by Steve Hopkins (These photos and the full article  *in German* can be found at tischtennis.de)

A week ago, Timo Boll won the first installment of the Dusseldorf Masters, a tournament series held at the team facility of Borussia Dusseldorf and with the support of the German Table Tennis Federation.  The top players in Germany have been back at practice after the Coronovirus shutdown, and this is one of the early competitions as players work to regain their form.

This week, the top seeds were Dimitrij Ovtcharov, Kanak Jha, Dan Qiu, and Steffen Mengel.   All four reached the Semifinals.  Ovtcharov cruised through the event logging 3-0, 3-0, 3-0, and 3-1 wins.  Kanak Jha beat Tayler Fox 3-0 and pulled out a tough 3-2 win over Steffen Mengel before falling to Dan Qiu in the Semifinals.  After Ovtcharov defeated Fanbo Meng easily in the Semifinal, he beat Dan Qiu 3-1.

The overall rankings after the first two tournaments are Ovtcharov (60 points), Boll (50 Points), Qiu (50 points), Mengel (40 points), Meng (25 points), and Jha and Karlsson are tied with 20 points.  The point totals are from both of the previous tournaments – though Jha did not compete last week.  Interestingly, it was Qiu who upset Ovtcharov in the Quarterfinals a week ago – before losing to Mengel.  Boll then topped Mengel to win the first series event.  The third part of the tournament series will be played next week.