In addition to attracting the attention of the audience with their strong strength, players can also impress fans with their own personal characteristics or “tricks”. “Sky Hook” and Japanese women’s singles bronze medalist Mima Ito at the Tokyo Olympics are also known as “mysterious serve” because they spin like a dance while serving. On the table tennis court, not only Mima Ito’s serving posture is surprising, but Dimitrij Ovtcharov from Germany once made the list of the 50 best inventions of “Time Magazine” in 2008 with his unique “submarine serve” (Top 50 best inventions of the year).
Ovtcharov’s original “submarine serve”, the most powerful thing is not the power or speed of the serve, but that he squatted to regarding the height of the table, only showing half of his face, coupled with his usual backhand serve, As a result, opponents are often caught off guard and dumbfounded. Recently, in the World Table Tennis Major League (WTT) World Cup finals, he reversed and defeated the current player Fan Zhendong, and at the same time, his special serving method of “confused” opponents has once once more become the focus, and we will introduce him today. Dimitrij Ovtcharov, who was ranked 11th in the world in 2018, has been on the throne of the world champion.
Ovtcharov was born in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine in the Soviet era in 1988. He immigrated to Germany with his family when he was 4 years old. Because both parents were billiard coaches, and his father won the individual billiard championship in the Soviet Union, he also represented the national team in 80 games. He has experience in international competitions on the field, so he was influenced by his parents and joined the snooker club since he was a child, and received the guidance of his father’s “national player” from the age of 9.
At first, he just started playing to earn bonuses, but Ovtcharov inherited the excellent genes of his parents and showed a full talent for billiards at a very young age. In addition, he entered the club to hone his skills. In addition to learning solid basic skills, he is unique. The submarine serving method also gradually took shape at that time. The better he played, he won the singles silver medal at the Youth European Championship in 2002 at the age of only 14, and won the gold medal in the same event three years later, thus becoming one of the main players in German billiards and also playing in Europe. name.
In 2007, he practiced a variety of different ways of serving, and he also left the original club to join the No. 1 team in European table tennis at that time. He also started to play in the senior group this year. Ovtcharov has the ability to attack and defend the backhand in one go. In addition, he is very strong when attacking, and his ability to control the ball’s landing is also quite good. He also has a delicate observation, which allows him to see the opponent’s weakness and conduct a series of violent attacks. Therefore, it took him only half a year to raise the world ranking to 22.
2008 was Ovtcharov’s first Olympic experience. Although he ended up in the top 16 in the men’s singles, the men’s team won the silver medal together with his teammates and successfully won the first Olympic medal in his career. At the same time, he also attracted worldwide attention. And because of the special and varied serving posture, he won the titles of “Submarine” and “Variety Serve King”.
Since 2009, Ovtcharov’s achievements in international competitions have become more and more outstanding. He also achieved the honor of entering the world’s top 15 for the first time in his career that year, and has never fallen out of the world’s 15th place. The following year he joined a billiard club in Belgium. Although he only played here for one year, he became the core figure of the team that year and led the team to the second place in the Europa League.
In the 2011 World Cup team battle, the snooker powerhouse China once once more won the championship, but it was a thrilling win in the semi-finals with Germany. At that time, Germany sent Ovtcharov to face Wang Hao, who was the world’s No. 1 team at the time, but Wang Hao was blown away by him. The cold defeat, in addition to ending Wang Hao’s unbeaten record of more than 7 consecutive years in singles, also made Ovtcharov famous once more and gained global attention. In the London Olympics the following year, he played once morest Taiwan’s “pool godfather” Zhuang Zhiyuan in the bronze medal match, and finally successfully won the first Olympic singles medal of his career, and also won the bronze medal in the men’s team, ending the second Olympic Games with 2 bronze medals. trip.
Although the previous record has been quite brilliant, but the peak of his career is just beginning. In the World Pool Team Championships held in Tokyo in 2014, the German team reached the final once once more to meet China. Ovtcharov played super-standard in the second singles and swept Zhang Jike in straight sets. Although China won the gold medal in the end, but Ovtcharov’s individual singles strength is already at the top level.
Not only has he defeated strong opponents many times in international competitions, he also missed only 3 gold medals in the men’s team battle of the European Championships between 2007 and 2017. Although it was not until 2017 that he won the first World Cup men’s singles gold medal in his personal career, and he also became the then-ball champion briefly at the beginning of the following year with this gold medal, but unfortunately, he injured his thigh and needed half a year to fully recover. Under the circumstances, he did not give up the opportunity to play, and played on and off with injuries.
In recent years, he has been plagued by various injuries, so his performance has declined slightly. However, in last year’s Tokyo Olympics, he once once more played in singles and men’s team events, and in the men’s singles bronze medal match, he defeated our country’s “Kobayashi-kun” with his versatile serving methods. “Lin Yunru, who once once more won the Olympic men’s singles bronze medal, also brought back the touch that he lost due to injury.
Because he was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, Ovtcharov also ended his 12-year cooperation with the Russian club following the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war this year, and entrusted his friends to take his grandma living in Kyiv away from the battlefield, but the 85-year-old grandma was in the process of escaping Ovtcharov fell in the middle of the school, and his old grandmother’s recovery was not ideal. In the end, she passed away. The death of her grandmother also brought Ovtcharov into a low ebb. Fortunately, he quickly said goodbye to the low ebb, and turned his grief and anger into strength, and concentrated on the table tennis court.
Recently, his injury has gradually improved, and his performance has gradually recovered. In the World Cup finals, he once once more staged a surprise show. He reversed the ball king Fan Zhendong in the quarter-finals and advanced to the quarter-finals. Tomokazu Hakamoto brought down, but his never-give-up “veteran spirit” and unique serving posture still left a deep impression on many people. It is believed that he will continue to deliver excellent results following returning to the court from injury.
