(by Steve Hopkins)
With half of the Round of 16 matches complete at the WTT Champions Series Event in Frankfurt, Korea already has to players through to the Quarterfinal Round. One of those Korean players, Butterfly-sponsored Lee Sangsu, captured today’s headlines by upsetting World No. 1 Fan Zhendong 3-1. Zhendong and Sangsu are familiar with each other having played 20 times – and Sangsu has a better record than most if you consider both singles and doubles – as by that calculation he has won 25% of their matches. However, today was the first time Sangsu secured a win in Singles. Today, it was Lee Sangsu who won the first game (11-7). Fan then took the second game 9-11 to even the score. The next two games were both tight throughout, but Lee Sangsu won Game 3 11-8 and then held on for a 13-11 win in the final game.
Lee Sangsu is now waiting to play the winner of the Dang Qiu / Felix Lebrun “Battle of the European Penholders” match scheduled for Thursday evening. Dimitrij Ovtcharov won his match Round of 16 match today, closing out his 3-2 win with a final game 11-9 victory over Mattias Falck. Ovtcharov will face the winner of Ma Long and Omar Assar.
In the bottom half of the draw, Wang Chuqin cruised past Liam Pitchford and into the Quarters. Chuqin will face Lim Jonghoon who upset World No. 5 Liang Jingkun 3-1. Korea, who logged wins today over World No. 1 and World No. 5, may be giving notice that they are the second best team in the world – a team that currently features Jang Woojin (No. 9), Lim Jonghoon (No. 15), and Lee Sangsu (No. 27) – but after this week, could see three players all ranked in the Top 15. Lin Yun-Ju will be favored in his match against Benedikt Duda, and Tomokazu Harimoto will be favored in his match against Jonathan Groth as the last two Round of 16 matches are played on Thursday. The winners of those two matches will face each other on Friday.
Bernadette Szocs is the headliner on the Women’s side as earlier today she upset World No. 2 Chen Meng 3-2. Momentum spun surprisingly in the match with Chen Meng winning twice easily 11-4 and 11-5, but all three close games went to Szocs (11-8, 13-11, and 12-10 in the final game). Szocs now faces Japan’s Hina Hayata. Sun Yingsha and Shing Yubin will face each other in the Quarters. The other seeded players are still in action tomorrow including Wang Manyu, Mima Ito, and Wang Yidi.
Lots of quality table tennis on tap all week long – we’ll have more updates soon.
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