May World Rankings 2014

--- WTTTC causes big changes in top 100 ---


Mihail Bobocica (58 places), Britt Eerland (26 places) and Daniel Kosiba (43 places) make big jumps after their performances in Tokyo.



Three of the most successful players of May - Photo by: ITTF





Past month showed two big events: The Spanish Open, and of course the World Team Table Tennis Championships.





Paul Drinkhall and Li Fen - 2014 Spanish Open Champions - Photos by: ITTF


The Spanish Open was held at the start of the month, in Almeria.
Winner in the Men's event was a huge surprise considering the list of seeded players. Top seeds Chen Chien-An and Taku Takakiwa were defeated by their countrymates Chiang and Morizono in the quarter finals. Seed #3, Alexey Smirnov and seed #4, Kenji Matsudaira had to leave the tournament even earlier. It was seed #23, Paul Drinkhall who reached the finals instead, where he accounted for Morizono. This makes Drinkhall the second Englishman in history to win the men's singles title at a World Tour event.

Another record was nearly broken in the women's event. Top seeds Liu Jia and Sayaka Hirano also lost in earlier rounds against Wakamiya and Matelova. Sabine Winter lost her semi final in a tight 3-4 match against 14-year old Miu Hirano. Hirano could have been the youngest World Tour winner ever, but she had big problems with the typical play of Sweden's Li Fen in the final. Li Fen won her title through a 4-1 victory.









Men's and Women's team of China - WTTTC 2014 champions - Photo by: ITTF Facebook


The long awaited WTTTC 2014 was held in Tokyo and showed a great media coverage. With new commentators, daily video reviews active use of Facebook the tournament drew a lot of attention online.

In the men's championship division all 4 top seeds finished 1st in their group, despite Japan losing to Greece on the opening day. One of them, Korea, couldn't make it to the semi-finals: they lost against Chinese Taipei, 2-3. After a very exciting match between Japan and Germany in the other half, it was a repeat of last edition's final: Germany vs China. China hadn't lost a match up till then but it was Dimitrij Ovtcharov to score against Zhang Jike. Ma Long and Xu Xin however played at the top of their level and the result was (again) a 3-1 victory for China.
In the 2nd division Team England beat Italy, meaning we'll see both in the championship division soon.

In the women's championship division all 4 group winners (China, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong) reached the semi finals. The crowd focused on home team Japan who had a very tight 3-2 match against the Netherlands earlier, but in the end they managed to reach the anticipated final against China. The upset would be too far away; China's women won the title without losing a single match in the entire tournament.
The women of Brazil won the final against Sweden in the 2nd division.​