(by Steve Hopkins, photo ITTFWorld)
The top two seeds avoided early upsets as both Matsushima and Harimoto reach the Quarterfinals at the WTT Champions series event in Frankfurt. A third Japanese player, Shunsuke Togami has also reached the Final 8. Home team Germany also managed to get three players through to see action on Saturday with Patrick Franziska topping Xiang Peng and Benedikt Duda to reach the Quarters (he’ll face Matsushima), Wim Verdonschot is through after upsetting Simon Gauzy and Hugo Calderano (he’ll face Togami), and Dang Qiu topped Ovtcharov on Thursday to earn his Quarters spot (where he will face Harimoto). The other pairing in the Quarters is Lin Yun-Ju who had a tough run that included wins over both Darko Jorgic and Zhou Qihao against Wen Ruibo who upset Wang Chuqin.
The two biggest upsets in the Men’s event thus far was Ruibo over Chuqin and Verdonschot over Calderano. Verdonschot is a fast-rising German talent. In 2026, he won a pair of Feeder events and reached the Semifinals in a third – and in the Star Contender in Chennai he reached the Round of 16 and in the China Smash reached the Round of 16. He has already risen a hundred spots in just a year – already reaching World No. 40. His next match against Togami will be a tough one – but he’s on a solid run.
For American fans, Kanak Jha lost his opening round match against Shunsuke Togami 3-0 (11-4, 12-10, 14-12). USA’s Lily Zhang met the same fate in Women’s Singles, losing to Hina Hayata 3-0, and Amy Wang fell to Kuai Man 3-0 in their opening round match.
Lots of quality table tennis on tap this weekend – we’ll have more updates soon.
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