"John..."
There was a call from behind, and Tobias stopped and turned around to see the familiar figure of David Harnett.
"I'll escort you for a ride."
Harnett said loudly, then quickly caught up with Tobias, and then the two of them walked side by side to the elevator.
The two were old acquaintances and had a good relationship in private, so Tobias had no scruples and made a half-joking comment.
"Why, send you out to stop the loss?"
Harnett laughed directly, "How can we say it's about stopping losses? It should be about maintaining friendly relations."
Tobias glanced at Harnett, "Are you speaking from the standpoint of Adidas now, or are you speaking as my friend?"
"Isn't it the same?"
"Ah, I understand, it's still Adidas' position."
"John..."
Looking at the helpless Harnett, Tobias still laughed and stopped embarrassing his friend.
"Even if we can't cooperate, we can still be friends. I understand this. Don't worry, how could I offend Adidas? I'm not a fool. I'm not ready to change careers yet."
A joke made the two people look at each other and smile. Although the negotiation just did not come to a result, it did not hinder the friendship between the two good friends.
Ding.
The elevator came, and the two people walked into the elevator. Harnett took the initiative to press the button for the three-story underground parking lot. After the elevator door slowly closed, he said, "I know you must have a lot of questions now..."
"But there are no answers to these questions, so don't worry, I won't ask." Tobias complained calmly.
Harnett laughed twice, and then said half chatting and half explaining.
"John, you should know that the challenge champion is worthless, right?"
"If it were a gold match or a championship match now, the value would definitely be different, but the challenge winner is basically the same as the hope match winner. No one would care."
How could Tobias not understand the truth?
The winner of the Challenge Tournament does not have enough weight. The main reason is because the contestants in the Challenge Tournament are relatively special——
Either they are young players who need to be tempered, their performance is unstable, and their state fluctuates extremely fiercely.
Or they are professional players who need to find their touch after recovering from injury. They often treat challenge matches as warm-up matches or practice matches to find their touch and do not try their best.
Or there are professional players with limited talent and limited strength who give up chasing higher goals and just use the challenge as a way to punch in the office and make money. The game is just a job to make ends meet and will not really try their best.
It is precisely because of this that the gold content of the challenge champion is highly questionable.
In the long history, countless challenge champions have hardly performed well in higher-level professional arenas; and now the top players in the professional arena often never participate in challenge tournaments or have no challenge champions at all, such as the Big Four. This is true.
Strictly speaking, players who can really stay in the top 50 in the world rankings for a long time often do not have many challenge championship titles to their names.
Because capable young players, after a little practice in the challenge, will directly enter the higher-level gold or championship games, starting from the qualifying rounds——
Just look at little Zverev. In Germany, he relied on the Tennis Association to take care of him and directly participated in the championship and gold medal matches with wild cards. He participated in the Binghamton Challenge to prepare for the North American season, and subsequently did not participate in Lexington. Dayton Challenge and directly participate in the qualifying rounds of the North American Series.
These are objective facts.
But Harnett's starting point itself is wrong. If he is an ordinary player, then Harnett's point of view is correct, but Gao Wen is a Chinese player, so the historical significance of the Challenge Championship is different, even if the Challenge Championship is no more important. Light, after all, has created history, and has different meanings to the Chinese market.
Harnett's words were actually just making excuses.
Tobias didn't intend to expose Harnett, so he said it lightly.
"When we win the Gold Game or the Championship Game, the decision is no longer in your hands."
If Gao Wen wins a gold medal now, I'm afraid all the top brands including Nike, Crocodile, and Fila will flock here. When the time comes, the decision to choose who to sign will be in Gao Wen's hands, and it also depends on It depends on the bids of competitors. Adidas may not be able to gain an advantage.
This is also an objective fact.
Tobias was as sharp as a snake and stabbed Harnett in the weak spot with just one sentence.
Harnett shook his head helplessly, paused, looked at the slowly descending elevator, and then finally told the truth.
"Do you think we don't pay attention to Gao?"
"Not only are we looking at him, Nike is looking at him and we all know it."
The truth was revealed in just two sentences, and now Tobias became serious, because he knew that Harnett was finally willing to tell the truth.
"We have been paying attention to him since we were in Athens. The NCAA competition has always been the focus, and there are detailed scouting reports."
"In the eyes of scouts, he has excellent golf intelligence, delicate touch, sharp tactics, good at grasping the context of the game, and has natural competitive ability."
Very, very good scouting evaluation, but there is often a twist later on, and that is the point. Tobias was not in a hurry to express his opinion.
"However, despite his thin body and lack of strength, he should be able to grow into a technical player with a football intelligence in the future and achieve good results at the challenge level."
Harnett's words stopped at that point and did not continue, but the subtext was already too obvious. Events above the challenge level may face many difficulties.
I see!
Tobias suddenly understood. It turned out that the key lies in "technical players".
As mentioned before, racket technology continues to improve, and players' power can be more fully and completely transmitted to the tennis ball through the racket. As a result, the entire tennis world is slowly changing, with power accounting for an increasing proportion, and the lightness and flexibility of technology The living space has also been gradually compressed.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the technical style of play represented by Martina Hingis was really pleasing to the eye, and the entire style of play was very diverse, with many tactical routines, and few players would play consistently. Sticking to the baseline, the light and agile hitting is very enjoyable to watch.
However, at the turn of the century, the power-based style of play represented by Serena Williams emerged, suppressing technical players in an unreasonable way. The absolute suppression of power eliminated the space for flexible use of technology. "Lost Ten Clubs", the whole tennis world changed.
In 2002, Hingis, who had only been in professional tennis for just five years, was forced to retire for the first time.
Time has passed and tennis has developed to this day. In the women's tennis world, we can still see technical players like Radwanska active and enriching different playing styles. However, in the men's tennis world, it has been difficult to find a living space.
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