(by Steve Hopkins)

Americans dominated at the US Open this year with Jinbao Ma (Sunnyvale, CA) winning the Men’s Singles event and Amy Wang (Turnersville, NJ) winning the Women’s Singles event.

Jinbao fought his way through the Men’s draw from the sixth position.  His first two matches were 3-0 wins (over Aditya Godhwani and Lingxiao Yan).  The Round of 16 win was over Japanes competitor Takuto Izumo (a 3-1 win with tight scores).  Jinbao’s Quarterfinal win was a 4-3 win over two time past US Open Champion Eugene Wang.  The Semifinal match was against Korea’s  Seungjun Lee – a 4-2 win for Jinbao.  The other Finalist was Masaki Takami, a Japanese player who took out defending Champion Kou Lei, Wei Wang, and teammate Asuka Sakai in consecutive matches.  In the Final, Jinbao and Masaki had three tight 11-9 games, with Jinbao winning two of those games.  The final two games were not competitive – Jinbao Ma pushed his 2-1 advantage to two easy wins at 11-1 and 11-5.  Congratulations to Jinbao – US Open Champion 2023.

Amy Wang entered the event as a strong third seed.  The top seed, Jun Gu fell to Hitomi Edahiro in the Round of 16.  Edahiro emerged from the top half of the draw with additional wins over Youruo Wu and Mitsuho Kimura.  In the lower half of the draw, the second seeded Aige He won three in a row before falling to Amy Wang in the Semifinals 4-1.  Wang dominated the Final by the same 4-1 score, in fact Wang only lost three games spread out across five wins in the event.  Congratulations Amy – US Open Champion 2023.

The US Open is a massive event with a variety of age and rating events – not just the signature Open Singles titles.  We’ll cover those events in a separate article, but its important to note here that Amy Wang didn’t just have a great Open Singles event, she had a great week.  Amy finished first in U21 Women’s Singles, teamed with Rachel Sung to win the Open Women’s Doubles title, and teamed with Nikhil Kumar to claim third in Open Men’s Doubles.  A truly dominant set of performances by our our Women’s Champion.

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