JTTA: Selection System to be Revamped for Paris 2024

Takkyu_wa_inochi said:

thats why JTTA makes those tournaments. They are angry with the WTT reform
...

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Thanks. This 1st tournament has already proven JTTA correct in their decision.

I was asleep so didn't get to watch the Hayata/Nagasaki match live so just checked out the score line and watch the tail end of the YouTube replay.. This match and her match with Kasumi shows HH's resiliency. What a heartbreaker for Nagasaki having a couple of match points. But I'm very happy to see that despite the ending, she still was able to flash that beautiful smile at the end with her T League teammate. I hope this tournament gives Miyu the encouragement and motivation to keep it going. I also hope to see her and her bestie Miyuu Kihara in future WTT tournaments. It's a travesty for them not to be included when it's painfully obvious that they are better than most of the players above them in world ranking.

pongfugrasshopper said:

Thanks. This 1st tournament has already proven JTTA correct in their decision.

I was asleep so didn't get to watch the Hayata/Nagasaki match live so just checked out the score line and watch the tail end of the YouTube replay.. This match and her match with Kasumi shows HH's resiliency. What a heartbreaker for Nagasaki having a couple of match points. But I'm very happy to see that despite the ending, she still was able to flash that beautiful smile at the end with her T League teammate. I hope this tournament gives Miyu the encouragement and motivation to keep it going. I also hope to see her and her bestie Miyuu Kihara in future WTT tournaments. It's a travesty for them not to be included when it's painfully obvious that they are better than most of the players above them in world ranking.

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yes the overall level in Japan is very high, so many good players especially in Women's side.

Ando and Shibata managed to do well in these selection tournaments in 2021.
thanks to that Ando got medals in the Asian Champs, and played the Women's Team final in that event to get gold !!! (China wasn't there)
Remember ? she beated the next Korean ace, Shin Yubin.
Shibata had match point against Ito in Houston, but wasted her chance, who knows what she could have done against Wang Yidi ?

pongfugrasshopper said:

Paris 2024 Selection Points from this 1st tournament:

Women's final ranking
1st place Hina Hayata 50P
2nd place Nagasaki Miyu 45P
3rd place Miyuu Kihara 40P
4th place Hitomi Sato 35P
5th place Mima Ito 30P
6th place Kasumi Ishikawa 25P
7th place Honoka Hashimoto 20P
8th place Miu Hirano 15P

Men's final ranking
1st place Tomokazu Harimoto 50P
2nd place Mizuki Oikawa 45P
3rd place Akira Yokotani 40P
4th place Koki Niwa 35P
5th place Yunobu Daimu 30P
6th place Hiroto Shinozuka 25P
7th place Sho Sone 20P
8th place Jin Ueda 15P

I think Miyu Nagasaki is the headliner of this tournament. Beating Mima Ito and deuce in the 7th loss to HH ... basically a coin flip. She's got a ways to go, but at least she's closing the gap with HH. I recall in one of the previous trials (I think WTTC or ATTC trials), she lost in straight games to HH.

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Yeah i wonder what took miyu so long, She's already beaten ZYL at least twice, That's no mean feat

Takkyu_wa_inochi said:

to be honest,.
i'm not very convinced about Hayata in this tournament. ok she won , made great comebacks, but i expected from her total dominance.
so many mistakes and unforced errors. Thats very far from the level required to beat the Chinese. I'm quite disappointed with her.
Nagasaki ? well she wasn't expected. I've not seen her against Ito yet but no doubt it was a great win. In the final, Hayata wasn't doing very well, and she was a bit more consistent in the first 3 games. After that, i think its about nerves. She served in the net at 9-9 in game 6... and got match points in game7. but still a lot of mistakes in that final, far from the level required to beat the top Chinese players.

otoh, Harimoto had a great tournament. ok, we didn't see him pitted against Togami or Uda, but he got the better of Shinozuka which is a rising menace, (he's doing very well in T-League), and got his revenge match against Oikawa.

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Happy you still have hope for someone to challenge the Chinese. I saw Kuai Man at the Muscat 2022 - looking at where she has already gotten to from where she was at WJTTC, I think Japan is just ready for another set of nightmares.

NextLevel said:

Happy you still have hope for someone to challenge the Chinese. I saw Kuai Man at the Muscat 2022 - looking at where she has already gotten to from where she was at WJTTC, I think Japan is just ready for another set of nightmares.

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Miyazaki is a Junior World Champion, she beated some Chinese on her way to gold.
Hayata is on paper the Asia champ (no Chinese were there). Her record v Chinese players is more like 1-4 to 2-4 on average compared with 0-4 to 1-4 for Ishikawa... but I agree its a long way to winning...

Another thing of note, i've got a strong impression that Mima has changed her serves and has been experimenting a lot at this tournament (and National Championships). That could explain her loss.

Also, i'm surprised that during that final Hayata-Nagasaki, there were not many short serves, as if they both agreed to an open-rally match before hand.

Shine said:

Yeah i wonder what took miyu so long, She's already beaten ZYL at least twice, That's no mean feat

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Yes, she beat her the 1st time at the 2019 Japan Open where she turned 17 during the tournament and then the 2nd time at the 2019 Swedish Open. And to beat Zhu Yuling as you noted twice at such a young age is very impressive. She's also a former World Junior Champion. I think she just needs more opportunities to play internationally. She's still only 19, but it's her time to shine.

While JTTA tries to adopt a selection system completely avoiding World Rankings and WTT tournaments, it seems that China has gone the opposite direction and has fully embraced the new WR and WTT by incorporating it in the selection of Team China for the Asian Games.

China Table Tennis Association: The Singles Champions of the Singapore Smash will be the Singles Representatives of the 2022 Asian Games

In the Asian Games, which will be held from September 10-25, 2020, there are only two (2) singles spots per country. CTTA has raised the importance of the results of the Singapore Grand Smash tournament by announcing that the Singles Champions (Men's and Women's) of the Singapore Smash will also be one of the Singles Representatives of China in the 2022 Asian Games. The other singles representative will be the player with the highest world ranking as of Week 14 of the year 2022 (April 4-10, 2022).

There are also five (5) spots for the team event that will be selected as follows:

• Singapore Grand Smash tournament Singles Winner
• 3 players with the highest WR as of Week 14 of the year 2022 (April 4-10, 2022)
• Youth Accommodation: player born on or after January 1, 1999, who has the highest WR as of Week 14 of the year 2022 (April 4-10, 2022)
• If there are less than 5 male and female athletes selected according to the above three conditions, CTTA will select the remaining members at its discretion.

apacible said:

While JTTA tries to adopt a selection system completely avoiding World Rankings and WTT tournaments, it seems that China has gone the opposite direction and has fully embraced the new WR and WTT by incorporating it in the selection of Team China for the Asian Games.

China Table Tennis Association: The Singles Champions of the Singapore Smash will be the Singles Representatives of the 2022 Asian Games

In the Asian Games, which will be held from September 10-25, 2020, there are only two (2) singles spots per country. CTTA has raised the importance of the results of the Singapore Grand Smash tournament by announcing that the Singles Champions (Men's and Women's) of the Singapore Smash will also be one of the Singles Representatives of China in the 2022 Asian Games. The other singles representative will be the player with the highest world ranking as of Week 14 of the year 2022 (April 4-10, 2022).

There are also five (5) spots for the team event that will be selected as follows:

• Singapore Grand Smash tournament Singles Winner
• 3 players with the highest WR as of Week 14 of the year 2022 (April 4-10, 2022)
• Youth Accommodation: player born on or after January 1, 1999, who has the highest WR as of Week 14 of the year 2022 (April 4-10, 2022)
• If there are less than 5 male and female athletes selected according to the above three conditions, CTTA will select the remaining members at its discretion.

Doubles pairings will be selected by CTTA at its discretion.

To be fair though, the Chinese players with the highest WR (FZD, ML, LJK) and (SYS, CM, WMY, WYD), are probably the players CTTA would have shortlisted anyway to represent China had it stuck to the discretionary selection method it has been using in the past, so it's not really taking much risk by moving from an internal trials+discretionary selection method to a selection method based on WR and WTT tournament wins.

Since Week 14 WR will be used, the Singapore Smash and the Doha Hub Series of Tournaments will be the only tournaments left to gain WR points. The Singapore Smash and the Doha Star Contender will be the most anticipated ones as these are the two remaining tournaments that ALL Top Chinese players will play in.

The full announcement of the selection criteria adopted by CTTA for the Asian Games can be viewed here. You can opt to use google translate.

I just found it ironic that JTTA chose to move away from WR as selection criteria after using this as the selection criteria in the past Olympics while CTTA at the same time chooses selection criteria wholly based on WR and WTT events when it used to ignore WR in the past. Haha. 😂

As for Team Japan, JTTA has already announced its selection criteria for the Asian Games a while back. Harimoto and Hayata earned one of the singles spots by winning the LION Top 32 Cup (1st Road to Paris Domestic Selection Tournament) days ago. There will be an Asian Games domestic selection tournament from April 9-10, 2022 to determine the other Asian Games representatives (Harimoto and Hayata are exempt because they already qualified). The first placer of the tournament will get a singles and team spot while the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th placers will only get team spots. Doubles pairings will be selected by JTTA at its discretion.

While the Asian Games domestic selection tournament will not directly offer Paris selection points, this tournament is still very important because only those players who play singles in the Asian Games can earn Paris selection points. See the points table here and use google translate if needed. That means that only the 2 players who earned their singles spots can get up to an additional 20-40 points (if they defend their seeding) or even up to 60-80 points (if they upset the seeding) to the exclusion of the other Japanese players who couldn't even play singles. It could even be argued that it's more valuable in the Race to Paris to earn an Asian Games singles spot than a WTTC singles spot since up to 5 players get to play WTTC and earn Paris points while only 2 players can play Asian Games Singles.

I'll be closely watching how the respective representative races of Team China and Team Japan pan out and will be anticipating an exciting finish.

P.S. The link to the various selection criteria of Team Japan can be found here. Zeio has also posted it previously on this thread. Haven't seen or heard from Zeio in TTD for a while and it seems that he has been more active on mytabletennis.net in the past few months. I am sure that I'm not the only one who misses his insights on TTD, but you can always check his posts on mytabletennis.net in case you missed it. He has started threads on the 2022 All Japan Table Tennis Championships and on the recently concluded LION Top 32 Cup (1st Road to Paris Domestic Selection Tournament) and has shared some interesting articles to read if you're interested.

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the rules used to award points to the Paris race are quite curious... whoever did that doesn't have a math degree.

Takkyu_wa_inochi said:

to be honest,.
i'm not very convinced about Hayata in this tournament. ok she won , made great comebacks, but i expected from her total dominance.
so many mistakes and unforced errors. Thats very far from the level required to beat the Chinese. I'm quite disappointed with her.
Nagasaki ? well she wasn't expected. I've not seen her against Ito yet but no doubt it was a great win. In the final, Hayata wasn't doing very well, and she was a bit more consistent in the first 3 games. After that, i think its about nerves. She served in the net at 9-9 in game 6... and got match points in game7. but still a lot of mistakes in that final, far from the level required to beat the top Chinese players.

otoh, Harimoto had a great tournament. ok, we didn't see him pitted against Togami or Uda, but he got the better of Shinozuka which is a rising menace, (he's doing very well in T-League), and got his revenge match against Oikawa.

Click to expand...

apacible said:

While JTTA tries to adopt a selection system completely avoiding World Rankings and WTT tournaments, it seems that China has gone the opposite direction and has fully embraced the new WR and WTT by incorporating it in the selection of Team China for the Asian Games.

China Table Tennis Association: The Singles Champions of the Singapore Smash will be the Singles Representatives of the 2022 Asian Games

In the Asian Games, which will be held from September 10-25, 2020, there are only two (2) singles spots per country. CTTA has raised the importance of the results of the Singapore Grand Smash tournament by announcing that the Singles Champions (Men's and Women's) of the Singapore Smash will also be one of the Singles Representatives of China in the 2022 Asian Games. The other singles representative will be the player with the highest world ranking as of Week 14 of the year 2022 (April 4-10, 2022).

There are also five (5) spots for the team event that will be selected as follows:

• Singapore Grand Smash tournament Singles Winner
• 3 players with the highest WR as of Week 14 of the year 2022 (April 4-10, 2022)
• Youth Accommodation: player born on or after January 1, 1999, who has the highest WR as of Week 14 of the year 2022 (April 4-10, 2022)
• If there are less than 5 male and female athletes selected according to the above three conditions, CTTA will select the remaining members at its discretion.

Doubles pairings will be selected by CTTA at its discretion.

To be fair though, the Chinese players with the highest WR (FZD, ML, LJK) and (SYS, CM, WMY, WYD), are probably the players CTTA would have shortlisted anyway to represent China had it stuck to the discretionary selection method it has been using in the past, so it's not really taking much risk by moving from an internal trials+discretionary selection method to a selection method based on WR and WTT tournament wins.

Since Week 14 WR will be used, the Singapore Smash and the Doha Hub Series of Tournaments will be the only tournaments left to gain WR points. The Singapore Smash and the Doha Star Contender will be the most anticipated ones as these are the two remaining tournaments that ALL Top Chinese players will play in.

The full announcement of the selection criteria adopted by CTTA for the Asian Games can be viewed here. You can opt to use google translate.

I just found it ironic that JTTA chose to move away from WR as selection criteria after using this as the selection criteria in the past Olympics while CTTA at the same time chooses selection criteria wholly based on WR and WTT events when it used to ignore WR in the past. Haha. 😂

As for Team Japan, JTTA has already announced its selection criteria for the Asian Games a while back. Harimoto and Hayata earned one of the singles spots by winning the LION Top 32 Cup (1st Road to Paris Domestic Selection Tournament) days ago. There will be an Asian Games domestic selection tournament from April 9-10, 2022 to determine the other Asian Games representatives (Harimoto and Hayata are exempt because they already qualified). The first placer of the tournament will get a singles and team spot while the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th placers will only get team spots. Doubles pairings will be selected by JTTA at its discretion.

While the Asian Games domestic selection tournament will not directly offer Paris selection points, this tournament is still very important because only those players who play singles in the Asian Games can earn Paris selection points. See the points table here and use google translate if needed. That means that only the 2 players who earned their singles spots can get up to an additional 20-40 points (if they defend their seeding) or even up to 60-80 points (if they upset the seeding) to the exclusion of the other Japanese players who couldn't even play singles. It could even be argued that it's more valuable in the Race to Paris to earn an Asian Games singles spot than a WTTC singles spot since up to 5 players get to play WTTC and earn Paris points while only 2 players can play Asian Games Singles.

I'll be closely watching how the respective representative races of Team China and Team Japan pan out and will be anticipating an exciting finish.

P.S. The link to the various selection criteria of Team Japan can be found here. Zeio has also posted it previously on this thread. Haven't seen or heard from Zeio in TTD for a while and it seems that he has been more active on mytabletennis.net in the past few months. I am sure that I'm not the only one who misses his insights on TTD, but you can always check his posts on mytabletennis.net in case you missed it. He has started threads on the 2022 All Japan Table Tennis Championships and on the recently concluded LION Top 32 Cup (1st Road to Paris Domestic Selection Tournament) and has shared some interesting articles to read if you're interested.

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In my opinion, the fact that China sent so many players here and doesn't want to overdo internal trials is probably what explains the selection criteria for the Asian Championships. It gives the younger players something to play for while also likely establishing the old guard who have a weird ranking dynamic in play - the likelihood that it won't be Fan and Ma on men's side and Chen and Sun on women's side requires something special from Liang J and Wang C on the men's side and Wang M on the women's side.

Takkyu_wa_inochi said:

Miyazaki is a Junior World Champion, she beated some Chinese on her way to gold.
Hayata is on paper the Asia champ (no Chinese were there). Her record v Chinese players is more like 1-4 to 2-4 on average compared with 0-4 to 1-4 for Ishikawa... but I agree its a long way to winning...

Another thing of note, i've got a strong impression that Mima has changed her serves and has been experimenting a lot at this tournament (and National Championships). That could explain her loss.

Also, i'm surprised that during that final Hayata-Nagasaki, there were not many short serves, as if they both agreed to an open-rally match before hand.

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Oh, I know Nagasaki is former WJTTC champion, from my memory, the year she played, none of those girls are on the national team for China now as (potential) key players and I think Ojio Haruna actually eliminated more key players with her chopping and pips. I do wish the best for Japan and will root for them but I just find it a bit weird to devalue someone's growth through struggle with comments about what it takes to beat China.

I don't think short serves are not what they used to be, and they have never been a big deal on the women's side.

Tempest/Comet said:

Re: Asian Champ Qualification Hayata has already garnered a spot with her Top32 win, that’s why she was exempted. The second spot now goes to Hirano.
edit oops I meant Asian Games

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ah ok it makes sense. HARIMOTO won the TOP32 event on the Men's side.