Interview with the national champion

Have you ever wondered what it is like to become a professional athlete when you are still in high school? Do you still need to study? How do you train? What is your training schedule? With these variety of questions, we now come to an interview with the tennis national champion and a national player from Beijing, China, David Lin.

Lin is currently a 16-year old national player with around 10 years of hitting experience. At the age of 13, Lin has already become the youngest champion of the level 4.5 professional competition in the year of 2018. After that, he is more determined to pursuit the career of a professional tennis player. Subsequently, he became the UNDER-14 and UNDER-16 champion of China.

During the interview, Lin shared many new insights with me. As I have also been playing tennis since I was 7 years old, we had a very insightful conversation.

Training is important！

Lin said that he does training for the legs on Monday. Some training on core is usually on Tuesday. On Wednesday he builds up his upper body, and on Thursday he often takes a day off and simply run 10 km. "The key is," said Lin," you should always try to train different muscles and different skills everyday. No person can endure repetitive training aimed at one part of the body."

He once went on a trip to Shenzhen to find an outstanding Japanese physical trainer. Out of his expectation, he had eventually stayed in Shenzhen, a place far from his home Beijing, for 6 months! The physical trainer scheduled many exercises to build his body. He had to train 4-6 hours a day, without any use of the rackets and tennis balls. He told me, during that period of time, his body was even too painful to fall asleep! At the age of 15, he had already put so much more efforts than the others, and that's how he won the national champion!

Mental strength is crucial

As no one who loves tennis will not know Roger Federer, Rafal Nadal, and Djokovic, we have inevitably talked about their skills during the interview.

When Lin spoke about them, he did not just talk about their skills and talents, but also talked about their mental strength. He thinks their mental strength is what makes them the most successful players in the history of tennis. Surely he was right. Nadal once said:" Federer may win, but I will not lose." He said that when he was at a loss of 2-0 sets against Federer, but eventually he won the 2008 Wimbledon Champion, which many still call as a miracle!

Tips for playing

As a fan of the sport, I spend 5-8 hours a week to play tennis and train my body. Subsequently I am most curious about tips for tennis, and there are! Firstly, consistency is the key. A consistent 10 times of hitting beyond the service box will build a player's confidence and threaten the opponent's confidence. Secondly, one should extend his/her arm as far as possible, and turn the body in the mean time. He told me it was just like golf, the more relaxed you are, the better you hit.

Now, Lin has already left Singapore and gone on the trip to the US. Let's with him good luck and wait to see him at the ATP Challengers!