(Chung's Notes: See the earlier article on Kong for the background. In the January issue of Table Tennis World, the reporters transcribed the reviews and critiques of Wang Liqin's and Sun Jin's performances at the Sydney Olympics. I have translated Wang's own critique, followed by his coach Li's and then Cai's reviews/critiques here. These offer great insight into Wang's problems and how hard the coaches have tried to work with him.)
Wang's Own Review:
Because this is the first Olympics for me, I was not used to the atmosphere in the beginning. It was much more tense and exciting than I had thought. Later I got used to it, and was able to play with a higher level of excitement and aggressiveness, and performed to my ability.
The key reason for doing well in the Olympics is the proper adjustment of my mental attitude. I did not place too big of a burden on myself to win, and when I had problems that I could not work out by myself, I had timely discussions with my coaches to analyze and solve those problems. Before the tournament, I tried not to have too high a goal, but to maintain a sense of calm and normalcy. In every match, I placed myself at a lower level, so that I was the challenger. Also I thoroughly studied the opponents, and prepared for the possible difficulties I would face in the match. During competition, Yan Sen and I had trust in each other, and we were in unison in our approach, our mental state and our strategy. And we executed our strategy decisively. When facing difficulties, we encouraged each other to overcome any fear we might have, and we aggressively addressed and solved problems. In these areas I did a lot better than before.
Technically, I have raised the quality of my serves, so that the receiver could not easily place the ball all over the table. The serve trajectory was kept low, with quick variations. In returning serves I judged better and improved my steadiness. I had good touch on returning short and flipping the serves. When Yan served and the receiver returned to the small triangle on my backhand, I was able to flip with high accuracy. I also aggressively looped the returns that were semi-long (almost off table). When Yan returned short and the opponent flipped the return, my backhand counter drive had adequate quality.
On the negative side, my control of placement was not great. My opponents could easily block off my attacks because I kept using the same lines. Also on defense I was not able to vary the placement. When Yan returned short and the opponent then placed the ball inside the table, my center of gravity tended to be too far back to initiate attacks. My backhand pushes did not have enough spin variation, and the flips were not quick enough. After Yan flipped the ball, I did not cover the whole table well enough, and especially my forehand counter/block was not steady.
Now that I have the doubles gold, I will try to solidify the good thinking process and mental attitude that I had, so that I could use them in the future. I have to get used to the bigger ball, and to improve my serve returns and my pushing game. I have to strengthen the control of the first 3 shots, and improve the quality of the backhand defense and attacks.
Li Xiaodong's Critique
(Note: Li was Wang's coach at the time.)
As your coach, I have 4 things to discuss.
First, you completed your task satisfactorily, so you should have a positive view on your accomplishment. But your own efforts are only one of the factors; you should see that behind your success, many people, including the whole coaching team, have made major contributions. We have met with you to discuss your problems numerous times. The effort we spent on you exceeded what we spent on Kong or Liu. You must have a clear understanding of how much we have worked with you, and use this to motivate yourself in the future.
Second, you are the most hard-working player on our team, and your skill level is very high, but you also have very high expectations of yourself. Some of the problems you never handled well, so you often made the same mistakes in practices and in competition. There are two reasons for this. One is that high expectations lead to a heavy mental burden, and you tried to do what you could not do. Second is you don't know where to place yourself, and you do not understand the relationship between the individual and the team. This has improved a little in the Olympics, so you should try to summarize it.
Third, for you, working on having the right mindset is more important than getting the right technique. Take you and Yan Sen for example: mutual encouragement and trust are important on the court; they are the foundations of your victory. You cannot place yourself at too high a level. Technically you should try to be steady first, then aggressive.
Fourth, considering the investment the whole team had made on you, the rewards are not the greatest. Compared to Kong and Liu, you are still behind in your accomplishments. So you have to be humble, and raise your intellectual and cultural levels. You have not achieved that much in singles yet, and you have not made strong contributions in the team event. So you have to raise your overall level. This could be a long and painful process.
After the Olympics, you still have not got over the flowers and the applause's. You did not pay sufficient attention to the University Games. For you, every match is important, and you have to give it your best. When you are better as a person, everything else will be better.
Cai's Critique
From the standpoint of carrying out his task in the Olympics, Wang's results are definitely positive. Not only did he fulfill his own dream, he also fulfilled the dream of the whole team (sweeping the golds), and the dreams of his friends and family. The Olympics success is a good starting point for Wang's maturing, and is a milestone.
But Wang's own critique is a little dull. I am not sure if Wang did not want to expose himself too much, or if he was not very good in summarizing. Since the 45th Worlds, similar problems have shown up, and he should have different experiences, but I do not see that in his summary. Overall the last several years, I felt that it was tiring talking to you. You did not want to think deeply into problems. Often at the end of our talks, I had no more inspiration left. We all felt that you thought too much of yourself, and when you ran into a problem, you ran out of ways to extricate yourself. Your way of handling a problem is this: I'll go back and practice more. But did you understand the purpose of practices? It is to solve problems that arise in competition. Your practices are disjointed from your competition, and too simplistic.
You are not the intellectual type of player; you are not very good with using your brain to play table tennis. Also, your will is not very strong, and you are limited in your capacity to play hurt. Even though you work the hardest in the team, and you want to be rewarded for that hard work, you could not train hard by using your brain, like Deng Yaping could. So there are these extremes: your way of thinking is simplistic and stubborn, and you interpret other people's advice for you as prejudice against you. The truth is that we all care about you; this is your fortune. But you may feel a little rebellish, and you try to look for other ways to justify yourself.
In addition, your self-centerness has greatly limited your progress. Take the Olympics qualification tournament, for example. Your role is to do well in doubles. But you wanted to prove your worth, and put all your energy in the singles. In the 2 Pro-Tour stops after the qualification, you only considered playing singles. At one time, we were doubtful whether you could handle your doubles role.
Also, there were some problems in your mutual trust with Yan Sen. When you have trust, then you play as a team. But often you would complain once you started losing. A classical example of that is when you played a Danish pair last July. When you lost, you tried to not shoulder the responsibility, and instead blame other people. The fact was you lost the most points. Given all these, we did not feel confident about your singles. In a match, you were playing your own game, you did not think about your partner or your opponents, and you were always trying to loop with your forehand, and to loop from all positions. You did not play intelligently, and you did not consider the fine skills.
You and Yan have played together for 4 or 5 years now, and you have good results. You have beaten the best pairs, but you have also lost to weaker players. There is great variability in your game, and on the court you showed a lack of ability to adapt. In the Olympics, you have overcome some of the problems. During the closed training, we have worked on a lot of the issues. So you should really summarize how you were able to win, so that you will not make similar mistakes in the future.
The Olympic victory will give you a chance to develop yourself more. When your overall quality is higher, you could play to your full ability. You should learn from the good players. For example, Liu Guoliang was behind Eloi 0-2, just like you were at the 45th Worlds. How did Liu come back to win, but you lost 0-3? Why not ask Liu what was going through his mind? Are there things you can learn from Liu?
Overall, you have to learn to be open, optimistic, and be a
solid player. To turn others' suspicion to trust, you have to be
stronger, and work out a path for yourself.