Japan Women's Race to Tokyo 2020 Singles

Post-Qatar Open Olympic Seeding Implications

With the Qatar Open possibly being the last World Tour Regular or Platinum event before the Olympics due to the Corona Virus Scare, this might have been everyone's last chance to gain significant WR points for Olympic seeding.

Mixed Doubles


Japan was a huge winner in the Qatar Open in terms of Mixed Doubles as they pretty much secured the 2nd seed in the Olympics, so they won't face China until the final. Of course, some luck played a part. Xu/Liu withdrew, which gave Mizutani/Ito a better chance of winning. At the same time, their main rival for the 2nd seed in Wong/Doo unluckily drew WCQ/SYS in the first round, which prevented them from capitalizing from any possible WR point gain in the absence of the Xu/Liu pair. The Hong Kong pair needs to win at least 2 of the next 3 World Tour events left before the Olympics in order to overtake the Japanese pair, but with the looming cancellations due to the Corona virus and with strong Chinese and Japanese opposition waiting should these tournaments push through, it's a tough road ahead for Hong Kong in securing the 2nd seed.

Women's Singles (See post #1635 by Zeio for the full table)
Despite falling short in the final of the Women's Singles event, Ito had a great tournament as winning 3 of her 4 matches against Chinese opponents (I'm including the XD final here) is no easy task. It's funny how less than a year ago, there was a legitimate concern that Ito wouldn't be one of the top 2 highest WR women in Japan and would miss the singles event due to her absence from last year's World Cup and an unlucky WTTC 2019 draw. Now, she'll be WR #2 come April and may even have a chance at WR #1 if she wins Olympic Gold (This will largely depend on if the CNT chooses Chen Meng to play Olympic singles as CM will likely have enough WR points to keep her WR #1 status even if she wins Olympic Silver or Bronze as compared to if she misses the singles event completely)

Speaking of CNT Olympic Selection, with Ito taking WR#2, there's no more incentive for the CTTA to take the two highest WR Chinese players to guarantee the Chinese players are drawn in different halves. Will Ito remain WR #2 come Olympic Time? Most likely. Even if Ito skips all the tournaments until the WTTTC in July, she'll only lose 30 WR points since most of Ito's best performances came from the Swedish Open 2019 onwards. Ito is already ahead of SYS in WR while SYS still faces more WR points deductions since her Japan Open Champion result of 2250 WR points will expire come the Olympics. LSW, DN and WMY will also face WR point deductions and they're already quite far behind Ito. Is this a product of Ito's progression or is the conspiracy theory Janard suggested in post # 1625 of this thread coming into play? Whatever the case, at least the CTTA can freely choose who it believes will best win China the Gold without having to worry about Olympic seeding or potential backlash for not taking seeding into consideration.

The FTW, CIC, and Ishikawa Race for 4th seed
Despite being the lowest ranked among the 3 today, Ishikawa is the favorite to get the 4th seed because NONE of her top 8 results will expire come Olympic time. In my opinion, between FTW and CIC, FTW has the best chance of overtaking Ishikawa since she won't incur as many deductions in WR. Furthermore, she only earned 1750 WR points in the 2018 WTTTC, which is really an anomaly since she could have gotten more WR points had Singapore not been upset by Ukraine in the R16. If Singapore can do better and enter at least the last 8 in the July WTTTC, FTW can rack up a lot of points as she'll likely be depended on to win 2 singles matches of every team match. There was a time her WR was so high since she racked up 11 match wins and 2750 WR points from the 2016 WTTTC. That's almost as many WR points awarded to the WTTC/Olympic Champion and Singapore only reached the QF that year! CIC will face more deductions than FTW and has a hefty 2250 WR points from the 2018 WTTTC to defend, so she has a tougher road to the 4th seed. In the end, I'm sure Ishikawa is grateful to Ito for taking out CIC and FTW from the Hungarian and Qatar Opens respectively, and she showed her gratitude by cheering her heart out for Ito and Mizutani in the Mixed Doubles Final and was genuinely happy for them when they finally won.

zeio said:

Mizutani: Thanks to Ito's serves, taking G1 was a cinch...WCQ had a hard time receiving Ito's serves...

Click to expand...

While watching the match live, I was quite shocked at the number of receive errors by WCQ against Ito's serve. It definitely played a big role in helping Japan secure games 1 and 3.

Some shocking statistics from that match:
In Game 1, Ito served to WCQ 5 times. Of those 5 times, WCQ missed on the receive 4 times while the other receive was a good short push that won the Chinese pair the point.

In Game 3, Ito served to WCQ 3 times. Of those 3 times, WCQ missed on the receive 1 time while the other two receives were bad and led to two 3rd-ball kills by Mizutani.

To be fair to WCQ, this is his first time playing against Ito, so he was not yet accustomed to her serves. Additionally, in doubles, you see the opponent's serve less as compared to in singles play because there are an additional two other players who have to take their turns in serving, so it's more difficult to adjust to a particular player on the opposing pair's serve. Finally, the order of play changes every game, so you can only see a particular player on the opposing pair's serve every other game.

Still, it makes me wonder what could have been had it been Ito in the Youth Olympic Games facing the WCQ/SYS pair instead of Hirano. Then again, Ito's service game at that time wasn't as advanced as today, so maybe the results wouldn't have changed. Besides, Ito's 2018 Swedish Open breakthrough was also a result of Ito missing the Youth Olympic Games and having an extended break from competition to work on her game. Ito's current level may not have been possible had she been chosen to participate in the YOG and forced to forego the additional training to help her reach her current level.