World Table Tennis Championships 2019

Garrison · Apr 28, 2019

Next event is Serbia Open next week. Next bigger one is China Open at the end of May.

TTLOVE · Apr 28, 2019

I want to see Ma Long destroying anyone again and again (even Fan).
so as to beat Samsonov's world tour title record and become Wr n°1 again, to beat the another record.

tropical · Apr 28, 2019

Just too easy for ML... I thought I'd change to short pips.

Ok .. now a serious note .. it is "indisputable" that ML is the GOAT. Congrats to him!

BTW, I do not like the referee's let call on a critical 9-9 in the 5th game in the women double. Shame on her.

Vlad Celler · Apr 28, 2019

tropical said:
Just too easy for ML... I thought I'd change to short pips.

Ok .. now a serious note .. it is "indisputable" that ML is the GOAT. Congrats to him!

BTW, I do not like the referee's let call on a critical 9-9 in the 5th game in the women double. Shame on her.

But after all, the Chinese couple knew for sure that they lost the 10th point ...The judge was wrong ... But why did the Chinese raise their hands?

tropical · Apr 28, 2019

Vlad Celler said:
But after all, the Chinese couple knew for sure that they lost the 10th point ...The judge was wrong ... But why did the Chinese raise their hands?

Because they also had no shame!

Shathe · Apr 28, 2019

As a spectator who has been attending the whole week iam gonna share my opinion.

I liked the tournament overall but there are many things to improve in.

First of all, the tickets are damn expensive for the casual hungarian folk. The season tickets for the whole week, or the last 5 days were a lot cheaper (still not cheap enough) but they were sold out in one day, they could have give out more of that. I myself bought the tickets separetely for each day (excluding the first 3 day, for theese i got a first 3 day season ticket) and it costed me around 70 000 ft ( 217 euro), and i missed an evening and a morning phase . But iam a huge table tennis fan, so i payed it. If only the tickets werent this expensive (i imagine half the price) more people would have attended leaving less seats open creating a better atmosphere. FYI only on the day of the men single finals was it full house. I know it costs some crazy money to rent such a place and to arrange everything, but if you want more spectators, entry fee has to cost less.

The other thing is the food. Its was incredibly expensive, thus making it impossible for regular hungarian folks, familys ( the hungarian federation said they aimed for families...) to stay a whole day or even for couple of full days.

The price on the tickets in addition to the overpriced food, is the main reason why many more potential viewer didnt come, only the most hardcore players and fans.

I also didnt like that from day 4 they divided the days to 2 sections ( morning and evening). i know, that it helps one to spare money, as people only have to buy tickets to the games they are interested in, but if the tickets werent overpriced , then the whole day tickets could work.

i loved it that they had 4 huge digital screens to show action and replays, but i would have rather see the slow mo replays of the rallys then the ocassional stupid fox animation.

i also liked that on the first few days, they tried to put the matches of top players in the main hall as well as hungarian players matches, so mostly we didnt have to choose between seeing for example Ma Long or a hungarian player.

On the final day not having the mens' singles final, as the last event of this tournament is a huge blunder and kills of the hype so much.

i think they put the women's doubles final after the mens singles, so that more spectators stay to see it (if it was before many wouldnt attend until the men start.), but its just a failed decesion.

Last, i wanna include my endless whine about the video quality, we get to see on youtube. This is a sport that absolute needs at least full HD 60 FPS video quality to get the insane skills across. I am utterly disappointed that even in a WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, we cant have the video quality table tennis deserves. i know they have the footage in excellent quality, they have several pro cameras from every angle. I also know that uploading high quality videos takes a lot more time, but in 2019 its should be solvable. Last WTTC they at least uploaded the finals in premium quality, now even the finals were uploaded with the regular method, with very few slow-mo-s and important, stunning and emotional parts cut completely out.

Hope ITTF can improve in these things

tropical · Apr 28, 2019

ITTF should ban this woman from being an international umpire,

especially being umpire in matches between China and others.

bzing · Apr 28, 2019

Mattias Falck has been winning just because players nowadays have not been accustomed in dealing with short pips being used in actual tournaments. It was the case where players prepared for fast and bouncy ball exchange designed to adapt with China's table tennis standards. With Matias in the tournament, players who are used to be good in looping and driving suddenly finds themselves in trouble as short pips usually return the ball very low and modifies the speed at which the ball would normally bounce back over the other table. Any player who would win over Falck would definitely prove that they are indeed masters of the sport as they wouldn't fall to the trap of unfamiliar foes joining the tourneys. On the other hand, Matias prove that beating a specific opponent can be achieve by using methods that would make the opponent feel less comfortable and thus gaining control over game. But with Ma Long's knowledge and experience, no amount of counter would dominate his standing unless you beat him on his own game. Just like how FZD manage to beat him. Btw FZD patterned his style with Ma Long but still is a far cry from the dictators textbook performance

mart1nandersson · Apr 28, 2019

I find it amazing that people complain about SP when this used to be Chinas number one weapon during the 80/90ies (remember Jiang Jialiang?). Mattias might be quirky but playing SP at this level requires some extreme skills. ML is by far the better player but it's not like he ran him over. Give Mattias some credit.

Edit: You would know that Mattias has received a lot of praise of the formers Chinese world stars if you follow Jörgen Persson in social media.

RidTheKid · Apr 28, 2019

SP is just another animal as any rubber. I see no advantages in using it over inverted. None actually. It was because Falck never got really comfortable in using inverted his coach told him to try SP. And it worked out ok to say he least. But there seem to be little experience at top level from playing against it, so at the moment Falck has some advantage but players adapt and overcome if they wanna stay in the top tier.

ttmonster · Apr 28, 2019

There is a also a lot of noise online on the in house commentary .. how it was stupid , negative and insulting at times ... curious to know your feedback on the same ... since you did not mention it ...

Shathe said:
As a spectator who has been attending the whole week iam gonna share my opinion.

I liked the tournament overall but there are many things to improve in.

First of all, the tickets are damn expensive for the casual hungarian folk. The season tickets for the whole week, or the last 5 days were a lot cheaper (still not cheap enough) but they were sold out in one day, they could have give out more of that. I myself bought the tickets separetely for each day (excluding the first 3 day, for theese i got a first 3 day season ticket) and it costed me around 70 000 ft ( 217 euro), and i missed an evening and a morning phase . But iam a huge table tennis fan, so i payed it. If only the tickets werent this expensive (i imagine half the price) more people would have attended leaving less seats open creating a better atmosphere. FYI only on the day of the men single finals was it full house. I know it costs some crazy money to rent such a place and to arrange everything, but if you want more spectators, entry fee has to cost less.

The other thing is the food. Its was incredibly expensive, thus making it impossible for regular hungarian folks, familys ( the hungarian federation said they aimed for families...) to stay a whole day or even for couple of full days.

The price on the tickets in addition to the overpriced food, is the main reason why many more potential viewer didnt come, only the most hardcore players and fans.

I also didnt like that from day 4 they divided the days to 2 sections ( morning and evening). i know, that it helps one to spare money, as people only have to buy tickets to the games they are interested in, but if the tickets werent overpriced , then the whole day tickets could work.

i loved it that they had 4 huge digital screens to show action and replays, but i would have rather see the slow mo replays of the rallys then the ocassional stupid fox animation.

i also liked that on the first few days, they tried to put the matches of top players in the main hall as well as hungarian players matches, so mostly we didnt have to choose between seeing for example Ma Long or a hungarian player.

On the final day not having the mens' singles final, as the last event of this tournament is a huge blunder and kills of the hype so much.

i think they put the women's doubles final after the mens singles, so that more spectators stay to see it (if it was before many wouldnt attend until the men start.), but its just a failed decesion.

Last, i wanna include my endless whine about the video quality, we get to see on youtube. This is a sport that absolute needs at least full HD 60 FPS video quality to get the insane skills across. I am utterly disappointed that even in a WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, we cant have the video quality table tennis deserves. i know they have the footage in excellent quality, they have several pro cameras from every angle. I also know that uploading high quality videos takes a lot more time, but in 2019 its should be solvable. Last WTTC they at least uploaded the finals in premium quality, now even the finals were uploaded with the regular method, with very few slow-mo-s and important, stunning and emotional parts cut completely out.

Hope ITTF can improve in these things

bzing · Apr 29, 2019

Notice how all the advertisement promotion videos include all the top quality HD 60p rallies. Whereas normal full matches/highlighed ones there is a crappy quality. These ittf bastards just probably deliberately keep the quality low on normal videos so as to reserve the good quality for TT companies so that they can make money off from the companies that want to do promotion on their products.

Cornel · Apr 29, 2019

I also went to the championships for the last two days and here are some thoughts about what I've seen :

- First of all, at the moment, table tennis is much more of a sport to be played than a sport to be watched. I feel that the tribunes could've been closer to the main table, the buffer between spectators and players was quite big, and the atmosphere was really good only for 2 or 3 matches, the others were very quiet.

- Was expecting much more from the brands' booths at the venue. People were saying that you can find lots of great deals there but what I actually saw there were brands that were getting rid of old equipment by selling it at a somewhat lower price and trying to sell their newest things at the usual prices. To sum it up, it is not different from the deals that you see on an ordinary table tennis shop like tabletennis11. Also, I haven't seen any exclusive items or something like that, Butterfly didn't even sell balls with the stamp of the championships.
P.S. I haven't followed closely TT News as of late, when did Butterfly manage to make a rubber that costs 80 euros?

- Agree with Shathe regarding food price and animations, and also regarding match schedule in the last days - it definitely should not be a burden for those who advance on all fronts, but at the same time we were paying for each session, and not for a day's ticket - and that meant that I had to buy more tickets(in each of the cases where I bought a ticket I was interested in one of the matches, and didn't quite care about the other match in the session). That led to the fact that on Saturday, there was a great atmosphere for the men's SF, but the WD SF were played almost like in a library.

- The commentary in the hall was quite bad - two guys were making some cheap analysis of the set that had just ended while the players were in their corners preparing for the next one. I don't think it is ok that a player has to hear the commentator analysing his game during the break between sets.

- Women's doubles matches were better and much more watchable than I thought - longer rallies and some really great exchanges. Even though initially I wasn't interested in them, I am happy to say I was wrong to disconsider WD.

- The Swedish fans are very cool guys - they really created a great atmosphere for Mattias Falck's matches. The Chinese have also done very well to encourage their players. (I hope we also did our part for Ionescu/Robles)

- Even if the quality of the game was much better, it felt lifeless in the crowd when no european player was involved.

- The mistake at 2-2 and 9-9 in WD final was quite bad, not because of the mistake itself, the umpire is also human after all, but because the replays are not used to decide on such important calls. Right after the decision there appeared a slow-mo replay on the big screens where you could see that the ball was not even close to the table, and yet they decided to replay the point. The boos from the crowd have been really, really loud.

- Taking part in such an event is really cool, because you get to meet the legends :

Suga D · Apr 29, 2019

Shathe said:
As a spectator who has been attending the whole week iam gonna share my opinion.

I liked the tournament overall but there are many things to improve in.

First of all, the tickets are damn expensive for the casual hungarian folk. The season tickets for the whole week, or the last 5 days were a lot cheaper (still not cheap enough) but they were sold out in one day, they could have give out more of that. I myself bought the tickets separetely for each day (excluding the first 3 day, for theese i got a first 3 day season ticket) and it costed me around 70 000 ft ( 217 euro), and i missed an evening and a morning phase . But iam a huge table tennis fan, so i payed it. If only the tickets werent this expensive (i imagine half the price) more people would have attended leaving less seats open creating a better atmosphere. FYI only on the day of the men single finals was it full house. I know it costs some crazy money to rent such a place and to arrange everything, but if you want more spectators, entry fee has to cost less.

The other thing is the food. Its was incredibly expensive, thus making it impossible for regular hungarian folks, familys ( the hungarian federation said they aimed for families...) to stay a whole day or even for couple of full days.

The price on the tickets in addition to the overpriced food, is the main reason why many more potential viewer didnt come, only the most hardcore players and fans.

I also didnt like that from day 4 they divided the days to 2 sections ( morning and evening). i know, that it helps one to spare money, as people only have to buy tickets to the games they are interested in, but if the tickets werent overpriced , then the whole day tickets could work.

i loved it that they had 4 huge digital screens to show action and replays, but i would have rather see the slow mo replays of the rallys then the ocassional stupid fox animation.

i also liked that on the first few days, they tried to put the matches of top players in the main hall as well as hungarian players matches, so mostly we didnt have to choose between seeing for example Ma Long or a hungarian player.

On the final day not having the mens' singles final, as the last event of this tournament is a huge blunder and kills of the hype so much.

i think they put the women's doubles final after the mens singles, so that more spectators stay to see it (if it was before many wouldnt attend until the men start.), but its just a failed decesion.

Last, i wanna include my endless whine about the video quality, we get to see on youtube. This is a sport that absolute needs at least full HD 60 FPS video quality to get the insane skills across. I am utterly disappointed that even in a WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, we cant have the video quality table tennis deserves. i know they have the footage in excellent quality, they have several pro cameras from every angle. I also know that uploading high quality videos takes a lot more time, but in 2019 its should be solvable. Last WTTC they at least uploaded the finals in premium quality, now even the finals were uploaded with the regular method, with very few slow-mo-s and important, stunning and emotional parts cut completely out.

Hope ITTF can improve in these things

Thanks a lot for your insight. A crowded house leaves a very different atmosphere and impression than a halfway filled house.
One reason why companies like www.fillaseat.com and https://www.seatjunky.com/houston exist.
I hope ITTF and the organizers read this and will learn from that.

Regarding the video quality, ITTF president Thomas Weikert said in Dan's latest podcast that they are very well aware of this, but it also seems to be a matter of broadcasting rights.
However from 2021 on things might change and massive improvements shall be made.
If you haven't seen the podcast yet, it's worth watching IMHO.

So thanks again. Wish I could've been there.

TT Guru · Apr 29, 2019

Considering how open the lower half of the draw was, it makes me wonder about the chances of some players who had a rough draw in the top half. For example if Hugo Calderano had been in the lower half would he have reached the final? Koki Niwa is another one who is strong enough (although he has lost to Mattias Falck twice).

Hardy Lee · Apr 29, 2019

no! It's Because the judge point at the net first！you can see the video again.

TTFrenzy · Apr 29, 2019

Hardy Lee said:
no! It's Because the judge point at the net first！you can see the video again.

it does not matter. yu ziyand did exactly the same against mizutani. that was unfair play by the chinese team.

timo boll, samsonov smirnov and others have given points to their opponents in BIG prestigious tournaments when referee made a mistake or didnt see a let or edge point

drunix80 · Apr 29, 2019

The judge called let and the CNT players agreed to the call. Based on experience, I would say that at times "let" service is difficult to adjudge from one side of the net or even both on rare occasions. The judge has a clear view of the net and he/she can call the let even when players are not aware of it. So, it is little harsh to blame the CNT players. They were in a high pressure match and judge called the let. And since it is sometimes difficult for players from one side of the table to adjudge a let, they simply agreed to the judge's decision. If it was really not a let, we have to blame the judge or the ITTF for not using technology for the same. IMO, this is not similar to LJK Vs Kenta incident where LJK clearly knew the trajectory and saw where the ball hit the table but still denied Kenta the point.

ttmonster · Apr 29, 2019

I did not see this in the Video clip Zeio posted .. can you please point me to the clip where the judge called it ...

What I saw is this :

1. SYS misses the shot.
2. the assistant umpire gives the point to Japan
3. SYS points to the net and says its a let ...
4. the umpire over rules and gives a let ...

now keep in mind the general courtesy in any serious game, if you think the serve is let you are supposed to raise your left hand , and play the ball back on the table ... you cannot attempt a shot and when it misses claim the serve was let ... again this is the how normal table tennis pros with sportsmanship operate ... I don't want to debate .. but nothing close to that happened ...

drunix80 said:
The judge called let and the CNT players agreed to the call. Based on experience, I would say that at times "let" service is difficult to adjudge from one side of the net or even both on rare occasions. The judge has a clear view of the net and he/she can call the let even when players are not aware of it. So, it is little harsh to blame the CNT players. They were in a high pressure match and judge called the let. And since it is sometimes difficult for players from one side of the table to adjudge a let, they simply agreed to the judge's decision. If it was really not a let, we have to blame the judge or the ITTF for not using technology for the same. IMO, this is not similar to LJK Vs Kenta incident where LJK clearly knew the trajectory and saw where the ball hit the table but still denied Kenta the point.

drunix80 · Apr 29, 2019

This video angle gives a better clue to sequence of events :

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=368008553812247

ttmonster said:
I did not see this in the Video clip Zeio posted .. can you please point me to the clip where the judge called it ...

What I saw is this :

1. SYS misses the shot.
2. the assistant umpire gives the point to Japan
3. SYS points to the net and says its a let ...
4. the umpire over rules and gives a let ...

now keep in mind the general courtesy in any serious game, if you think the serve is let you are supposed to raise your left hand , and play the ball back on the table ... you cannot attempt a shot and when it misses claim the serve was let ... again this is the how normal table tennis pros with sportsmanship operate ... I don't want to debate .. but nothing close to that happened ...

World Table Tennis Championships 2019

Well-Known Member

Member

Active Member

Well-Known Member

Active Member

Member

Active Member

Attachments

Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Member

Member

Well-Known Member

Member

Member

Well-Known Member

Active Member

Well-Known Member

Active Member

Similar threads