Gawain could catch the slight embarrassment and shyness in Pu Lan's eyes, and a faint smile could not help but appear in his eyes. Then he pretended not to notice anything and changed the subject.
“I learned some things, but I also realized that there is still a lot to learn.”
"But the most important thing is to really realize the joy of clay."
Pulan tilted his head slightly, "Oh? How do you say that?"
Gawain thought that Pu Lan was just trying to change the topic, so he said a few general words. But when he saw Pu Lan, his brows showed interest in curiosity and inquiry, he couldn't help but be a little surprised, "Are you really interested?"
"Of course, as long as it's something you're interested in, I'm willing to listen." Pulan looked deeply at Gawain, his clear pupils reflecting Gawain's face.
Gawain was stunned for a moment. Before he realized it, the smile on his lips slightly rose, "Be careful, you may have opened Pandora's Box."
A joke made Pu Lan burst into laughter, and then Gawain continued.
"Actually, there has always been a saying among professional coaches that training for basic skills must begin on clay."
"But obviously, the North American training system does not agree with this, and it is more the European coaches' idea."
"In the past, I always believed that this should be a conflict of views between different training factions, which objectively exists in the professional training of different competitive sports."
Pulan doesn't know much about tennis. If it weren't for Gawain, she wouldn't even watch tennis often, let alone care about the status of tennis matches.
But at this time, Pu Lan showed an expression of interest, not in a way of pandering, but from the bottom of his heart. Gawain always seemed to be able to make things interesting.
More importantly, Pu Lan wants to understand Gawain's world, and his curiosity and interest are stronger than ever.
"So, have your views changed now?"
Gawain nodded gently, "Just a little."
As Gawain said, this is a dispute between training factions, which slowly emerged in the second half of the first decade of the 21st century and has continued ever since -
The cause was Roddick's retirement. He reached the top of the US Open in 2003. This was the last time a North American player won a Grand Slam. This also announced the decline of North America's golden generation; even for a long time afterwards, the world
There are no American players in the top ten ranks.
There is no doubt that this is the end of an era. From Connors to McEnroe to Chang Depei, from Courier to Sampras to Agassi, North American hard court players have dominated professional tennis for more than thirty years.
Whether it is a Grand Slam championship or the world's No. 1 throne, it shows its top dominance in all aspects.
Now, it has completely collapsed.
Instead, European players have emerged strongly, and the "Big Four" are all from Europe, which has led to the emergence of factions across Europe. The balance of power in professional tennis has also undergone a fundamental change.
Later, in 2017 and 2018, a group of players such as Isner and Querrey suffered a decline in their world rankings due to injuries, and the growth rate of the new generation was far behind Zverev Jr.
, the growth rate of Tsitsipas and others has caused the professional tennis in North America to fall into a short-term hiatus.
At the worst time, there were no American players in the top 30 in the world rankings, and this continued for a long time.
This is the case until Taylor-Fritz, Reilly-Opelka, Tommy-Paul, France-Tiafoe,
Sebastian Korda, Jenson Brooksby and other young players born in the 1995s and 2000s came forward one after another and changed the situation again.
In this regard, professionals around the world, including those in North America, launched a heated discussion:
why?
The strength of the "Big Four" is one aspect; but what about other than that? Leaving aside the Grand Slams and Masters championships for the time being, what about the world rankings?
Not only in top-level competitions, but also in ordinary competitions, it can be generally felt that American players are lacking in competitiveness and find it difficult to keep up with the average competition level.
Moreover, the most puzzling fact is that due to commercial considerations, the popularity of hard courts has skyrocketed, the number of hard court events continues to rise, and the living space of clay and grass is further compressed. Naturally, players who are good at hard courts
Also get more room to play.
Someone once said that Federer is good at grass, Nadal is good at clay, and Djokovic is good at hard courts. Of course, these three giants perform very, very well on all surfaces, but everyone has their own favorite surface.
Therefore, people in the industry are generally optimistic about Djokovic’s future——
The most intuitive point is that as hard-court events occupy an increasing proportion, the number of weeks Djokovic has been ranked No. 1 in the world has become longer and longer.
After all, world rankings measure average performance over the past year.
In the same way as Djokovic, players from the North American training system are good at hard courts. Logically speaking, they should be able to show off their skills like a duck in water. However, this is not the case.
This doesn't seem to make sense.
At this time, the dispute over the training system gradually surfaced.
It may sound strange and difficult to understand, but the reality is that the North American training system is called "strength stream", while the European training system is called "technical stream"——
Yes, Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, and Murray are all called "technical flow."
Of course, from the perspective of competition style, Federer and Nadal seem to be far away from the technical flow, but through in-depth analysis from a professional perspective, we can see the context.
This conclusion is not without reason.
To put it simply, the North American training system is not limited to the United States, but also Canada, Australia, etc., including most countries in Asia.
This training system revolves around hard courts. Serve and forehand are strengths, but that’s all. Compared with a single weapon, the more serious problem is:
The monotony of the tactical system.
Players often rely too much on their serve and forehand, and strength has become the core of the entire training system. In fact, with the development of physical fitness and equipment technology, as long as the power of the serve and forehand is sufficient, you can indeed win. This has further led to players
They put everything into trusting their serve and forehand.
But the question is, what if it doesn’t work? What if you can’t score on your serve or forehand?
At this time, the players who have grown up under this training system have fully exposed their shortcomings:
One is the lack of scoring methods.
One is the lack of tactical literacy.
Finally, we delve into an essential issue, which is the lack of cultivation of "ball intelligence".
how to say?
It can be understood that if a person has eighteen kinds of martial arts in his arsenal, then in a crisis situation, he will constantly think about what other weapons he has to get out of the predicament, and naturally, the entire tactical system will become rich and active.
But if a person only has one weapon in his arsenal, he can really defeat the enemy at ordinary times, so he will have no other ideas in his mind, and his thinking ability will gradually deteriorate. When the real crisis comes, he will not know what to do at all.
Well, even if someone threw a machine gun in front of him, he wouldn't know how to use it.
Players who come out of the North American training system are the latter.