Japan Women's Race to Tokyo 2020 Singles

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Well, T2 Diamond just announced the following additions:

Liu Shiwen
 
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Very true, but Ishikawa and Hirano have equal chances of meeting a Chinese player in the opening round as well. The chances of Ito drawing Chinese players consistently while at the same time, both Hirano and Ishikawa consistently avoid a Chinese player over a span of several tournaments is low. Moreover, Ito still has a fighting chance in matches against Chinese players if ever they do meet. Ishikawa and Hirano are almost guaranteed to lose if ever they do draw a Chinese player based on track record.

Agreed
 
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There is no complete list of confirmed players, I understand correctly?
10 Chinese women scored the required number of points to participate in the Diamond in Malaysia ....If all ten will participate, then Ishikawa and Kato will not .....
 
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There is no complete list of confirmed players, I understand correctly?
10 Chinese women scored the required number of points to participate in the Diamond in Malaysia ....If all ten will participate, then Ishikawa and Kato will not .....
Ishikawa & Kato have been officially announced to the world, this cannot be changed. They are going to T2.
Only 9 chinese women were in the top 15, GYT was in the tie group with Ishikawa, with Kato directly behind. If Kato is in, then China withdrawn 4, if Han Ying is in, they pulled 5.
 
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They should already have the confirmed list for a few days. Just trying to hype it up by releasing the names separately.
 
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Thank....Presumably a month before the start should be published?
It will be interesting to see what remains of the original list ....

1. WANG Manyu - 863

2. CHEN Meng - 750

3. LIU Shiwen - 463

4. ZHU Yuling - 325

5. DING Ning - 300

5. ITO Mima - 300

7. SUN Yingsha - 256

8. CHEN Xingtong - 181

9. FENG Tianwei - 158

10. WANG Yidi - 133

11. CHENG I-Ching - 125

12. HE Zhuojia - 108

13. HIRANO Miu - 100

14. CHENG Hsien-Tzu - 91

15. DOO Hoi Kem - 83

15. POLCANOVA S - 83

...
17. SZOCS Bernadette - 81

18. ISHIKAWA Kasumi - 75
 
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Perhaps the Wild Card?

However, this is only the first Diamond, Malaysia ....
 
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Bernadette did better on tour than Ishikawa? I don't recall seeing her on tour at all lately.
For 2019, I think Ishikawa not playing in the Hungarian Open hurt her which is where Szocs made the QF. However, Szocs did not make the main draw at the Qatar Open, but Ishikawa was unlucky and drew SYS at Qatar in the 1st round and lost. Both made R16 at the China Open... Ishikawa lost to CXT; Szocs lost to CIC. Japan Open is past the cut-off date for the 1st T2 event.
 
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Actually, in various ways, we do. No need to make it sound like we don't hear from the players themselves how much they practice dealing with her with the pips practice partners and how the pips players have gotten more prominence because of Ito's rise.

Dealing with a threat successfully is not an indication it was never a serious threat. In fact, I still take Li Xiaoxia's summary of the situation as pretty much complete. Li said pips are inferior to inverted and that will always cap Ito, but Ito as a player herself is very talented. Li believes that China's superior resource depth and the flexibility of inverted looping will win out.

So none of the coaches believe that they shouldn't beat Ito. But all of them also regard Ito as a legitimate threat. There is no need to make it seem that China has a hidden agenda. Gu Yuting after barely beating Ito also pushed her teammates in tough matches, taking 3 game off Chen Meng who she hadn't taken a game off in years.

So I take Guo Yan at her word 100%. Same with Li Sun and the other coaches. You won't hear them discussing Ishikawa the way they discuss Ito.

Doesn't matter how talented Ito is. She has critical flaws in her style. Unless they are fixed, her chance of winning against Chinese A team will decline over time. The same applies to Harimoto.
 
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Doesn't matter how talented Ito is. She has critical flaws in her style. Unless they are fixed, her chance of winning against Chinese A team will decline over time. The same applies to Harimoto.

The subject was not whether Ito or Harimoto supposedly have fundamental flaws - even Xu Xin has a relatively weak backhand and he has been CNT A his whole life.

It was whether the Chinese team considered Ito a serious threat. You make it sound as if anyone was even scaring or winning matches against the Chinese in the last decade before Hirano and Ito came along. Guo Yan and Li Sun were speaking on this context.

As for the future, who really knows. If you want we can place money on a Harimoto bet. I consider most of his perceived weaknesses to be a sign of youth. You may disagree. But I think it is easy to take a popular opinion (no one can beat the CNT) and then act like those who are 20% successful are failures because you set the bar at 80%. Forgetting that historically maybe no one got to 5%.
 
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A brilliant ass pull.

OY5IslOh.png
 
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Korea, USA, Spain, Croatia.jpg

Japan and Singapore.jpg

since we are on the topic of win rates and what makes someone a true threat to chinese dominance I figured I would compile a (nonexhaustive) list of the wins of women who have been labelled 'threats' against the chinese.


Some of my choices were questionable, especially after calculations had been made (*AHEM* Yu Mengyu, Dang Ye Seo, Shen Yanfei) but it really goes to show how dominant the Chinese have been when even a single victory against their main players is enough for you to be considered a threat.


Considering the fact that defeating second string chinese players doesn't do anything to nullify their dominance, I've only calculated matchups against CNT women who have at least done one of:


1. Represented China in the Olympics since 2004
2. Appeared in more than one WTTC singles event
(i.e. no Mu Zi, Cao Zhen or Hu Limei - again, I might have missed out some people)


Some findings:
a) Zhang Yining, Ding Ning and Li Xiaoxia are major confounders to the data, scoring 10 or more wins over multiple opponents (no coincidence then that they are all Olympic champions), Liu Shiwen is up there in this list as well, and the cells have been highlighted in red.


b) Beating a Chinese player more than once is an accomplishment. Cells highlighted in yellow show match-ups where a non-chinese player has beaten a CNT player 3 or more times. Only Jiang Huajun and Li Jiawei have this ascendency over more than 1 player.


c) Building on the previous point, many players have beaten individual players of CNT's core team once, but never again once they've been 'figured out' as we like to say here. Notably, Mima Ito has only beaten Liu Shiwen and Ding Ning more than once. That says something about her long-term threat to the Chinese. It remains to be seen whether the younger generation are as susceptible to her play style.


d) Mima Ito leads the rest of the pack by far with a 25.71% rate over main CNT players. Surprisingly, Tamara Boros comes in second at 22.86%, though my data could have been confounded for not including players before the 2004 era, in which Boros was more active. Other notable players with a win rate of >15% are: FENG Tianwei, JIANG Huajun and GAO Jun


e) Average win rate for someone who is considered a 'threat to CNT' is 12.87%. Players who have less than 10% win rate against CNT are: MIU Hirano, ISHIKAWA Kasumi, Lin Ling, SHEN Yanfei and YU Mengyu


I think the saddest part of this all is that the biggest threat to CNT only has a 1/4 chance of beating the main team. I'm sure her stats are higher if second-string players are included, but I doubt the percentage will go beyond 30%. That's Japan's chances of winning gold in Tokyo 2020, folks.

*information is based on ITTF's head-to-head data base, which to my knowledge is not 100% accurate. There are several instances where they have missed out matches that I recall very specifically

*results are definitely biased as I have included Chinese Super League results to slightly bolster the wins of non-CNT players. So the actual numbers are actually slightly more dismal :D
 
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More on Tamara Boros - http://mytabletennis.net/forum/foru...&title=greatest-female-tt-players-ever#990730

Ito's overall winning percentage against the CNT is 33.3%, and 29.6% if counting only those playing in WTTC/WTTTC. Those numbers include matches from when she was 11 years old. In 2018, her winning percentage was 60%(12/20), and 62.5%(5/8) if counting only the WTTTC members. LSW 2w, DN 1w1l, ZYL 1w, WMY 1w2l.

Like Guo Yan said in the interview, the CNT has not faced a stronger threat in a long time.
 
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