(by Steve Hopkins, photo by WTT)
If you only tuned in on Saturday for the Finals of the WTT Champions Xinxiang event, you saw a somewhat predictable No. 1 over No. 7 Final in Men’s Singles and an equally predictable No. 1 over No. 3 Final in Women’s Singles. Those winners were Fan Zendong and Sun Yingsha – each currently leading in their respective ITTF Rankings by enough that they could take half a year off and still be the top seed in the end-of-year championships events. Despite the predictable last day, Fan and Sun are not the big story in this WTT event.
The big story in Xinxiang was the upsets in Men’s Singles – or perhaps the parity across the World’s Top players. On the Men’s side, 9 of the World’s Top 10 played – and the upsets started early. Ma Long and Tomokazu Harimoto both fell in the second round (Lim Jonghoon beat Harimoto 3-1 and Lin Yun-Ju beat Ma Long by the same 3-1 score). European Champion Dang Qiu fell 3-0 to Lin Shidong. France’s Alexis Lebrun topped Truls Moregard 3-2. Germany’s Ruwen Filus took out World No. 5 Hugo Calderano 3-1. By the time this group got to the Quarterfinals, 6 of the World’s Top 10 had fallen by upset. And if you’d like to make the argument that there is new parity in table tennis, note that Fan Zhendong was down 1-2 to Lin Shidong before a comeback win in the Quarterfinals, and then Fan needed all 7 games to defeat Korea’s Lim Jonghoon (4-3) in the Semifinal. In the other half of the draw, it was World No. 7 Liang Jingkun that topped Wang Chuqin 3-0 and then topped Lin Yun-Ju 4-2 on his way to the Final. Ultimately Fan won the first two games of the Final with tight scores of 12-10 and 11-9 before coasting to a 4-1 win.
There was a moment on Wednesday when Lee Sang Su was up a game on World No. 1 Fan Zhendong, where this tournament could have been turned on its ear with nearly all of the top seeds out before the Quarterfinals. However, Fan righted the ship and ran off three wins in a row. And second seed (and World No. 2), Wang Chuqin advanced easily.
First, European Champion Dang Qiu fell 3-0 to Lin Shidong – a tight first game went to Shidong 14-12 and then he coasted through two easy games. Shidong will face Fan Zhendong on Thursday. And in the second major upset, one of France’s rising stars, Alexis Lebrun, swapped 11-9 tight games with Truls Moregard before dominating the final two games to advance. And in the last game of the day, it was Germany’s Ruwen Filus over World No. 5 Hugo Calderano 3-1. In one of the few non-upset wins, Liang Jingkun also topped Mattias Falck.
There is often less intrigue on the Women’s side of these events. Seven of the top seeds made the Final 8. The top five Chinese players (Sun, Cheng, Yidi, Chen, and Manyu), the top two Japanese players (Ito and Hayata), and Korea’s Shin Yubin all battled in those Quarterfinals and only Chinese advanced. From those Final Four, Wang Yidi was the surprise – topping World No. 2 Chen Xingtong. And then Sun Yingsha, World No. 1, completed her domination of the event with a 4-1 win.
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