Photo: Youtube
JO Waldner was a ball genius and a champion.
And sometimes even a mind reader.
Like the time he just placed the racket – and humiliated rival Timo Boll.
There was not much that JO Waldner could not do when he stood at the ping pong table. Waldner broke that Chinese superpower dominance in table tennis, and in the country he is still known as the “Evergreen Tree”, and he is still considered to be perhaps the greatest ping-pong player of all time.
Incredible career
Waldner is also considered one of the greatest athletes of all time, and he really had everything needed to reap incredible success. Few people have been as talented with the ball as Waldner, and he really was a magician when he had a racket in his hand.
But Waldner also had the creativity and understanding of the game, and it was precisely the latter that he mainly lived on. JO Waldner could see things three steps ahead, and had an absolutely fantastic positioning, which led to lots of easy points. But sometimes he was so superior that it could almost look funny.
Humiliating blow
During his career, Waldner had a lot of hot matches against the German Timo Boll. They played against each other in both the German league and in the championship, and even though it usually ended with a Swedish victory, it was always exciting and even matches. But Waldner had that little extra, and this is a clear example of that.
The point is one of JO’s most classic, and it really looks like he’s turned into a mind reader. Waldner first strikes a sharp screw that Boll responds to, but when he strikes the blow, Waldner is already ready with his rack, and without moving, he inserts a return that makes Boll just gape. The German does not even have time to react before the ball bounces on the table and away, and he stands for a while and thinks about what really happened.
This is really YES in a nutshell – what legends!
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