2017 ITTF World Table Tennis Championships Men’s singles: The Story so far up to day 6!

What an incredible start to the 2017 World Table Tennis Championships! We’ve already had some electrifying matches, huge upsets, and records broken. Perhaps the biggest shock coming in the form of 13 year old Japanese wonder kid Tomokazu Harimoto. With an almost comfortable 4-1 win over his compatriot and world number 6 Jun Mizutani. Since then he has gone onto beat Lubomir Pistej making him the youngest ever player to reach the quarter finals of the World Table Tennis Championships. He will face the winner of Xu Xin and 20 year old Chinese sensation Gaoyuan Lin, which is to be played tomorrow.

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Harimoto Tomokazu shocks the table tennis world!

Harimoto briefly spoke with us after his match with Jun Mizutani, and had this to say:


Not to be outdone by the Japanese starlet, stepped forward Korea’s Lee Sang Su. He was up against, what seemed to be an almost impossible task. A match against the former 2 time World Champion Zhang Jike. However the Korean had other ideas shocking the German crowd by ousting the all-time great in 5 sets in what is surely his greatest win since the Korean open way back in 2012 where he stunned the current World Champion Ma Long. Lee Sang Su carried this momentum forward this through to his last 16 match with Vladimir Samsonov, beating the Belarusian in straight sets. He will now face Wong Chun Ting who beat Sang Su’s compatriot Jeong Sangeun in their last 16 match up 4-2.

There was almost a third massive upset with the German, world number 5 Dimitrij Ovtcharov taken the full seven set distance by Romanian, world number 82 Hunor Szocs. However the top ranked European player had just too much in the end, closing out a nail biting final set 11-8 after being 3-2 down in games. Ovtcharov will play his last 16 match tomorrow against Koki Niwa for the right to play Fan Zhengdong In the quarter finals who has breezed past his competition so far.

Interview with Dima after beating Paul Drinkhall in last 64:


After easing through the earlier rounds, Timo Boll finally took revenge on Marcos Freitas in their last 16 battle, in front of his home fans. With many people talking about potential retirement looming, Boll silenced his critics beating the Portuguese number 1, 4-1 to book his place in the quarter finals.

We caught up with Timo after the match and he had this to say about the win and his upcoming match tomorrow with world number 1, Ma Long:


Ma Long himself had a similar, fairly comfortable route to the Quarter finals, however did drop 2 sets to Swedish rising star Anton Kallberg in the last 64, a promising performance from the Swede. However the Chinese number 1 carried on improving in his last 32 and 16 matches, defeating Ovidiu Ionescu 4-1 and Chuang Chih-Yuan 4-0 respectively.

We’ve loved the World Championships so far and with some incredible matchups still to come it’s all to play for, can anyone see past a Chinese win or can an a non-Chinese player cause one of the greatest upsets in table tennis history? Share your thoughts and comments below.

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We are really excited to be covering the World Championships on TTD and look forward to the big matches ahead! Stay tuned for updates, training hall footage, interviews, articles and much more… Catch up with all the latest highlighted matches in the TTD Video Library and watch all the very latest training hall videos here.

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Photos by: ITTF Flickr
Written by: Thomas Jeffcott
TableTennisDaily
 
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