It will be an interesting event, and also good to have a tournament with another format compared to WTT series, however, I am confused. Will the players that wins in Macao be considered best in the world? Or the ones that wins in Doha in May? Or the ones that won WTT finals in Fukuoka? Or the ones topping the WTT ranking? Or the ones that won in the last Olympics since it was less then a year ago?
you have raised a very important question, table tennis is indeed very confusing for fans who come from other sports.
In the past you have the 3 majors - olympic gold, world championship champion, and world cup winner.
There was finals before too, world tour/pro tour finals, and now it is just called WTT finals
The previous finals wasn't as serious, since it was mostly few countries playing and winning (think of 6 to 9 Chinese players of 16 players taking part).
WTT ranking is just world number 1 per se, and there is some other stats like - how many days/week, at world number 1. Ranking number 1 only gives you seeding, and other than glory, there is no monetary or ranking point value in it.
Now today, ITTF and WTT are separated (even though WTT is a subsidiary, the marketing/event/IT staff are not the same people).
ITTF is World Cup/World Champ/Mixed Team world cup etc
WTT now has Finals, Smash, Champions
Finals at one stage was supposed to replaced the world cup.
now each of these have fancy points, so if you were to use "ranking points" and the winners of each event to see what is important.... here is goes:
OG 2000
Smash 2000
World Champ 2000
Finals 1500
World Cup 1500
Champions 1000
note, OG is every 4 years, World Champ individuals is every 2 years. The others are every year, with Smash having 4 and Champions 6 per year.