Product
Cost of being a professional tennis player
Basic Info
An organization has done statistics and found that it costs about 1 million RMB to train an entry-level professional player. If you can reach the top 500 in the world, it will cost at least several million RMB; if you are in the top 100 or higher, it will cost millions of US dollars. Therefore, this sport is made of money, and of course, talent is an unavoidable issue.
Zheng Qinwen crunches forward and prepares to seal the net as his opponent Vekic misses.
Zheng slowed down a bit, dropped her racket and fell down on the red clay court, hissing with her hands in her fists to celebrate her victory.
At that moment, she became China's first ever Olympic women's singles champion.
At the same time, Zheng Qinwen's father, Zheng Jianping, and his mother, Deng Fang, witnessed this historic moment in front of the TV at their home in Wuhan, where his father raised his arms and shouted, “Olympic gold medal”; and his mother, with red eyes, gently applauded.
More than 400 kilometers away, the Olympic Sports Center in Shiyan City also made a loud noise, and thousands of Zheng Qinwen's hometown erupted into a sound wave higher than that of the Roland Garros tennis court in Paris.
From that moment on, Zheng Qinwen seemed to become an adjective, and suddenly you could say that someone was “just like Zheng Qinwen”. It's just that different people may even interpret it differently.
Behind the glory, for example, people soon realized that Zheng Qinwen's path to the Olympic title was marked by her father's hard work in exchange for millions of dollars of investment, her identity as a member of the national team as opposed to the traditional sense, and, of course, the rewards of being true to herself. ......
So the narrative about Zheng Qinwen takes on several more complex perspectives: similar to the idea that as long as one has the money, mere mortals can strike gold in the Olympics; and whether competitive sports can help a family make the leap up the social ladder.
Of course, this is a God's perspective reading.
Who would have known that the photo of 11-year-old Zheng Qinwen standing in front of the TV watching Li Na win the Australian Open 10 years ago would be widely circulated today? Because at the moment in the photo, there is one more champion.
That photo seems to be the starting point of a transition between an old and a new era.
Perhaps somewhere, there is also an individual child who pressed the shutter in front of the screen where Zheng Qinwen won the title, hoping to become the next Li Na, or Zheng Qinwen.
The city is surrounded by mountains and flat roads are precious here. People go out either on foot or by motorized vehicles.
Locals told the Times that bike-sharing appeared in Shiyan, but quickly disappeared: everyone always rode down the slope to the lowest elevation, but no one rode up the slope.
Zheng Qinwen's childhood was spent fighting these slopes. Her father, Zheng Jianping, once told the media that Zheng Qinwen hated riding in the car from a young age and loved to run, so much so that Zheng once thought his daughter's specialty was running.
So why did Cheng Chin-man fall in love with tennis?
Zheng Jianping said in August 2008, took 6-year-old Zheng Qinwen to Beijing, to see the Olympic Games, his daughter in every field of play to see dancing, only to see to the tennis game, suddenly quiet.
At that time, tennis in the country there is still a strong middle-class mark. In four or five lines, especially in small cities like Shiyan, not many people know about tennis, and even fewer participate. Even today, there are only three or four tennis courts open to the public in Shiyan.
Less, is still there.
Back in Shiyan, Zheng Jianping decisively took Zheng Qinwen to Shiyan Sports Center to enroll in a tennis class.
Human life is full of mysteries, and everything is moving so fast nowadays that no one has time to sit there and daydream. Zheng Jianping is a businessman, he certainly understands this.
In 2001, Zheng Jianping in Shiyan near the bus station, set up a car parts and steel retail company, although in October 2007 canceled. But in 2005, Zheng Jianping in 1.4 kilometers away from the alley, the establishment of Hazhan Industry and Trade Co.
Speaking of this company, even today is still in the local steel people, know that the company has made a lot of money.
According to business information, this company has a registered capital of 10 million yuan, and Zheng Jianping is the majority shareholder.
They remembered that Zheng Jianping had no factory buildings, only a small office, and only four or five employees under him, but he could earn enough to let his boss drive a Cadillac worth 400,000 to 500,000 dollars.
A peer told the Times, “Our boss earns more than 10 million a year, but he (Zheng Jianping) earns more, the best time of business, (I heard) the flow of funds are almost 100 million.” In small cities, peer-to-peer information is usually the talk of the circle after dinner.
Another peer also confirmed to the Times reporter, the steel business in those years “is very good”.
The years after the millennium were a period when China pushed ahead with infrastructure and real estate development, and demand for steel increased significantly. In January-February 2004, for example, China's fixed-asset investment grew by as much as 53 percent year-on-year, boosting GDP growth to 9.8 percent in the first quarter.
But these narratives are only in their memories.
In fact, they haven't seen Zheng Jianping for more than a decade, and everyone knows he left Shiyan because he has a daughter who plays tennis.
However, Zheng Qinping, who disappeared from the steel circle, did not completely leave the commercial battlefield of Shiyan. in April 2016, he took a 29% stake in a local tunnel engineering limited liability company.
From a certain point of view, Zheng Qinwen embarked on the road of tennis, talent is on the one hand; on the other hand, Zheng Jianping with steel for her to build a solid family base.
But it is difficult to say clearly is, is Zheng Jianping built Zheng Qinwen, or daughter with the family, into another world.
In about a year of tennis classes at the Shiyan Sports Center, 6-year-old Zheng Qinwen ran to the court every afternoon as soon as school was out, practicing from 4 to 8 p.m. Her childhood training partner, who trained with her, told the Times, “Every day when she got home, she would practice a little bit more on her own.”
It wasn't long before Zheng Qinwen started following her partners out to competitions. During one of the tournaments in the provincial capital, Sun Yanyan, the tennis coach of the children's sports school at the Chongren Sports Training Center of the Hubei Provincial Sports Bureau, took an immediate liking to her.
Sun Yanyan recalled to the Times reporter: “playing bad, errors are many, but others playing bad ball, she is very active to chase, to save, unlike others playing bad, not to chase, not to save.”
Playing tennis, 7 points depend on the feet. “This kid is so aggressive with her feet.” She could tell that Zheng Qinwen had a desire for tennis.
In those days, it was mostly Zheng Qinwen's grandmother who accompanied her to matches. Once Sun Yanyan happened to be sharing a room with Zheng Qinwen's grandmother. Sun Yanyan told her grandmother that she liked the child very much and suggested that the child's father contact her and let the child train with her in Wuhan.
A door opened.
In 1933, Hankou hosted both men's and women's tennis tournaments; in 1957, the Chinese Tennis Association (CTA) was founded, and the first CTA president, Sun Yaohua, was also the vice mayor of Wuhan.
In 1933, Hankou already had women's tennis tournaments (Source: Social Networks)
And in the three National Games from 1993 to 2001, the Hubei tennis team won 9 out of 21 gold medals.
Great local athletes have inspired youngsters to get involved in tennis, and they usually choose to coach after retiring from the sport.
So there is no shortage of good tennis coaches in Wuhan.
After training with Sun Yanyan for a while, Zheng Jianping tried to contact Yu Liqiao, a famous coach in Wuhan's tennis industry.
He has been busy looking for the most suitable coach for Zheng Qinwen, and less than 8 years old Zheng Qinwen, first by the grandmother rented a room nearby to take care of, and then Zheng Qinwen's mother decided to quit her job, to Wuhan to act as her daughter's full-time “logistics”.
Soon, Zheng Qinwen began to win medals, at the age of 9, she won the U10 girls' singles championship and third place in doubles in Hubei Province, and in 2011, she defended the girls' singles and doubles championships at the Jingmen stop of the Provincial Junior Tennis Tournament.
Since 2012, Zheng Qinwen has been traveling around the world to compete. She probably didn't know at that time that the family's money started to get tight.
In 2013, the central part of the country invested a total of 190.45 billion yuan in real estate, an increase of 20.8%. Perhaps seeing the real estate momentum, Zheng Jianping borrowed 2.2 million yuan that year to several real estate development companies in Shiyan. According to the contract, they returned at the end of the year as much as possible.
But the money Zheng Jianping waited two years.
Zheng Jianping had no choice but to launch a lawsuit, but was told that the borrower is suspected of illegally absorbing public deposits have been detained.
This money is not coming back.
Did not recover the money owed, like a long whip, little by little hit his business chain.
For example, he could not repay the 200,000 owed to the steel supply company; for example, in order to obtain working capital, he mortgaged his house in Shiyan - the one Zheng Qinwen grew up in - to cover the debt.
Until May 9, 2019, he still had a loan of 2.4 million yuan outstanding.
Zheng Jianping, who was not yet an “Olympic champion father”, was sued by the bank, he was restricted from high consumption, and his house in Shiyan was also seized.
During those difficult years, Zheng Jianping found legendary coach Carlos Rodriguez, who coached Li Na and seven-time Grand Slam winner Justin Henin, based in Beijing.
Zheng Jianping, a businessman, calculated the cost of going to Beijing to train: rent, training fees and domestic and international tournaments, at least 500,000 yuan a year, a figure that does not include the cost of hiring Rodriguez as a private tutor.
For the sake of his daughter, the man sold his house in Xiangyang.
By any standard, Zheng Qinwen's family are remarkable people: they see her strengths, they see how tennis has influenced and changed Zheng's day-to-day life, and most importantly, they understand why Zheng is loyal to herself.
As Zheng's reputation grew, she was signed by IMG (International Management Group, a company similar to Sports Economics) and Nike, which somewhat eased the family's financial pressures.
As the club's coach, Zhong Yi studied under Yu Liqiao, who is Li Na's junior sister and Zheng Qinwen's senior sister.
In the first half of her career, Zhong Yi, like her brothers and sisters, followed the coach's “three from a large” training method: from difficult, from strict, from the actual combat, a lot of.
So Zhong Yi practiced from the age of 7 to 23, the year she won the third place in the singles at the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea.
The next year, she suffered cartilage damage in her wrist and retired.
Jong Yi has been coaching ever since, from the Woo Seong Institution Tennis Academy to starting her own tennis club.
After Zheng Qinwen won the championship, Zhong Yi obviously felt the tennis boom, “the amount of inquiries more than doubled”. But from Zhong Yi's point of view, she does not think she can “copy Zheng Qinwen”: “Every child has a different personality and different family situation. There is no absolute road to success.”
In addition to the family situation, for the older generation of athletes who have experienced hard work and endurance, there is a more realistic dilemma in the new era - fewer and fewer parents are willing to let their children suffer.
“Even many parents are afraid of their children getting a tan, and tennis as an outdoor sport requires indoor air conditioning.” She feels that more parents have limited knowledge of the future prospects of tennis, thinking that it's just a hobby, just “for fun”, and that “it can never collide with studies”.
In this logic, it seems that whether the child loves the sport or not becomes less important, and instead becomes an outlet for the parents to fulfill their emotional values.
Or, tennis becomes a mere act of investment, with parents setting the dream and the child's ideas being set aside. “There are too few like Zheng Qinwen and her father who share a common dream and go forward together as a family.”
In Zhong Yi's view, it may not be possible to have both “happy tennis” and “professional tennis”.
Professional tennis is a sports school - city team - provincial team - national team, from the training team to the professional team, this is the general path, but also the most common training path of athletes under the national system. Early Li Na, including Zheng Qinwen's coach Yu Liqiao, Sun Yanyan, and the younger Zhong Yi, are all through this route “out”.
In the general perception, this is a cruel but effective mode of training.
Li Na once recalled, “All the players grew up under the super-pressurized training style.”
“In fact, even Zheng Qinwen, who went to the top, she couldn't be cheerful every day. Competitive sports are just brutal, it's like watching the Olympics that just ended, there's blood boiling and there's regret, and that's what makes it so fascinating. Athletes is to break through the limits of their own body, you can hardly say that every day is happy, are a little bit of suffering, and constantly break through their own to get through, so the final victory is also more precious.” Zhong Yi said.
However, as a special sport, tennis has the most complete professional system in the world.
Participating players do not need to be recommended and selected by teams or organizations, as long as the athletes' rankings and qualifications are in line, they can go to play the corresponding level of competition, thus further accumulating points and obtaining prizes. As a result, the top professional players spend 11 months of the year in the four Grand Slam tournaments and various tours and cup tournaments in order to strive for more prize money and higher rankings.
The four Grand Slams are the most important tournaments in professional tennis and have the most points and prize money.
The argument that “the Olympics are not that important in tennis” is also a product of this logic - the Olympics do not offer points and prizes.
The mechanism of using the individual as an ip clearly diverges from the modus operandi of the provincial or national teams.
After the Beijing Olympics, in 2009, under the impetus of Sun Jinfang, director of the Tennis Center, the Chinese Tennis Association officially agreed to four women tennis players, Li Na, Zheng Jie, Peng Shuai and Yan Zi, to “fly solo”.
In fact, it is also unreasonable to pit the national system against individual career paths.
With the continuous adjustment of the domestic system, the domestic tennis system is now developing into a “mixed system”.
Players like Zheng Qinwen, Wang Xinyu and Zhang Zhizhen, who have made a name for themselves within the system, can go on to compete professionally at the international level. But they also need to play in the National Games, Asian Games, Olympic Games and other regional or national competitions.
For this year's camp, Sun Yanyan had her eye on another 8-year-old girl whose family lives more than 30 kilometers away from the stadium. She told the girl's father that the coaching team would tend to focus their teaching on her if they were willing to let their child develop along the way. Try not to miss practice every afternoon and progress will be fast.
Perhaps, in their view, it is more realistic to look for the next Jung Chin-man rather than copying one.
The Indian text, the Rig Veda, has a quote to the effect that one can only control the behavior, not the outcome of the behavior.
In other words, in competitive sports, athletes do their best, but how things end up is not in their control. If it ends well, everyone follows along; if it ends poorly, there may not even be a chance to be talked about.
But it's not just athletics.
In August 2024, the door to the house that had been mortgaged out by Zheng Jianping was closed, and neighborhood security guards said they had seen him drive in and out of a coffee-colored Buick business car.
Another security guard recalled to the Times reporter, Zheng Jianping looks fat, big nose, very friendly, looks “like a rich man look”.
A few days later, the father returned to Shiyan, went straight to Wudang Mountain, climbed to the top for his daughter's prayers, hoping that she will soon realize the “Golden Slam” dream.
Daughter, however, with the media “quietly” about her father's emotional, “after the game, with my parents on the phone, my dad actually cried, eyes are swollen, my mom said next to me, oops, your dad these days to see you play, every see a cry.”
In the future, Zheng Qinwen may stand in the final match countless times, but the 2024 Paris Olympics this game, will be in Zheng Jianping's mind constantly replayed, that is the daughter of the championship road to look back.
Zheng slowed down a bit, dropped her racket and fell down on the red clay court, hissing with her hands in her fists to celebrate her victory.
At that moment, she became China's first ever Olympic women's singles champion.
At the same time, Zheng Qinwen's father, Zheng Jianping, and his mother, Deng Fang, witnessed this historic moment in front of the TV at their home in Wuhan, where his father raised his arms and shouted, “Olympic gold medal”; and his mother, with red eyes, gently applauded.
More than 400 kilometers away, the Olympic Sports Center in Shiyan City also made a loud noise, and thousands of Zheng Qinwen's hometown erupted into a sound wave higher than that of the Roland Garros tennis court in Paris.
From that moment on, Zheng Qinwen seemed to become an adjective, and suddenly you could say that someone was “just like Zheng Qinwen”. It's just that different people may even interpret it differently.
Behind the glory, for example, people soon realized that Zheng Qinwen's path to the Olympic title was marked by her father's hard work in exchange for millions of dollars of investment, her identity as a member of the national team as opposed to the traditional sense, and, of course, the rewards of being true to herself. ......
So the narrative about Zheng Qinwen takes on several more complex perspectives: similar to the idea that as long as one has the money, mere mortals can strike gold in the Olympics; and whether competitive sports can help a family make the leap up the social ladder.
Of course, this is a God's perspective reading.
Who would have known that the photo of 11-year-old Zheng Qinwen standing in front of the TV watching Li Na win the Australian Open 10 years ago would be widely circulated today? Because at the moment in the photo, there is one more champion.
That photo seems to be the starting point of a transition between an old and a new era.
Perhaps somewhere, there is also an individual child who pressed the shutter in front of the screen where Zheng Qinwen won the title, hoping to become the next Li Na, or Zheng Qinwen.
Zheng Qinwen, who won the 2024 Paris Tennis Olympic Championship
Steel and tennis
The famous Wudang Mountain is located in Shiyan, Hubei Province, where the modern industry is Dongfeng Erqi.The city is surrounded by mountains and flat roads are precious here. People go out either on foot or by motorized vehicles.
Locals told the Times that bike-sharing appeared in Shiyan, but quickly disappeared: everyone always rode down the slope to the lowest elevation, but no one rode up the slope.
Zheng Qinwen's childhood was spent fighting these slopes. Her father, Zheng Jianping, once told the media that Zheng Qinwen hated riding in the car from a young age and loved to run, so much so that Zheng once thought his daughter's specialty was running.
So why did Cheng Chin-man fall in love with tennis?
Zheng Jianping said in August 2008, took 6-year-old Zheng Qinwen to Beijing, to see the Olympic Games, his daughter in every field of play to see dancing, only to see to the tennis game, suddenly quiet.
At that time, tennis in the country there is still a strong middle-class mark. In four or five lines, especially in small cities like Shiyan, not many people know about tennis, and even fewer participate. Even today, there are only three or four tennis courts open to the public in Shiyan.
Less, is still there.
Back in Shiyan, Zheng Jianping decisively took Zheng Qinwen to Shiyan Sports Center to enroll in a tennis class.
Human life is full of mysteries, and everything is moving so fast nowadays that no one has time to sit there and daydream. Zheng Jianping is a businessman, he certainly understands this.
In 2001, Zheng Jianping in Shiyan near the bus station, set up a car parts and steel retail company, although in October 2007 canceled. But in 2005, Zheng Jianping in 1.4 kilometers away from the alley, the establishment of Hazhan Industry and Trade Co.
Speaking of this company, even today is still in the local steel people, know that the company has made a lot of money.
According to business information, this company has a registered capital of 10 million yuan, and Zheng Jianping is the majority shareholder.
They remembered that Zheng Jianping had no factory buildings, only a small office, and only four or five employees under him, but he could earn enough to let his boss drive a Cadillac worth 400,000 to 500,000 dollars.
A peer told the Times, “Our boss earns more than 10 million a year, but he (Zheng Jianping) earns more, the best time of business, (I heard) the flow of funds are almost 100 million.” In small cities, peer-to-peer information is usually the talk of the circle after dinner.
Another peer also confirmed to the Times reporter, the steel business in those years “is very good”.
The years after the millennium were a period when China pushed ahead with infrastructure and real estate development, and demand for steel increased significantly. In January-February 2004, for example, China's fixed-asset investment grew by as much as 53 percent year-on-year, boosting GDP growth to 9.8 percent in the first quarter.
But these narratives are only in their memories.
In fact, they haven't seen Zheng Jianping for more than a decade, and everyone knows he left Shiyan because he has a daughter who plays tennis.
However, Zheng Qinping, who disappeared from the steel circle, did not completely leave the commercial battlefield of Shiyan. in April 2016, he took a 29% stake in a local tunnel engineering limited liability company.
From a certain point of view, Zheng Qinwen embarked on the road of tennis, talent is on the one hand; on the other hand, Zheng Jianping with steel for her to build a solid family base.
But it is difficult to say clearly is, is Zheng Jianping built Zheng Qinwen, or daughter with the family, into another world.
In about a year of tennis classes at the Shiyan Sports Center, 6-year-old Zheng Qinwen ran to the court every afternoon as soon as school was out, practicing from 4 to 8 p.m. Her childhood training partner, who trained with her, told the Times, “Every day when she got home, she would practice a little bit more on her own.”
It wasn't long before Zheng Qinwen started following her partners out to competitions. During one of the tournaments in the provincial capital, Sun Yanyan, the tennis coach of the children's sports school at the Chongren Sports Training Center of the Hubei Provincial Sports Bureau, took an immediate liking to her.
Sun Yanyan recalled to the Times reporter: “playing bad, errors are many, but others playing bad ball, she is very active to chase, to save, unlike others playing bad, not to chase, not to save.”
Playing tennis, 7 points depend on the feet. “This kid is so aggressive with her feet.” She could tell that Zheng Qinwen had a desire for tennis.
In those days, it was mostly Zheng Qinwen's grandmother who accompanied her to matches. Once Sun Yanyan happened to be sharing a room with Zheng Qinwen's grandmother. Sun Yanyan told her grandmother that she liked the child very much and suggested that the child's father contact her and let the child train with her in Wuhan.
A door opened.
A daughter, a new career
Wuhan is one of the few cities in China with a centuries-old tennis tradition.In 1933, Hankou hosted both men's and women's tennis tournaments; in 1957, the Chinese Tennis Association (CTA) was founded, and the first CTA president, Sun Yaohua, was also the vice mayor of Wuhan.
In 1933, Hankou already had women's tennis tournaments (Source: Social Networks)
And in the three National Games from 1993 to 2001, the Hubei tennis team won 9 out of 21 gold medals.
Great local athletes have inspired youngsters to get involved in tennis, and they usually choose to coach after retiring from the sport.
So there is no shortage of good tennis coaches in Wuhan.
After training with Sun Yanyan for a while, Zheng Jianping tried to contact Yu Liqiao, a famous coach in Wuhan's tennis industry.
He has been busy looking for the most suitable coach for Zheng Qinwen, and less than 8 years old Zheng Qinwen, first by the grandmother rented a room nearby to take care of, and then Zheng Qinwen's mother decided to quit her job, to Wuhan to act as her daughter's full-time “logistics”.
Soon, Zheng Qinwen began to win medals, at the age of 9, she won the U10 girls' singles championship and third place in doubles in Hubei Province, and in 2011, she defended the girls' singles and doubles championships at the Jingmen stop of the Provincial Junior Tennis Tournament.
Since 2012, Zheng Qinwen has been traveling around the world to compete. She probably didn't know at that time that the family's money started to get tight.
In 2013, the central part of the country invested a total of 190.45 billion yuan in real estate, an increase of 20.8%. Perhaps seeing the real estate momentum, Zheng Jianping borrowed 2.2 million yuan that year to several real estate development companies in Shiyan. According to the contract, they returned at the end of the year as much as possible.
But the money Zheng Jianping waited two years.
Zheng Jianping had no choice but to launch a lawsuit, but was told that the borrower is suspected of illegally absorbing public deposits have been detained.
This money is not coming back.
Did not recover the money owed, like a long whip, little by little hit his business chain.
For example, he could not repay the 200,000 owed to the steel supply company; for example, in order to obtain working capital, he mortgaged his house in Shiyan - the one Zheng Qinwen grew up in - to cover the debt.
Until May 9, 2019, he still had a loan of 2.4 million yuan outstanding.
Zheng Jianping, who was not yet an “Olympic champion father”, was sued by the bank, he was restricted from high consumption, and his house in Shiyan was also seized.
During those difficult years, Zheng Jianping found legendary coach Carlos Rodriguez, who coached Li Na and seven-time Grand Slam winner Justin Henin, based in Beijing.
Zheng Jianping, a businessman, calculated the cost of going to Beijing to train: rent, training fees and domestic and international tournaments, at least 500,000 yuan a year, a figure that does not include the cost of hiring Rodriguez as a private tutor.
For the sake of his daughter, the man sold his house in Xiangyang.
By any standard, Zheng Qinwen's family are remarkable people: they see her strengths, they see how tennis has influenced and changed Zheng's day-to-day life, and most importantly, they understand why Zheng is loyal to herself.
As Zheng's reputation grew, she was signed by IMG (International Management Group, a company similar to Sports Economics) and Nike, which somewhat eased the family's financial pressures.
Until 2022, Zheng Qinwen got the WTA best newcomer, the world ranking from more than 500 to the end of the year the world ranking of 25, by the outside world called it “rocket girl”.
It seems to be a paradoxical world where business and life, spirituality and materialism, faith and betrayal, daughter and future coexist in the determining factors of the father, and when it all collides with each other, it shapes a difficult zone in which Zheng Qinwen happens to inhabit.
The twist happened after Zheng Qinwen became famous, on July 22, 2022, Zheng Jianping signed a contract on behalf of his daughter with the Wuhan Bingyu Net Sports Management Center. The content is that in the next four years, Wuhan Municipal Sports Bureau will subsidize Zheng Qinwen, in the hiring of coaches, rehabilitation and other aspects of the expenditure, in order to ensure that the latter team normal operation.
Zheng Qinwen seems to remain detached from the system, but her status has always been that of a registered athlete in Wuhan.
She did not represent Hubei at the National Games, but in September 2023 she won the singles gold medal at the Hangzhou Asian Games as a member of the national team.
“Copying” or searching
Four years after opening the club, Zhong Yi has not yet encountered students who are determined to take the professional path, “the whole of Wuhan (professional seedlings), a palm can be counted.”As the club's coach, Zhong Yi studied under Yu Liqiao, who is Li Na's junior sister and Zheng Qinwen's senior sister.
In the first half of her career, Zhong Yi, like her brothers and sisters, followed the coach's “three from a large” training method: from difficult, from strict, from the actual combat, a lot of.
So Zhong Yi practiced from the age of 7 to 23, the year she won the third place in the singles at the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea.
The next year, she suffered cartilage damage in her wrist and retired.
Jong Yi has been coaching ever since, from the Woo Seong Institution Tennis Academy to starting her own tennis club.
After Zheng Qinwen won the championship, Zhong Yi obviously felt the tennis boom, “the amount of inquiries more than doubled”. But from Zhong Yi's point of view, she does not think she can “copy Zheng Qinwen”: “Every child has a different personality and different family situation. There is no absolute road to success.”
In addition to the family situation, for the older generation of athletes who have experienced hard work and endurance, there is a more realistic dilemma in the new era - fewer and fewer parents are willing to let their children suffer.
“Even many parents are afraid of their children getting a tan, and tennis as an outdoor sport requires indoor air conditioning.” She feels that more parents have limited knowledge of the future prospects of tennis, thinking that it's just a hobby, just “for fun”, and that “it can never collide with studies”.
In this logic, it seems that whether the child loves the sport or not becomes less important, and instead becomes an outlet for the parents to fulfill their emotional values.
Or, tennis becomes a mere act of investment, with parents setting the dream and the child's ideas being set aside. “There are too few like Zheng Qinwen and her father who share a common dream and go forward together as a family.”
In Zhong Yi's view, it may not be possible to have both “happy tennis” and “professional tennis”.
Professional tennis is a sports school - city team - provincial team - national team, from the training team to the professional team, this is the general path, but also the most common training path of athletes under the national system. Early Li Na, including Zheng Qinwen's coach Yu Liqiao, Sun Yanyan, and the younger Zhong Yi, are all through this route “out”.
In the general perception, this is a cruel but effective mode of training.
Li Na once recalled, “All the players grew up under the super-pressurized training style.”
“In fact, even Zheng Qinwen, who went to the top, she couldn't be cheerful every day. Competitive sports are just brutal, it's like watching the Olympics that just ended, there's blood boiling and there's regret, and that's what makes it so fascinating. Athletes is to break through the limits of their own body, you can hardly say that every day is happy, are a little bit of suffering, and constantly break through their own to get through, so the final victory is also more precious.” Zhong Yi said.
However, as a special sport, tennis has the most complete professional system in the world.
Participating players do not need to be recommended and selected by teams or organizations, as long as the athletes' rankings and qualifications are in line, they can go to play the corresponding level of competition, thus further accumulating points and obtaining prizes. As a result, the top professional players spend 11 months of the year in the four Grand Slam tournaments and various tours and cup tournaments in order to strive for more prize money and higher rankings.
The four Grand Slams are the most important tournaments in professional tennis and have the most points and prize money.
The argument that “the Olympics are not that important in tennis” is also a product of this logic - the Olympics do not offer points and prizes.
The mechanism of using the individual as an ip clearly diverges from the modus operandi of the provincial or national teams.
After the Beijing Olympics, in 2009, under the impetus of Sun Jinfang, director of the Tennis Center, the Chinese Tennis Association officially agreed to four women tennis players, Li Na, Zheng Jie, Peng Shuai and Yan Zi, to “fly solo”.
Individual career path means the whole process of self-financing.
In addition to the high investment in learning to play at a young age, after adulthood, the income is completely linked to the results: for adult players, it is generally recognized that the rankings in the world's top 100 professional players can basically rely on the game prize money to support themselves.In fact, it is also unreasonable to pit the national system against individual career paths.
With the continuous adjustment of the domestic system, the domestic tennis system is now developing into a “mixed system”.
Players like Zheng Qinwen, Wang Xinyu and Zhang Zhizhen, who have made a name for themselves within the system, can go on to compete professionally at the international level. But they also need to play in the National Games, Asian Games, Olympic Games and other regional or national competitions.
For this year's camp, Sun Yanyan had her eye on another 8-year-old girl whose family lives more than 30 kilometers away from the stadium. She told the girl's father that the coaching team would tend to focus their teaching on her if they were willing to let their child develop along the way. Try not to miss practice every afternoon and progress will be fast.
Perhaps, in their view, it is more realistic to look for the next Jung Chin-man rather than copying one.
The Indian text, the Rig Veda, has a quote to the effect that one can only control the behavior, not the outcome of the behavior.
In other words, in competitive sports, athletes do their best, but how things end up is not in their control. If it ends well, everyone follows along; if it ends poorly, there may not even be a chance to be talked about.
But it's not just athletics.
In August 2024, the door to the house that had been mortgaged out by Zheng Jianping was closed, and neighborhood security guards said they had seen him drive in and out of a coffee-colored Buick business car.
Another security guard recalled to the Times reporter, Zheng Jianping looks fat, big nose, very friendly, looks “like a rich man look”.
A few days later, the father returned to Shiyan, went straight to Wudang Mountain, climbed to the top for his daughter's prayers, hoping that she will soon realize the “Golden Slam” dream.
Daughter, however, with the media “quietly” about her father's emotional, “after the game, with my parents on the phone, my dad actually cried, eyes are swollen, my mom said next to me, oops, your dad these days to see you play, every see a cry.”
In the future, Zheng Qinwen may stand in the final match countless times, but the 2024 Paris Olympics this game, will be in Zheng Jianping's mind constantly replayed, that is the daughter of the championship road to look back.
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