There were two changes in the Top 10 this week when the ITTF released their World Rankings List for February. The first is a change at the top, where Xu Xin and Fan Zhendong switched places yet again. Xu Xin, who just won the German Open, is now the top player in the world, and Fan has slid one spot to No.2. The second change is the addition of Dimitrij Ovtcharov to the Top 10. Ovtcharov passed teammate Timo Boll to take the No. 10 position, in part on the strength of his Semifinal appearance at the German Open last weekend.
The rest of the Top 10 remains unchanged with Ma Long and Lin Gaoyuan in the No. 3 and No. 4 positions and with Tomakazu Harimoto at No. 5. These rankings are important to various qualifying events leading into the Olympic games, and it is also important to note that China has five players in the Top 10 while no other country has more than one player. However, based upon these rankings Japan would field a strong team with positions No.5, No. 12, and No. 15. Also, Germany would be in a solid third position with No. 10, No. 11, and No. 14.
Seven of the Top 10 players are from Asia. The only player in the Top 10 who is not from Asia or Europe is Hugo Calderano at No. 7. The next two players in the rankings outside of Asia and Europe are Quadri Aruna at No. 18 and USA’s Kanak Jha at No. 25.
Jha’s peak came last September when he achieved No. 22. His current position is the second highest of his career. After Jha, the next highest players in North America are Canada’s Jeremy Hazin at No. 146, and three US players: Kai Zhang (No. 172), Nikhil Kumar (No. 178(, and Nicholas Tio (No. 234). The top Latin Men in the rankings are all Brazillian with Calderano, Tsuboi, and Ishiy as the top three (at No. 7, 40, and 56 respectively). Brian Afanador (No. 84) and Daniel Gonzales (No. 140) of Puerto Rico are both in the Top 12 in Latin America.
In the Women’s rankings the top three players are all unchanged. Chen Meng, Sun Yingsha and Mima Ito continue to lead the world. Japan’s Ito is the only non-Chinese player in the Top 7. The first non-Asian player in the Women’s List is Sofia Polcanova of Austria who is No. 14. The top player from outside of Asia or Europe is Puerto Rico’s Adriana Diaz at No. 20, and the second and third ranked players from outside Asia or Europe are USA’s Lily Zhang (No. 28) and Jennifer Wu (No. 30). In looking at team configurations for the Olympics, obviously China has the strongest position. After China, Japan has three players in the World’s Top 11 and is a clear second seed. Then it would be Taipei with No. 10 and 26, Hong Kong with 15 and 29, Germany with No. 19 and 27, Romania with No. 22 and 34, and the US with No 28 and 30. A lot of teams have a legitimate shot at a medal this year in Japan.
February is a busy month on the ITTF Tour with events in Spain, Portugal, and Hungary as well as regional cups: Pan Am, Europ Top 16, Africa Top 16, and Asian Cup. There is lots of opportunity for ranking changes in March.
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The Google Sheets image takes you to a spreadsheet that gives the settings for each drill. While these won’t be the exact settings for the Control Panel on your robot, they will give you an idea of where to start, and you’ll need to adjust from there. At the bottom, we’ve included the ranges and defaults for the setting on a Prime so you can compare these to the ranges and defaults on your own robot. In general, default settings should give you a similar ball regardless of what model you have. If a drill has a change of speed, spin, or trajectory, you will be unable to replicate that drill on a Basic or Start model.
Amicus Prime owners, save these drills to your device via the following steps:
Click the Drill image below to download the file to your tablet, cell phone or other device that has the Amicus app on it.
Open that file and a window will appear in the Amicus app to confirm you want to import those drills. Tap Import to add the drills to the Exercise List.
You can then play those drills just like any other drill in the Exercise List.
Tip – After importing the drills from a Fethomania Session, tap on the drill description to reveal Stefan’s technique pointers for that drill!
Amicus Prime owners, if you want a video of a Fethomania drill, you will need to manually link the video for a particular Fethomania drill with the following steps:
Download the video to the device that contains the Amicus app (probably to the Downloads folder).
Open the Amicus app on that device.
Select the matching drill in the Exercise List.
Tap on the Drill Description. The Set Exercise Properties popup window will appear.
Tap on Select Video button at the bottom of that window. Then navigate to where the video is located in the file directory and select that video.
Tap Save at bottom right of the popup window, Save at the top right of the main window, then Save in the resulting popup window.
Tap the Drill Description again and the title of the video should now appear in parentheses after Select Video.
To play the video, tap the Play Video button on the Play Exercise screen.