2015 Butterfly Badger Open: Open Singles and Open Doubles Highlight of Play on Second Day of Competition
by Barbara Wei
Saturday, September 19th, the second day of play, at the 2015 Butterfly Badger Open will feature the highest level of competition. Before the day is over, a new Badger Open Singles Champion will have been crowned, and the highly competitive Open Doubles event will have reached the final rounds. With more than 12 players rated over 2400 competing in both events, spectators and fellow competitors can look forward to an impressive show of table tennis skill at the Milwaukee County Sports Complex.
The Open Singles event kicks off at 11:00 a.m. with the preliminary round robin groups. Matches to watch in this stage are in Groups 3, 12 and 13 where the wildcard international players from Indonesia may pose significant threats to the seeded players. With only one player advancing from each group into the round of 16, every match in the initial rounds will be important.
The round of 16 in the Open Singles event will take place immediately following the conclusion of the round robins and will feature some spectacular matches. If the preliminary round robins go to seeding, the round of 16 will feature such high level matches as Cheng Li (2558) vs. Jon Ebuen (2507), Qi Wei (2510) vs. Rajat Hubli (2471), and Bowen Chen (2520) vs. Dan Seemiller (2494). However, all players must clear their preliminary rounds in order to qualify into the round of 16 (the first round with prize money). The Open Singles event will continue on Saturday afternoon with the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals taking place at 2:30 p.m., 4:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. local time. Open Doubles will begin at 6:00 p.m. and feature top doubles teams as Cheng Li/Tong Zhang (2015 Collegiate Champions), Jishan Liang/Yichi Zhang and Ruichao Chen/Nathan Hsu.
Live streaming of the Open Singles and Open Doubles events will start at 11:00 a.m. and will continue throughout the day.
Continual coverage of the Butterfly Badger Open and stories about the athletes will be available at ButterflyOnline.com, or via Butterfly North America’s Twitter and Facebook pages.
