John Mar won the Joseph Newgarden Summer Gold Dollar Upset Open
(By jlam)
John Mar won the Joseph Newgarden Summer Gold Dollar Upset Open
The Knoxville Table Tennis Club (KTTC) hosted its summer tournament at the Knoxville Table Tennis Club on August 5th, 2017. The tournament uses a format with two tier giant round robin where 36 players are divided into two divisions, Upper and Lower division. Each division has two groups of nine players. Players in each group will go through a giant round robin. The top two seeds advance to Semi-Finals and Finals and a third place match was also played for the second-runner up from the semi-final matches.
In addition to the normal tournament prize money, this tournament format is unique in that the winner of every upset match will receive Upset Gold Dollar based on the rating difference if both players are officially rated by USATT before the start of the tournament. These are US One Dollar coins. This feature of the tournament is junior players’ favorite. KTTC has reserved additional $200 for upset “Gold Dollar”.
In the Upper division, the first semi-final was played between Babak Fakharpour (Rated: 1767) from Lexington, KY and Lydia Tsang (Rated: 1955) from Nashville, TN. Lydia plays shortpips on her forehand and her furious quick forehand attack has defeated top seed John Mar in the group stage to earn a top spot in the Semi-Finals. However, Lydia’s quick attack has found a match in Babak powerful forehand smash attack and lost in the fifth game to Babak. The second semi-final was played between Martin Del Vecchio (Rated: 2127), a new five-day old resident of Knoxville, TN (from New Orleans, LA) and John Mar (Rated: 2207) from Atlanta, GA. The second semi-final was equally entertaining with many rallies and brilliant shots from both elite players. In the end, John Mar has to overcome a two-game deficit to defeat Martin on another five-game thriller to advance to the final.
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