(by Steve Hopkins, photo WTT)
Action kicked off on Sunday with half of the main draw seeing action at the China Smash, where Smash events are the top category of WTT tour events. On the Men’s side, all of the Top 50 players are present except for No. 39 Yuta Tanaka. With so many of the elite athletes in action, fans are certain to have an exciting week as the draw narrows ahead of next weekend’s Finals.
The initial knock-out round has 64 players, 56 present by seed, and 8 qualifiers. With this number of matches (in Men’s and Women’s singles), half of the draw played their opening match today and half will start on Monday. In the first day of action, Wang Chuqin and Hugo Calderano (seeds 1 and 3) each advanced without too much pressure. This was the norm across the 16 matches played, with 13 of the higher seeded players advances as expected. There were three upsets. The biggest surprise of the day was Taipei’s Feng Yi-Hsin (World No. 62), who blanked World No. 8 Benedikt Duda 3-0. Duda never really got started, with Feng winning at 6, 5, and 7. World No. 26 Lee Sang Su fell 3-2 to Polish Qualifier Milosz Redzimski (World No. 46). The other upset was the match between two of Europe’s better known players, where Patrick Franziska topped Darko Jorgic 3-0 (No. 17 over No. 10). The other half of the first round matches will be played on Monday – that includes USA’s Kanak Jha facing off against Shunsuke Togami at 12:45p local time.
In early action on the Women’s side, three of four North American entrants fell. USA’s Lily Zhang lost 0-3 to Sabine Winter of Germany, Puerto Rico’s Adriana Diaz fell 1-3 to Japan’s Honoko Hashimoto, and Canada’s Mo Zhang lost 1-3 to Zhu Sibing of China. The remaining player from our region is USA’s Amy Wang who will face France’s Prithika Pavade on Monday evening.
Women’s action fell largely by seed. Sun Yingsha, Zhu Sibing, Honoka Hashimoto, Doo Hoi Kem, Sreeja Akula, Wang Yidi, Chen Xingtong, Xiaona Shan, Li Yun-Jhun, Bernadette Szocs, Chen Yi, Qian Tianyi, Bruna Takahashi, Zhu Yuling, Miwa Harimoto, and Sabine Winter are the first day winners. Like the men, only half of the matches have been played, so the remaining first round matches will be played on Monday.
Lots of quality table tennis on tap all week long – we’ll have more updates soon.
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