(by Steve Hopkins) After Ma Long was upset early (a 4-2 loss to Xu Chenhao), the other 2/3 of their Olympic Team finished China’s Olympic Simulation exactly as expected.  Fan Zhendong (World No.1) and Xu Xin (World No.2) advanced to the Final, where Fan topped Xu is a tight 4-3 victory. The more interesting result […]

(by Steve Hopkins) The final events in the Dussedorf Masters Series was held today.  It included Timo Boll as the top seed, the 2020 Duseldorf points champion (Dang Qiu), the young German points leader (Cedric Meissner), and a pair of Swedes (Anton Kallberg and Kristian Karlsson). Meissner fell early – his earliest loss of the whole […]

(by Steve Hopkins) Just three weeks after Ma Long was ousted early in the China Olympic Trials, he falls again – this time a 4-2 to Xu Chenhao.  Chenhao is a 24 second tier Chinese player who was briefly within the Top 100 in the rankings (No. 97) in 2014.   That said, he’s a dangerous free-swinging […]

(by Steve Hopkins) The ITTF Event Calendar has been pretty light in the first half of 2021 so as to not risk the Olympics in Tokyo.  There have been a few qualification events which needed to happen because they were cancelled in 2020, but for the most part players will be preparing for the Olympics […]

(by Steve Hopkins, photo ITTFWorld) Kay Stumper won the Youth Challenge Event in Tunis this week.  Stumper is a young German player (18 years old) who has been turning heads in Europe on the junior circuit – winning the European Youth Top 10 the last two years.  Stumper won the third Dusseldorf Masters Event (last […]

(by Steve Hopkins) The Junior Pan Am Games is an event for athletes between 18 and 21.  “Junior” is a misnomer for an American audience where we often use the term to refer to those 18 and under.  In this case, the event will feature the best young players of this hemisphere, and that includes […]