitive form has not diminished with age, especially Zhang Zhizhen, who is in such good form that even the national team coach is surprised.

In such a state, what kind of experience was it for them to be able to win a silver medal in mixed doubles at the Olympics without knowing each other well?

Temporary combinations against strong foreign players.

Tennis mixed doubles has never won a medal in the history of Chinese tennis, one reason is that Chinese tennis players are men and women training separately and preparing for their own competitions, and the mixed doubles have relatively little contact and tacit understanding.

In contrast, there is no such distinction between foreign players, for whom the mixed doubles competition is as important as the singles, and they have become accustomed to working with unfamiliar partners when it comes to this event.

In this competition, China sent a temporary team composed of two very strong post-80s players Zhang Zhizhen and Wang Xinyu, and the opponent was a combination from the Czech Republic, and the mixed doubles strength of the two Czech Republic was very good.

Among them, the men's Trabel is the men's doubles champion of the 2022 French Open and the 2023 US Open, while the women's Pitcovic is the third place in the women's doubles at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

The Chinese and Czech pairs were placed in Zone C, and in the first round, the Chinese pair faced the Greece pair.

The strength of the Greece pair was not strong, and the Chinese team played very easily in this match, winning with a clean score of 6:2, 6:2 and successfully entering the final.

However, in the final stage, the Chinese team met the Czech team, and before the game, experts said that the strength of the Czech team was there, and it was difficult for the Chinese team to win the championship.

As the saying goes, strong hands against strong hands, whether you can play a level of performance depends on the mentality, in the first game of the game, sure enough, the Chinese combination took the lead in serving, but in the first game, the Czech combination seized the opportunity and broke successfully.

The Czechs were in high spirits and firmly controlled the tempo of the match, but the Chinese were unfazed and won the second and fourth games to level the score.

In the final tense moment of the first set, the Chinese pair took the lead in the service game and only needed one more game to win the first set.

Zhang Zhizhen started, but to his surprise, although he had worked hard to play to his full strength, there was a feeling of being seen through by the opponent, and no matter what, the Czech players always seized the opportunity to make a fatal break on the Chinese pair's serve.

In the first set, the Chinese pair lost two games in a row and finally lost the first set 4-6.

In the second set, the Chinese pair decisively changed their strategy, took the initiative to change their playing style on the court, and actively looked for opportunities while defending, and as a result, they broke the opponent's serve first in the second game and opened the game with a 2-0 lead.

The two sides then broke each other's serves, and the Chinese pair broke again in the sixth game and then won the second set 6-3.

In the deciding set, the Czechs were clearly under pressure from the Chinese duo, who were in a crucial rhythm in the eighth game and would have won one more game to win the title 2-1 on aggregate.

However, the Czechs' performance should not be underestimated, and they knew that the situation was critical, but the Chinese were a temporary partner and failed to break at a crucial moment in the face of the Czechs' serve.

A break of serve was then made, and the Czechs won three games in a row at the end of the match to win the inaugural Olympic Mixed Doubles title.

However, the Chinese pair also achieved good results, and the partner won the Olympic mixed doubles silver medal in just one day, creating Chinese mixed doubles history.

The two were obviously very excited, and in an interview after the game, in the face of the staff's congratulations, Zhang Zhizhen said happily: "I'm so happy, I didn't expect to be able to win the silver medal with the female team!"

Wang Xinyu joked: "We didn't cooperate with each other too much, and we didn't even know what skills each other was good at, but we won the silver medal with a tacit understanding and experience as singles players."

Such a humorous performance is very much in line with the style of today's new generation of professional tennis players.

The temporary partner won the silver medal.

In this competition, the Chinese team was able to compete with the Czech team for the championship, and the biggest contributor was Zheng Qinwen.

Zheng Qinwen has the highest points ranking in the mixed doubles event, so when the team sends personnel to participate in the event, Zheng Qinwen is naturally the first candidate.

However, shortly before the start of the game, it was revealed by the media that she had given up the Olympics ahead of schedule due to injury, and although the national team had found a replacement, the substitute was still not determined when the game was approaching.

In this case, Wang Xinyu was ordered to substitute for the national team, and her partner was Zhang Zhizhen.

To everyone's surprise, after just one day of chatting, the team won a silver medal in mixed doubles at the Olympics.

In fact, both of them are Chinese tennis leaders in their singles, Wang Xinyu has reached the 117th position in the world in singles, and Zhang Zhizhen has rushed to the 68th position in the world in singles.

In each other's singles, both men are ranked in the top 100 in the world, and their strength should not be underestimated.

But no one thought that they could work together to achieve such good results, and some reporters asked how the two did it in the post-game interview.

Wang Xinyu said: "Actually, we weren't familiar with each other before, and we didn't even know what each other was good at, but at the end of the day, we found a tacit understanding, and the cooperation between us is more like an invisible tacit understanding, and it is very easy to play ball."

Zhang Zhizhen also agreed: "We don't know why it's so easy, maybe it's because the main singles have been playing for too long, and it's too easy to cooperate!"

However, whether they can get such good results is because the strength of the two is very outstanding, but on the other hand, the more important reason is that they cooperate very tacitly.

Zhang Zhizhen, as a men's singles player, took the initiative to attack, and the female player counterattacked in time as a defensive player.

Even after the game, in an interview with the outside media, Zhang Zhizhen also joked: "I think the Chinese team has always taken the initiative in our game, and the Czech team has been on the defensive, and we really didn't cooperate with each other too much."

The sense of humor and self-confidence in the team has made people see a new trend of a new generation of professional tennis players, Zhang Zhizhen and Wang Xinyu are both post-00 players, and their humor and self-confidence are also worthy of widespread dissemination and learning by Chinese people.

Chinese tennis can be vigorously developed.

In this competition, we can clearly see that in the national team, the famous players used to focus on singles events, and they used separate training for men and women, and the time for training and preparation was very sufficient.

However, now, the post-00s players who are still very young have shown great potential, and they are very good at playing mixed doubles, so it can be said that Chinese tennis has finally ushered in a new vitality.

Although there is an element of luck in the play of the temporary combination, more importantly, these two Chinese players have found a tacit understanding with their teammates in the rigorous training of the national brand.

In the context of Chinese tennis training, not only did Wang Xinyu and Zhang Zhizhen, who played with good strength, but Zhang Shuai, who also won the championship in the World Women's Tennis Championship, also let people see another hope for Chinese tennis.

Chinese tennis has a lot of room for development in the temporary combination.

The cooperation between the two is a case in point.

Perhaps, in the future selection of players, more attention should be paid to the adaptability of players, only in the team cooperation, in order to better adapt to the team's training and preparation, teammates will also be greatly enhanced.

The experience of this tournament will undoubtedly promote wider cooperation and exchanges between Chinese tennis and the world in the future, and will also attract more young players to join the mixed doubles event.

Such a beautiful thing will undoubtedly bring new vitality and hope to Chinese tennis in the post-Olympic era.

Therefore, we should see the meaning behind this game, and we should cherish the new opportunities brought by this game.

epilogue

Chinese tennis, finally, ushered in a new development opportunity in 2024.

At the same time, this match also injected new vitality into Chinese tennis to the world.

In the future, we look forward to more brilliant tennis in China.