Chapter 16: Encounter with the Strange Ball Player
"In the first game, Pansich serves."
In this match, Pancich will have a major change in his serve, and he has decided to play with an upper serve instead of using an underhand serve.
Although the stability is high, the aggression of the lower serve is too weak, and it can even be said that there is no aggression at all. It can be used to deal with the competitions held by the unit, but in this kind of competition, which gathers amateur masters from all over the country, it will not work at all.
Serving has always been the most troublesome and most difficult technique for amateur tennis players to master. Therefore, the upper hand serving level of amateur players is generally not too high, and under the condition of ensuring stability, speed will not be deliberately pursued. For some players, the occasional 150 or 160 km/h serve is quite good. It is not at the same level as those serving cannons in professional players, who can often reach speeds of more than 200 kilometers per hour.
For Pansiqi, he had not used a top-hand serve before, because he felt that it was unnecessary. But this time it was different, and he needed to end the match as soon as possible, so he was prepared to take the initiative as soon as he came up and not give his opponent a chance to entangle.
The tennis ball is tossed high, and the bright yellow contrasts with the blue of the sky in the soft morning sun. As if all the power had been exhausted, the tennis ball, which had risen to its highest point, began to fall rapidly under the pull of the earth's gravity.
At this time, Pansic, who had been waiting for the racket, made a critical blow to the tennis ball, and his feet were in the air to perfectly transfer the power of his waist and abdomen to the tennis ball through the racket. After receiving such a strong power support, the tennis ball roared towards the opponent's court. Looking at the momentum, it is far from being comparable to the balls sent by those players in the unit competition.
"It's so fast, I guess the speed is more than 160 per hour." Seeing that Pan Xiqi's first serve was so fast, Su was taken aback by Su, who was standing on the net.
Don't look at his age, but he has a lot of experience, basically the competitions held by CTA, as long as the time is right, he actively signs up. Therefore, although the CTA level is only 5 and the strength is not very strong, Su Chao is also well-known in the amateur tennis circle. After all, there are many competitions, and most people can be familiar with each other.
In addition, what impresses people is his weird style of play. Su Chao uses a pure chipping style of forehand and backhand that is not common in the entire tennis world, that is, most of his balls, regardless of whether he is forehand or backhand, are handled with chipping instead of the usual hard hitting. He is also the only player in this tournament to adopt this style of play, so it can be said that this is an out-and-out monster player.
Looking at the entire tennis world, the professional players who use the same style of play can be counted as Romanian women's player Nigu and Italian women's player Wenqi. These two players, although they are not ranked at the top, but the weird and changeable chipping ball has also made many top masters suffer a lot.
What is impressive is that Nico played the China Open one year, giving Sister Na a duck egg in the second set in front of the home crowd. Even more famous, in the US Open semi-finals, Wen Qi used a chopping ball to keep the invincible Empress Wei out of the final, shattering her dream of winning the four Grand Slams of the year.
It can be said that even professional players will feel a lot of headaches when they encounter opponents with this style of play, let alone amateur players. With a rare style of play, Su Chao basically has a winning rate of more than 90% when facing opponents who are weaker than him. Even some players who are obviously higher than him have no way to find a way to crack their chipping, and often have to regret losing in the end.
In other words, players like Su Chao are the most reluctant opponents for players with little competition experience. When Su Chao saw that his opponent in the first round was an unfamiliar name like Pan Xiqi and was of the same level as him, he knew that there was a high probability that another new player would be a stepping stone for him to advance.
I don't know what a wonderful expression Su Chao would have on his face if he knew that Pan Xiqi was also very fortunate to meet him in the first round. But he didn't have time to think about it now. His immediate priority now is to get back Pansizi's quick serve, which surprised him a little.
Pansizi's powerful shot is already likely to constitute a direct score for the average amateur. But Su Chao didn't seem to be very worried, I saw him take a step to the right, and with a slash of his forehand with the ball, he actually sent the ferocious incoming ball back softly around his fingers. Looking at his mellow movements, it seems that he is very used to this way of returning the ball.
"Huh!"
Seeing that his somewhat powerful serve was easily picked up like this, Pansic was a little surprised that it was Pansic's turn this time. Because he served in the first zone and in the outside corner. It stands to reason that the average right-handed racket player uses a forehand to handle the serve when receiving the serve. With his serving speed, as long as the opponent's receiving level is not high, it is easy to make direct mistakes, or catch the ball high, creating a chance for him to die directly with a high ball in the half.
However, Su Chao not only did not make a mistake in this return serve, but used extremely strong spin to cut the ball fast and deep. This return serve not only neutralized Pancic's serve, but also left him with no offensive opportunities.
"Sure enough, it's the highest level of amateur competition in the country, and the opponent in the first round doesn't seem to be so easy to deal with."
When the tennis ball hits the ground, it spins without diminishing after bounce, and if you make a mistake, it is easy to knock the ball away. However, it is unlikely that this will happen to Pansizi. With his current vision, no matter how fast the tennis ball spins, he can easily judge the speed and direction of spin.
Seeing that it was a strong downspin ball, he pulled sideways with a strong forehand and hit the ball towards Su Chao's backhand. To deal with the downspin ball, there must be enough upward force, otherwise the ball will go to the net nine times out of ten. This ball Pansiqi has a purpose, this straight line is fast and heavy, even if the opponent's pace is in place to return the ball, there is a high probability that he will choose to return the diagonal line. At that time, Pan Xiqi, who was already waiting there, slapped a backhand straight line, and he could easily collect points.
Sure enough, as he expected, Su Chao, who was in place, chose to use a backhand to return a slash. However, he sliced the ball back with a backhand. The spin of the chipping ball caused Panci to be unable to score with a backhand as planned, and if he forced to play, there was a high probability that he would return a tennis ball.
"Looks like this game is getting a little interesting."
Su Chao was greatly surprised by Pan Xiqi's two consecutive shots back, making him realize that this first-round opponent did not seem to be so simple. After all, he has never encountered a player who uses a chipping ball for both front and back shots.
Carefully pull the ball with a backhand and return to a straight line. But the slowdown of the ball speed has made it impossible for him to score directly, because the opposite Su Chao has returned to the defense in place.
After the first two beats of Pan Xiqi's active attack, Su Chao, who stabilized his position, began his counterattack. But for a player of his style, counterattacking does not mean taking the initiative to attack, but laying out a game with a chipping ball and waiting for the opponent to take the initiative to fall into the trap.
Pancic's return to his forehand was slow and a good attacking opportunity. But instead of attacking hard, he slashed the board with his forehand. This shot was the opposite of the previous low and sharp chipping, but it was high and floating, and it landed slowly on the Pansiqi court. The effect of this ball is like Su Chao made a mistake and did not control the ball in place.
It's a great opportunity to attack.
"Fight, attack, no one can resist such temptation." A sly light flashed in Su Chao's eyes.
Sure enough, Pansiqi's forehand was a big takeaway, and it seemed that he was about to use all his strength to blast out a winning point. As the racket got closer and closer to the ball, the smug look on Su Chao's face became stronger and stronger, and it seemed that the opponent was about to be fooled. He used this trick to deal with novices before, which can be described as a hundred trials.
Just when everyone thought that Pancich was going to make a violent forehand attack, at the moment when the racket touched the ball, Panci suddenly retracted his strength and turned to the incoming ball with a heavy slash. If there are spectators who have seen Pan Xiqi's game against Lao Wang, they will recognize that Pan Xiqi actually chose to put the ball in front of the net at this time.
With the familiar speed and altitude of the tennis ball, it will wipe the net, fall, spin, hit the net, and land!
"In the first game, 15:0, Pansiqi leads."
All this came too suddenly, far beyond Su Chao's expectations, and it wasn't until he heard the referee's announcement that he realized what was happening.
"It failed, my plan didn't work out! How is this possible? Faced with such a result, Su Chao was obviously a little unacceptable.
You know, the ball he returned was high and shallow, and nine times out of ten players would not be able to help but attack. However, who would have thought that he secretly added extremely heavy downspin to the tennis ball when returning the ball, looking at the high bounce, but as long as he hit forward with force, he would be 100% off the net.
He used this trick to turn countless novices around, but he didn't expect that when he faced Pan Xiqi today, he cracked it. Not only that, but the opponent will also calculate, and use the chopping ball to give him a short, so that he is unsuspecting and loses this point.
"It seems that I was really lucky, I actually met a pure chipper in the first round." Pansiqi couldn't help but smile a little wryly. However, the first encounter with this kind of strange ball player made him a little interested in the game.
"Since you are so confident in your chipping ball, and you don't want to be rude, then I'll play with you to the end."
In the first point, the two sides put a lot of thought into the back and forth, and even the referee felt that the first round of singles this year seemed to be extraordinarily exciting.
Coming to the second zone of serve, Panci sent another top-hand serve. But this time he lost a lot of energy, estimated to be only about 120 kilometers per hour. Because after understanding the opponent's style of play, he knows that the faster the serve, the easier it is for the opponent to relay, so as to cut the return ball faster and more spinning.
Naturally, Su Chao used his own backhand cutting to receive the serve. However, unlike the first point, Pansiqi actually gave up the flat shot and chose to cut the ball in response. Pan Xiqi's return ball is not only not slower than Su Chao's, but even better in terms of revolutions.
Seeing that the other party actually responded to the battle in the way they are best at, this is obviously a naked provocation. Su Chao was obviously enraged, and beat harder than the other, and the two instantly went toe-for-tat.
Looking at the two people on the field who were cutting wildly, the referee was a little puzzled by what was happening. How to play a good game, in the blink of an eye, it turned into a chipping battle.