(by Steve Hopkins, photo USATT)

In this Mixed Team event, both Men and Women play on the same squad.  There is room for a minimum of three of each gender participating – and depending upon how each team allocates their doubles matches you could have four of each gender play in a given team match.  The first match is Mixed Doubles, then Men’s Singles and then  Women’s Singles (in both cases, it cannot be a mixed doubles participant), then the final two matches are Men’s Doubles and Women’s Doubles (with the lower ranked team choosing the order of those matches).  Leaving China out of this analysis as they are so strong – with the top players in both the Men’s and Women’s Rankings, this format is very interesting as not all national teams are strong in both men’s and women’s events.  Further, there is a strong focus here on doubles – while much of the focus in the Rankings is on individual play.

For TeamUSA, they enter the tournament seeded 14 out of 18 teams.  They will open play against Romania in Group 3 where the top seed is Japan, second seed is France, third is Romania, and then USA and Australia are seeded fourth and fifth.  Puerto Rico is in a tough Group 1 with China, Hong Kong, Sweden, and Puerto Rico seeded in that order.  Group  two is Germany, Portugal, Egypt, and Slovakia.  And the final group is Group 4 with Korea, Taipei, Singapore, India, and Canada.

ITTF will be showing matches on featured tables live at their ITTF YouTube channel, and will be posting results here.

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