(by Steve Hopkins, photo WTT)
Not a lot of “strawberries” and tricky sidespin shots, but Lind logged a career win over World No. 1 Wang Chuqin while showing his unique creativity through variation. Long serves, tomahawk serves, and pace changes were all mixed in. Lind’s service return positioning seemed to have given Chuqin the most trouble. The lefthanded Lind sometimes moved deep into his backhand corner – where he would force the receive with his forehand – but while using his whole repertoire of shots – sometimes heavy top, sometimes overly aggressive, sometimes a hard push, and sometimes floating the ball across the middle. Then, Lind would completely flip the script and force backhand returns – sometimes moving all the way across his forehand to strike the ball with his backhand. His backhand service returns covered the whole table, and his attacks seemed to catch Chuqin offguard. With the advantage on his serve and on his service return, Lind seemed comfortable just playing out the points – “plain vanilla” returns in rhythm keeping up with Chuqin’s pace and power. The result, a narrow win in Game 1, a narrow loss in Game 2, and two wins to close out the match 3-1. World No. 50 with a big upset win.
Lind will move on to face Kao Cheng-Jui in the Round of 16. Kao also pulled off a small upset on Tuesday, defeating Shunsuke Togami 3-1. The Lind/Kao winner will face either Anton Kallberg or Lin Shidong. The other pairings are Felix Lebrun versus Xiang Peng, Truls Moregard and Harimoto, Lin Gaoyuan and Jonathan Groth, Zhou Qihao and Liang Jingkun, Ma Long and Lee Sang Su and Darko Jorgic versus Hugo Calderano.
Ten of the women’s final 16 are Chinese. That said, there have been some unexpected results as lesser-known players take advantage of this opportunity to compete in Beijing. Top seeds Sun Yingsha and Wang Manyu have both advanced easily. But both will play a surprise Chinese opponent. Qin Yuxan has logged a pair of upsets to fight through to face Wang Manyu, and Liu Weishan has done the same on her way to face Sun Yingsha. Japan’s Miu Hirano lost today, so Kim Nayeong will now face Mima Ito on Thursday in the Round of 16. China’s Fan Siqi upset Wang Yidi on the first day and has now advanced to face Sakura Mori of Japan. And Wang Xiaotong ousted Sofia Polanova – and will now play Cheng I-Ching.
Lots of quality table tennis on tap all week long – we’ll have more updates soon.
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