(by Steve Hopkins)
The first day of action in the Round of 64 is underway at the United States Smash, the WTT Smash Series tour event being held at the Ontario Convention Center in Los Angeles. Top seed Wang Chuqin won his opening match 3-0 over Zhou Qihao. Other opening day winners included Hugo Calderano, Manav Thakkar, Adrien Rassenfosse, Anders Lind, Omar Assar, Sora Matsushima, Felix Lebrun, Joao Geraldo, Darko Jorgic, Yuta Tanaka, Lin Shidong, Yukiya Uda, and Chen Yuanyu. Two of TeamUSA’s wildcard entries fell today with Daniel Tran losing to Darko Jorgic, and Nandan Naresh losing 1-3 to Chen Yuanyu. The other American wildcard, Jishan Liang faces Tomokazu Harimoto on Monday evening, and USA’s Kanak Jha will face Shunsuke Togami tomorrow evening as well.
In Women’s Singles early action, Wang Manyu topped American Irene Yeoh with World No. 2 Manyu moving on to face Hitomi Sato (who topped Puerto Rico’s Adriana Diaz). Another American wildcard, Jessica Reyes Lai fell to Cheng I-Ching this evening. Amy Wang split the first two games with Mima Ito, but the American lost the final two games as Ito advanced. Dina Meshref, Shi Xunyao, Zeng Jian, Hina Hayata, Xiaona Shan, Anna Hursey, Miwa Harimoto, Kuai Man, Mo Zhang, Kim Nayeong, and Shin Yubin were the other women who secured their spots in the next round today. Americans Sally Moyland and Lily Zhang will see action on Monday.
Lots of quality table tennis on tap all week long – we’ll have more updates soon.
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