Name Zhao Zihao
Date of birth 1997 | 06 | 01
Place of birth Nanjing, China
Nationality Chinese
Height 177 cm
Weight 73 kg
Actual club Shang Hai Land Table Tennis
Best Success
3x Winner National Team Championships (2014, 2015, 2016);
Group Champion in National Games (2017); Bulgarian Open 2nd place (Men’s Single 2019); Austria Open 2nd place (Men’s Single 2019)
Material
DONIC True Carbon
Personal Strength
Penhold arc/loop combined with smash. Tricky play. Flexible tactics.
How and where I started table tennis
With seven years I got enlightened in Nanjing, started in Shanghai Cao Yanhua T-T club.
Coaches which support and inspire me
Each coach I met gave me support and inspired me!
Training sessions
Morning/afternoon training & fitness training on daily basis; at weekends one or half-day for rest.
My aims
Short-term goal: prepare for the National Games this year, strive for good results!
You don’t know Zhao Zhihaostrong? Take a closer look, here comes a noticeable young man.
The 23-year-old practices an eye-catching style: He is one of the very few remaining world class players using the penholder-grip. So does his famous compatriot Xu Xin, ranked number 2 in the world, but Zhao Zihao has the better backhand, and he often uses it for the first attack on short balls above the table.
Moreover, he has fast feet, a very powerful forehand, good services and he feels comfortable playing above the table.
"It’s not about playing Penholder or Shakehand, winning is essential."
His passive game is not as good, but who cares? If you keep attacking as powerful as the man from Nanjing, you will rarely need a good block. „To me the key factors are speed and variation of spin“, Zhao Zihao says, who also lists variability and tactical understanding as very important for his play, too.
In this manner Zhao Zihao has already made it quite some way up. At the Summer Universiade 2019 he won two gold and two silver medals. These results, his tournament victory at the Belarus Open 2018 and a silver medal at the Austrian Open 2019, where only his compatriot Fan Zhendong stopped him in the final, stress the point: Zhao Zihao belongs to the world class.
He is member of the national team in China, the world’s strongest table tennis nation, being listed as number 23 in the world ranking, the seventh best Chinese. Five of the six higher ranked Chinese players are older than Zhao Zihao, so he might climb up even further in the future.
To fight back against his hit-and-run-style attacks is not an easy challenge, an experience a lot of international stars have already made. Zhao Zihao achieved victories against Jeoung Youngsik and Jang Woojin from South Korea, Hongkong’s Wong Chung Ting, Germany’s Dimitrij Ovtcharov, Hugo Calderano (Brazil), Sweden’s World Championship Runner-Up Mattias Falck, Simon Gauzy from France…
You don’t know Zhao Zhihao? You will hear from him.
Zhao Zihao's Material of Success
