(by Steve Hopkins)
When all was said and done, it was the top three seeds (and the sixth seeded Felix Lebrun) that claims the final four spots in Men’s Singles. In fact, there was not a lot of drama with the top two seeds as Lin Shidong and Wang Chuqin each pressed into their Semifinal as expected. Harimoto reached one semifinal to face Lin Shidong and Felix Lebrun reached the other to face Wang Chuqin – but both Harimoto and Lebrun faced still challenges along the way.
After defeating USA’s Sid Naresh in their opening match, Harimoto narrowly escaped with a pair of wins – 3-2 over Quadri Aruna and 3-2 over Sora Matsushima. He then found himself tied 2-2 with Lin Yun-Ju in their Quarterfinal match before pushing through and winning 4-2. Felix Lebrun dropped the first and fourth game in his opening 3-2 win over Shunsuke Togami, lost the first game to Gauzy before winning 3-1, and then trailed early in the fifth game before winning 3-2 over Benedikt Duda. Lebrun then eliminated underdog Lilian Bardet 4-0 in the Quarters to advance.
The biggest story of the event was the play of 24 year old Frenchman Lilian Bardet. Bardet beat Lee Seungsoo in the opening round of the qualifiers 3-2, topped Singapore’s Liam Siu Hang 3-1 and then needed all five games to beat Kim Taehyun of Malta 3-2 just to reach the Main Draw. By this time, Bardet was on a roll, and that streak included a come-from-behind 3-2 win over Liang Jingkun, and then consecutive upset wins over solid European players Ricardo Walther and Johnathan Groth. Bardet did fall to Felix Lebrun – but what an amazing run for World No. 84 as he struggles to find room to compete for France where the National Team already has both Lebrun brothers, Simon Gauzy, Thibault Poret, and Flavien Cotton (all in the top 50)
The American players had valuable experience in the main draw. Unranked Xiangjing Zhang was 2-1 in the Qualifiers and then lost 0-3 with tight scores to An Jaehyun of Korea. Nandan Naresh drew Dimitrij Ovtcharov and won the first game before losing 1-3. Like his brother, Sid Naresh had a tough draw – and he fell to Tomokazu Harimoto 0-3. Jishan Liang was up twice to Chan Baldwin of Singapore but fell 2-3. And Kanak Jha had a horrible start with Lee Sang Su, dropping the first two close games, but then mounted a comeback before falling 2-3. Unfortunately for TeamUSA, no American reached the Round of 32. Still – valuable experience.
Aside from the Bardet upset of Liang Jingkun, there were some other unexpected results. Alexis Lebrun fell to Yuta Tanaka 3-2. Tanaka also took out Truls Moregard, so chalk up two solid upsets for World No. 60. Lin Gaoyuan fell to Alvaro Robles – with Lin blowing a 2-0 lead on his way to falling 3-2. Anton Kallberg also fell to Omar Assar, and Chen Yuanyu fell to Liam Pitchford – both smaller upsets.
Lots of quality table tennis on tap all week long with the Final scheduled for next Sunday.
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