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Review made and produced by TableTennisDaily user Steven

The ITTF has published the new world rankings! These were released on November 5, 2014.



Huge jump by Paul Drinkhall!


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Paul Drinkhall in action at the 2014 Russian Open - Photo by: ETTU.org



November was all about the last two World Tour events before the Grand Finals: the Swedish Open and the Russian Open! At the last event Paul Drinkhall surprised the crowd by reaching the finals resulting in a huge jump into the top 50 of the world.




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Zhu Yuling and Fan Zhendong - 2014 Swedish Open Champions - Photos by: ITTF


The Swedish Open was held in Stockholm, Sweden and featured many Stiga players including Wang Hao who has been inactive on the international circuit.

In the men's event the first big upset was caused by Kristian Karlsson who beat Panagiotis Gionis in the round of 32. In the next match he was close to beating top seed Xu Xin as well: 3-4. Steffen Mengel also brought second seed Fan Zhendong to a 7th set before being knocked out. 4th seed Dimitrij Ovtcharov was expected to be the biggest hurdle for the Chinese team but lost to Fang Bo. A couple hours later the semi finals were occupied by China. Xu Xin and Fan Zhendong showed why they were top seeds by beating both Fang Bo and Wang Hao. In the final Fan Zhendong had a tough start but managed to finish it quite easily: 4-2.

In the opening round of the women's event unranked junior Feng Yalan swept Li Jiao without any difficulties while Dora Madarasz caused an early exit for Korea's Yang Haeun. In a terribly long match that required the expedite rule Ai Fukuhara accounted for Hu Limei (4-3). Sadly the Japanese representatives could not get far as both Fukuhara and Ishikawa lost their quarter final match to Wu Yang and Zhu Yuling. Zhu Yuling then impressively continued her run and defeated Liu Shiwen in the final: 4-0.




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Kasumi Ishikawa and Koki Niwa- 2014 Russian Open Winners - Photos by: ITTF


The Russian Open was held in Ekaterinburg, Russia. More than 75 Russian players competed in this event which for the rest mostly featured European and Japanese players.

All men's top 4 seeds managed to book a place for the quarter finals. Marcos Freitas was the first to be knocked out there; Paul Drinkhall surprised by beating the Portugese player 4-2. Drinkhall didn't stop there as he continued and finished the tournament for Dimitrij Ovtcharov in 7 sets. His final opponent was too much though: Koki Niwa was crowned the champion of the last World Tour event of the year after a comfy 4-1 victory.

Ai Fukuhara and Kasumi Ishikawa returned to Ekaterinburg after their quarter final elimination in Stockholm earlier. This time there were no Chinese opponents on their road. 3rd seed Sayaka Hirano exited in the first round but her spot in the semi final was replaced by another Japanese player: Hina Hiyata. Hiyata posed no threat to Ishikawa though as she raced towards the final where she met Fukuhara. The final match was an interesting one: Fukuhara took a 3-1 lead, but Ishikawa fought her way back and managed to close off with a 15-13 victory in the 7th set.





Other events included in this month's rankings are:
2014 XXII Central American and Caribbean Sports Games
2014 Estonian Junior and Cadet Open
2014 Hungarian Junior & Cadet Open - ITTF Premium Junior Circuit




This month's most notable changes
39 (46) KARLSSON Kristian
41 (68) GAUZY Simon
45 (80) DRINKHALL Paul
48 (61) LIANG Jingkun
52 (82) VLASOV Grigory
56 (73) BOBOCICA Mihai
60 (81) YOSHIMURA Maharu

14 (xx) FENG Yalan
21 (26) SHAN Xiaona ^
44 (61) SILBEREISEN Kristin
63 (87) HAYATA Hina
75 (89) MADARASZ Dora
123 (137) KHETKHUAN Tamolwan
129 (151) XIAO Maria ^




Men's World Rankings
1 (1) XU Xin
2 (2) MA Long
3 (3) FAN Zhendong
4 (4) ZHANG Jike
5 (5) MIZUTANI Jun
6 (x) WANG Hao
7 (6) OVTCHAROV Dimitrij
8 (7) CHUANG Chih-Yuan

9 (8) BOLL Timo
10 (xx) YAN An
11 (9) FREITAS Marcos
12 (10) SAMSONOV Vladimir
13 (14) NIWA Koki
14 (11) GAO Ning
15 (xx) FANG Bo
16 (12) JOO Saehyuk

17 (14) TANG Peng
18 (13) APOLONIA Tiago
19 (16) BAUM Patrick
20 (17) CHEN Chien-An
21 (18) GIONIS Panagiotis
22 (21) MATSUDAIRA Kenta
xx (xx) KIM Minseok
23 ​(xx) CHO Eonrae
24 (19) GACINA Andrej

25 (24) GARDOS Robert
25 (22) ZHAN Jian ^
27 (20) STEGER Bastian
28 (28) MENGEL Steffen
xx (xx) MAZE Michael
29 (23) CRISAN Adrian
30 (25) MURAMATSU Yuto
31 (30) ARUNA Quadri
32 (27) LEE Jungwoo





Women's World Rankings
1 (1) DING Ning
2 (2) LIU Shiwen
3 (3) LI Xiaoxia
4 (4) FENG Tianwei
5 (5) ZHU Yuling
6 (6) ISHIKAWA Kasumi
7 (8) WU Yang
8 (7) CHEN Meng

9 (9) HAN Ying ^
10 (11) FUKUHARA Ai
11 (12) LIU Jia
12 (10) SEO Hyowon
13 (13) YU Mengyu
14 (xx) FENG Yalan
15 (15) LI Fen ^
16 (18) HIRANO Sayaka

17 (14) LEE Ho Ching
18 (17) POTA Georgina
19 (16) SAMARA Elizabeta
20 (20) YU Fu ^
21 (26) SHAN Xiaona ^
22 (19) DOO Hoi Kem
23 (21) YANG Haeun
24 (22) LI Jiao

25 (25) ISHIGAKI Yuka
26 (23) HU Melek
27 (24) RI Myong Sun
28 (xx) HU Limei
29 (30) MORIZONO Misaki
30 (28) WU Jiaduo
31 (27) PAVLOVICH Viktoria
32 (29) JEON Jihee ^





Full rankings can be found here.
In December: the World Junior Championships and the World Tour Grand Finals!
 
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I was counting the ratio of Asian/European players in the top 100 and came to the conclusion that it was about 1:1... So that made me wonder why Asia is way more successful. Then I made the plot below that shows the age and origin of every top 100 player in December:

VdLy4Wo.png


Look at the difference between Asia and Europe... It's almost as if for every European player, there's an Asian who is just as good but a couple years younger. :) Asia has the future...
 
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I was counting the ratio of Asian/European players in the top 100 and came to the conclusion that it was about 1:1... So that made me wonder why Asia is way more successful. Then I made the plot below that shows the age and origin of every top 100 player in December:

VdLy4Wo.png


Look at the difference between Asia and Europe... It's almost as if for every European player, there's an Asian who is just as good but a couple years younger. :) Asia has the future...

Indeed, and i'm pretty sure this has been going on for many years already.

The European playing career time frame is always longer, compared to Asian who are shorter
We can say European is from teenage years till around 40 or more - which is around 20 years
Asian is more around 20 to 30 years old, so say 10 years or so
- Talking about in ITTF ranking

Chinese generation is around 4 to 5 years and you will get a fresh batch of top level players, whereby Sweden in Waldners days was few decades for a batch :p

This is indeed interesting, as the Europeans are non stop developing juniors, but how come they are not making the generation gap smaller (in order words, youngsters to beat the oldies on the national team)
 
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Interesting analysis. I would think it is perhaps two factors at work regarding the age distributions:

1. There is a far far larger pool of enthusiastic players to draw from in Asia.
2. Asian players start younger and train and play more intensively reaching their peak at an earlier age (10000hrs and all that)

The result is that if you are an exceptionally good European player (1 in a million) then it can be many many years before another 1 in a million player emerges to replace you. In Asia there is a one in a million player arising every year to two.

There may also be something to be said about level of local competition. Is it coincidence that Persson and Waldner and other swedes rose together, or did they force each other to raise their game.
 
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It would also be interesting to see a longitudinal analysis showing the age at which Asian and European players reach their highest ranking as a distribution.

(Some of those in the top 100 are on their way up and some have peaked and are on their way down.)
 
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It would also be interesting to see a longitudinal analysis showing the age at which Asian and European players reach their highest ranking as a distribution.

(Some of those in the top 100 are on their way up and some have peaked and are on their way down.)

That would indeed be interesting, but it would also be a lot of work. :)
 
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