The Chinese women's doubles pairing of Li Ting/Sun Tian Tian just beat the 2nd seeds to win Olympic Gold in tennis!!! Hmmm, imagine in Beijing 2008, all 3 olympic racket sports become dominated by them! They're already on their way to glory, taking away women's doubles in table tennis, badminton, and now tennis!!!
Just amazing From the above results, they are dominating (racquet sports)already This will sure spurs more tennis popularity in china.
So is tennis just pure brawns and no brains? Can't really be because we have seen 'pint' size ladies like Swiss and Belgian (?) girls against the opposite numbers, the William sisters. So Asians still have a chance. China's women's tennis pair could have benefitted from their badminton counterparts through the exchange of ideas on tactics and strategies!
yes, she's Justine Henin-Hardenne, this tiny pocket rocket beat the thorougbred looking Amelie Mauresmo.
thats Right! Just looked at the way they played, there was no dign of stress nor pressure, even when one commited double fault... GReat job China**** Also, the most heartening win to me is still table tennis woman singles Zhang Yining has got to be my new idol.....Precision + Speed...
I saw the end of the match, the chinese girls were playing well, but what striked me the most is that ... doubles are even more repetitive and boring than singles in tennis! Also, doubles aren't very important in tennis, most players only train for singles and play doubles for fun, so it is easier for a well-prepared pair to win in doubles... Anyway, good job done by the chinese girls, they deserved their gold medal!
no, i think russia is. they have thousands kids in training with pretty good national program. Maria Sharapove is just one of many. How much dominance of tennis by china depends how serious china runs their national training/ladder system. For the next little while, russia is spitting out accomplished juniors like spit balls.
I think so too LoL with so many young talented players ... with myskina, dementieva, sharapova, lutkestkova and other dificult name LoL
Ya... Right now we already hv 2 big players; Anna Kournikova & Sharapova.... esp the latter, powerful serve... just imagine the points she can get just frm serving. Then again, by the next olympics, China will be so....so.... prepared to get ALL the GOlds they are targeting on.. all the rackets games for sure.... gynastics.... I just felt that this yr is such perfect yr for S'pore to get a medal...or two... Next time is gonna be much harder/.......
i dont think tennis doubles are as developed as their singles counterpart. so i dont think it really is much of a great issue that a non seeded won the gold. another question that popped up in my head is: is tennis doubles really international/pro standard? i think its a great achievement for china though.
You guys are saying that China will be the next superpower of tennis... that's such a crock. The two chinese had a cinderella olympics, it was bound to happen sooner or later. The USA and Australia are the only superpowers in tennis. Always have been and always will be (however western Europe in general is very good).
^^ There's no such thing as "always have been and always will be" when it comes to sports. In that case, should we say that besides Asia and Denmark, the rest of the world has no hell of a hope in badminton and should just give up right here and now??? Should we say that China should just lock the Uber Cup in a vault in Beijing as they're always going to dominate women's badminton till badminton becomes obsolete (perish the thought!!!). A perfect example of this idea is ice hockey. 50 years ago Canada was destroying European countries like they were schoolkids. Now, a half century later, Canada is not even guaranteed a gold medal match if they don't play to their best abilities. Sporting dominance can shift hands as new nations pick up on them and start developing their own programs!
totally agree. Another example is basketball. I never had thot argentina, lithuania, puerto rico, italy, spain, etc are so good now.
