(By Steve Hopkins/Photo by USATT)
The Liebherr 2019 World Championships are set to being in just one week and most of the world’s best players are on their way to Budapest, Hungary to represent their country in one of the largest and most competitive events of the year. The tournament begins on April 21 and will continue through the finals on the 28th. Eligibility is based upon a combination of world ranking and qualifying events by national associations. This year, there will be 310 players in the Men’s event and 248 players in the Women’s event. The top 64 players will be seeded and the remainder will play qualifiers (with 64 advancing to be paired against the seeded players). Men’s Doubles, Women’s Doubles, and Mixed Doubles events will also be featured.
China will hold the top three seeds in Men’s Singles with Fan Zhendong, Xu Xin, and Lin Gaoyuan. The rest of the Top 10 in order are Tomokazu Harimoto, Timo Boll, Sangsu Lee, Hugo Calderano, Koki Niwa, Liang Jingkun, and Jang Woojin. And for good measure, the next three seeds have all been World Championship semifinalists: Ma Long, Dimitrij Ovtcharov, and Jun Mizutani.
Entries from Team USA include four men (Kanak Jha, Nicholas Tio, Nikhil Kumar, and Victor Liu) and three women (Amy Wang Lily Zhang, and Jennifer Wu). Puerto Rico is sending Adriana and Melanie Diaz along with Brian Afanador and Daniel Gonzalez. Canada is sending Alicia Cote and Mo Zhang.
Check in with ButterflyOnline.com for updates throughout the event.