(by Steve Hopkins, photo WTT)
Eight players fought through the Qualifiers to reach the main draw at the China Smash, the premiere WTT event being played this week in Beijing. Poland’s Samuel Kulczycki emerged from one group of eight, winning three matches including a 3-1 win over USA’s Ma Jingbao. The other qualifiers are Kazakhstan’s Kirill Gerassimenko, Poland’s Maciej Kubik, Ankur Bhattacha of India, Japan’s Kazuki Hamada, Romania’s Eduard Ionescu, and two Chinese players – Chen Junsong, and Yuan Licen. The Qualifiers now move to the main draw, to join the first round of 64 players.
In the top fourth of the draw, World No. 1, Wang Chuqin will face Jang Woojin in the opening round. Three of the four players from the Republic of Korea are in the same section of the draw with Woojin, Lee Sang Su, and An Jaehyun needing to get past each other (and Chuqin) to get to the Quarterfinal. If Chuqin proceeds by seed, then he would be set to face Liang Jingkun in the Quarterfinals – presuming that Jingkun navigates past Darko Jorgic and Patrick Franziska and Lin Gaoyuan.
In the second fourth of the draw, the top seeds are Hugo Calderano and Benedikt Duda. This section of the draw includes Anders Lind, Simon Gauzy, and Xu Yingbin. The third quarter of the draw features Felix Lebrun and Tomokazu Harimoto. Dimitrij Ovtcharov, Alexis Lebrun, and Dang Qiu will each be fighting to knock off the top seeds and earn their own birth to the Quarters. The final section of the draw has World No. 2 Lin Shidong and Truls Moregard as the top seeds. USA’s Kanak Jha is in this section, and will face Shunsuke Togami on Monday afternoon. Other high seeds in this section are Lin Yun-Ju, and Anton Kallberg.
USA’s Jessica Reyes Lai won her opening Qualifier before falling to Ng Wing Lam of Hong Kong (the group winner). USA’s Sally Moyland and Jiangshan Guo each lost their opening match. When action begins in the Main Draw, USA’s Lily Zhang will face Sabine Winter (Sunday evening) and USA’s Amy Wang will face Prithika Pavade (on Monday evening). Puerto Rico’s Adriana Diaz has drawn Japan’s Honoka Hashimoto, and Canada’s Mo Zhang will face China’s Zhu Sibing.
Lots of quality table tennis on tap all week long – we’ll have more updates soon.
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