Chapter 31 Chapter 27 Pain

In the eyes of others, I may have had a lot of glory in 2010, but in fact, the deepest and indelible memory of that year left me with one thing: pain. In Melbourne, my knee was swollen again.After defeating Irakovic, Zavi, and Hantuchova in a row, everyone around me saw that there was something wrong with my legs. The illness came like a mountain, and this time the knee injury was severe.After entering the top 16, I had to take a day off every day I played, because my knees could no longer withstand more than two consecutive days of exercise. I've had corisone anti-inflammatory once before, but it didn't help.I asked a doctor in Australia for help, and the doctor recommended me an expensive injection, which cost about 500 euros per tube.The next day, I brought the injection to the competition site and asked the competition doctor to give me the injection.The Saihui doctor I was familiar with happened to be away, and another female doctor said that it would be the same to find her.I went to her for an injection.

The doctor didn't care about my previous condition. She looked at my leg casually and said, "It's not edema." She didn't pump or do anything else, just injected the injection into my knee. It hurts!I couldn't help screaming!It was the most intuitive and profound experience of pain I have ever had in memory.I have always considered myself a person who is not so sensitive to pain. After so many years of wind and rain, I don’t take ordinary minor injuries and pains seriously, but when the doctor pulled out the needle that day, I couldn’t help it. , cried on the spot.After the injection, I told the South African therapist: Even if I die next time, I will never see this doctor again.

After the injection, the swelling in my leg still didn't subside. I was going to play against Danish rookie Wozniacki, the No. 4 seed. This victory is as incredible as this injection. I told my therapist the next morning that I would still have to see the same race doctor.That doctor is a good friend of Dr. Eric, who performed the operation on me, and knows my situation better. With his help, I successfully found Dr. Saihui. After listening to me about the situation the day before, Dr. Saihui checked my knee and told me: "She didn't pump out the water for you at all." I said, "I feel the same way, but I can't tell her that, after all, she is a doctor and a professional."

Then the race doctor pumped two and a half tubes of water out of my knee.When drawing water, he had to insert the needle into the knee, and then slowly pull the needle away to let the fluid in the knee enter the syringe along the needle, which was very painful, but compared to the injection by the female doctor the day before , I think this is completely nothing. While watching the monitor, the doctor kept changing places, sticking the needle in and drawing out new fluid.Just find a place little by little, so that all the accumulated water can be sucked out as much as possible. Jiang Shan didn't go for this treatment, but my therapist took me there.My therapist was the last time we went bungee jumping from the Auckland Harbor Bridge, and we were all hesitant to jump off the stage without hesitation.

The therapist is a South African and has a lot of guts.His complexion also changed that day, and when he came back, he said to Jiang Shan: It was the first time he saw such a situation as a therapist for so long. At that time, he felt his heart tremble when he saw the doctor pumping out the water one by one. . After taking out two and a half tubes of fluid, the doctor gave me a shot of corisone, and he warned me: "You can't take it anymore, you have already taken corisone twice in two weeks, no matter how swollen you are You can't fight anymore, it's not good for your health."

I said ok, no problem. After taking corisone, I feel slightly better. The next day, I was going to play against Venus, and I lost the first set, and the second set also had a sluggish start, but I made a key break on the second break point, dragging the game into a tie-break, The result of the tie-break was that I won 7:4. We were tight in the tiebreaker, and in the end I held on and beat Venus Williams and made it to the semi-finals of a Grand Slam for the first time in my career. Coincidentally, in the next semi-finals, my opponent happened to be the world's number one Serena Williams.Sisters Venus and Serena Williams were born to dominate the tennis world.When they appeared on the field at the same time, other players seemed to be able to sit on the sidelines.The match against Serena was quite difficult. Both sets went to tie-breaks, but I lost in the end.

But after the game, I felt that my knee was okay, and it didn't hurt as much as I thought. It is worth mentioning that I entered the semi-finals of the Australian Open. After two weeks of competition, my points were brought to 3500 points, and I entered the top ten in the world.I thought to myself: I am also a player in the top ten in the world, this feeling... but that's it. This idea makes me feel a little inexplicable. I am like this. Sometimes I will suddenly be out of rational control, and some ideas will come up that are completely contrary to my previous thinking.I still don't understand why I was so low before, and likewise, I can't explain how my state rebounded at the Australian Open.I have always been a very passive person, and I don't try to actively control anything.I like to go with the flow, do whatever I want, and go with the flow. If there is no one to encourage and spur me, I may have been wandering like this forever, so my state will always have ups and downs. This is my biggest problem.

I wish I could be as balanced as others, but I just can't.Sometimes I'm more neurotic.I think this may have something to do with my personality. On the one hand, I am a very competitive person, but at the same time, I am a particularly easy-to-satisfy person. After the Australian Open, I started a long, heavy dormant period again.Maybe it's not actually that long, but you know the bad days pass so slowly while the highs of victory are fleeting.I even wondered if it was a mistake to choose tennis, because I found that the joy brought by victory was far from enough to offset the depression brought by failure.The feeling of playing in the professional league is like licking honey at the head of a knife. We gain very little and lose a lot. However, we still try again and again with great joy.

Why is this so? I knew the problem was me: the Australian Open semi-finals filled me up, and after playing against the Williams sisters, I lost my hunger for victory. There is no easy victory, especially when both sides of the game are top players in the world. Superb skills, a cool head, and a healthy body are all important conditions for winning, but they are not the only conditions. To win, you have to really want to win from the bottom of your heart, you have to want to win very, very, very much.You want victory like a dying person longs for clear water while trekking in the desert. Then you have hope, just hope, to win.

My half-dead state lasted until June 13th, when I played the grass court game in Birmingham, my state picked up. Speaking of which, Birmingham is really one of my blessed places. In 2006, I beat Jankovic here to win my first WTA women's doubles title. In 2009, I finished second in women's singles here. In 2010, I beat the Sharapova. The championship won in Birmingham this time is the first grass court championship for a Chinese player, which gave me a certain amount of confidence. Sadly, at this time, my collaboration with Thomas came to an end. From my comeback in 2004 to now, my results have been improving. The ranking in 2010 has been improved from No. 15 to No. 11 at the end of the year. As Thomas said, I am getting closer and closer to my ideal goal.

But when Thomas said sadly, "I have nothing more to teach you", we were all silent. After working together for a long time, Thomas felt that the help he could provide had reached the limit, and he thought I needed a new feeling and experience.I also feel like I've absorbed as much energy as I can from Thomas.Maybe it's time to try a new method. After the 2010 Asian Games, our cooperation officially ended.Thomas is now Sharapova's coach.I am very grateful for the help Thomas has given me during my tenure.Good luck, Thomas!