Chinese Women! What would be their ranking if they were men?

[tzifos]

The Chinese women (now 6 Chinese women in top 10) are very strong. What would be their rankings if they played in the men's leagues and tournaments. Would any Chinese woman be in the men's top-20? What do you think?

 

[BlopChock]

Top 20?! No
Top 100, maybe

 

[Sriver1]

Maybe top 200.

 

[chandyrandy]

after a couple months to adjust to the playstyles I reckon players like sun yingsha could adjust and become top 20

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Chinese womens team, other than training with themselves (other womens), also make use of provincial men's team as sparring partners (unranked).

Based on the training above, and previous men's vs women's internal matches, I would say there is no chance of top 50, if they can get into top 100, that is pretty good.
probably best case 80, and more likely 120-150 for the stronger women's.

 

[Dr Evil]

I think SYS would have a chance for top 100, but no chance for top 50 unless she played in a weaker region where she could pick up relatively easy ranking points. She'd have been favored over Aditya Sareen when he got to top 40 two years ago, for example. But as men's players got used to her game, I'd bet against her being able to stay in the top 100. As strong as she is, she still has a power disadvantage that top 100 men would figure out how to exploit consistently.

 

[Nakira]

I think SYS would be at least top 15. TT is clearly not about only power. It is just a parameter, between many others.
For the other women, there would be some top 50/80/100, but much less than men (5-10%).

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

CNT mens vs CNT womens
Mens start with 6, while womens start with 8 points.

provincial team womens vs non-provincial team mens (just regularly university player)

as much as womens will get used to mens, the mens will also get used to womens.

TPE and JNT womens players I know, trains with mens.
the womens is in an disadvantge When I say weak, we talking probably 2 to 3 tiers lower.
ie in Taiwan, a U19 2nd half national junior player (lowly world ranked, or not ranked) is more than sufficient to handle WR60 women players. The moment we go to someone like Chang Yu-An, where he is WR80 in the world, he can also handle Top 20 Japanese women's players.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

I think SYS would have a chance for top 100, but no chance for top 50 unless she played in a weaker region where she could pick up relatively easy ranking points.

I was more thinking playing level in terms of world rank.
but you do have a point.

maybe if they not in easy regions, but they still could travel the world and play in feeders/contenders with lesser strong players and mathematically get a decent world ranking by dodging as many strong mens as possible.

but if talking top 50, there is no ways to dodge, and the level gap will be more obvious.

 

[pongfugrasshopper]

I think SYS would be at least top 15. TT is clearly not about only power. It is just a parameter, between many others.
For the other women, there would be some top 50/80/100, but much less than men (5-10%).

I'm a fan of a number of the top women TT pros, but that's pretty delusional to think SYS is top 15. She has trouble against Nikhil Kumar of the USA let alone a top 50 player. Tony's assessment sounds very sensible.

 

[Nakira]

@pongfugrasshopper Very often, guys (and gals) here see the players in a dominance pyramid, where there are the 'winners', who always win on 'loosers', who get beat by the same all the time. The one with a higher rank.

But I don't think it is how it works. First you have a play type, which works well against you, and another one which does not work. Second, the best are the one who adapt, and know how to fix things. LGL is not a looser because he lost to Simon. He is one because he was not able to fix his strategy after their first match.
Third, you get used to some playing types, depending on your training partners. That's why, using internal tournaments, like the JTTA did for the world cup (if I remember) was a mistake. It does not mean you can perform at the international events.

Who knows how SYS was when she lost to the US dude? Maybe she was sick, maybe she was surprised, maybe she just didn't care? It does not mean anything. But the fact that, with a ton amount of work, in addition of the perfect environment, she has a statically rare enough DNA to be as good as the top men. I'm pretty sure she would be able to adapt.

There are still high ranked defender men, right? Does it require a lot of power? Was Harimoto winning using power, when he was 11?

Anyway, as we say in France, "if my aunt had some, she would be my uncle".

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Anyway, as we say in France, "if my aunt had some, she would be my uncle".

why don't you ask the French women's players what they think
that is probably way easier to get a clear view of where they think they can be.

Maybe ask Pro A players womens if they feel comfortable playing in Pro A mens, or something like that.
I'm sure it is easy for you to reach the Pro A club players?

 

[Nakira]

@Tony's Table Tennis : It's always easy to reach a Pro A Club, if you have the good mindset.
Especially with table tennis, which is not soccer, of course.

I won't do it, because I have better things to do: helping local countryside kids to play and compete, instead of staying at home watching TikTok. Also, doing happily my correct paid job (not in TT), that is also properly filling my social and reputation needs. Not everyone is looking forward to know "famous" players.

Just as a reminder:
- I didn't say that power is useless. I just said it is a parameter.
- I didn't say that half of the humanity would occupy half of the top rank positions.

In addition, for what I know about Pro A and B women, it is known that the salary difference between men and women is huge. I would bet some would try the Men pro team, for a better salary - it doesn't mean they would be successful.

 

[chandyrandy]

I'm a fan of a number of the top women TT pros, but that's pretty delusional to think SYS is top 15. She has trouble against Nikhil Kumar of the USA let alone a top 50 player. Tony's assessment sounds very sensible.

I hate this argument specifically, it's not relevant anymore as that happened 6 years ago

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

I hate this argument specifically, it's not relevant anymore as that happened 6 years ago

Its all relative, so if you need a 6 year ago comparison, Dec 2019:

SYS was ranked WR2 in womens and was 18 years old
Nikhil Kumar was ranked WR174 and was 16 years old

 

[golden_son]

Its all relative, so if you need a 6 year ago comparison, Dec 2019:

SYS was ranked WR2 in womens and was 18 years old
Nikhil Kumar was ranked WR174 and was 16 years old

What was the impetus behind this matchup? Why was she playing a middling-ranked American teen male anyway? 🤨

 

[PenHoldSandro]

Depends, what do you mean by this question? If you wanted to get technical then that means the women would become men, and therefore gain the heightened stregth and speed. This would mean that some could become WR 1 because of the anatomy change.

But ofc if you meant if they stayed the same but just played against men then it's very much over. Top 50 would be a rare sight

 

[turbozed]

I hate this argument specifically, it's not relevant anymore as that happened 6 years ago

It's relevant because (1) it's a male vs female match and (2) it involves SYS.

It might not be determinative because it happened a while ago. But it might be the ONLY relevant piece of information for this specific discussion.

You're welcome to come up with any other data points where SYS competes with male players though.

 

[lightspin]

One of my friends was on the CNT and ranked in the top 5 in the world. She said the men could give the top women around 7 points in a game to 21 and still win without taking it too seriously. Another friend was on the Army Team in China and said Liu GuoLiang could beat the entire women's team using shakehand grip before he joined the national team.

There is a massive gap between the top Chinese men and women. I wouldn't be surprised though if some of the women in the CNT could break into the rankings 50-100. If they moved to a weaker region and took advantage of all kinds of tournament bonus points, they probably could be ranked higher.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

What was the impetus behind this matchup? Why was she playing a middling-ranked American teen male anyway? 🤨

exhibition match, part of China-USA ping pong diplomacy, the CNT has visited and trained in USA quite a few time.

Due to the skill gap difference, the USA mens team took on the CNT womens team and while most people thought CNT Womens team will have a walk in a park against younger and lower ranked USA men's players, the result shows otherwise.

Here is the match in question and while it isn't a formal match, it was a match for pride and neither player wanted to loose.

For those that doesn't now, USATT tournaments does allow mens to play against womens and based on USATT ratings - you can actually compared say top 50 USA women players and see what they USATT levels are, and on the same "level", how lowly ranked the mens would be.

If people have seen enough for mens vs womens table tennis, then they won't make the assumption that the womens can just job into top mens zone (ie top 15)