February World Rankings 2013

[Steven]

The ITTF have released the latest World rankings! The rankings were published by the International Table Tennis Federation on Monday 2nd February 2013.

--- The order of the top 3 changes yet again!---

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Ma Long, Xu Xin and Zhang Jike - Top 3 of the World. Image from qq.com

Although it is certain that the current top 3 are the best of the world, the order of the three is still one big question mark. Recently however, World and Olympic Champion Zhang Jike lost a match against an outsider at the first major tournament (more about this later..). World Cup winner Ma Long, who recently led his team Ningbo Haitian to the Chinese Superleague championship, grabs his chance to pass him and retrieves the 2nd spot. Grand Finals winner Xu Xin remains at the top, but at little distance.

The major tournaments and also the opening of the 2013 World Tour series were the Spanish Open in Almeria and the Austrian Open in Wels!

Cazuo Matsumoto and Fang Bo, Spanish/Austrian Open 2013 Winners - Photos by ittf.com and ping-pong.cz

Many upsets have occurred in Almeria last month. Top seed He Zhi Wen (66->74) was beaten by his Spanish teammate Marc Duran (196->168) in the 2nd round. 2nd seed Jean-Michel Saive (103->86) even lost a round earlier to the promising French Alexandre Robinot (395->265), who got even further than his brother.
One man managed to survive it all; Brazil's Cazuo Matsumoto took his first World Tour title in Spain which earns him the 84th place.
The Women's matches were more consistent with Hongkong's Jiang Huajun winning the title and 4 places on the ranking (21->17).

In Austria it was all about the Chinese young guns due to the absence of Ma Long and Xu Xin, but also because of the early exit by Zhang Jike; After a tight match against Japan's Maharu Yoshimura (119->99), it was Taku Takakiwa who finished the fight. Altough Taku lost his next match, he jumps 16 places and reaches the top 30 for the first time in his career. What remained was a fight between the young guns Fang Bo and Zhou Yu, and the older but still amazingly consistent Chuang Chih-Yuan. Chuang first eliminated Zhou Yu (52->37) but fell in the final against the champion Fang Bo. This gave Fang Bo a big boost of 50 places which results in the 24th place.
The Womens' event ended in a final between the two top seeds, Ding Ning and Li Xiaoxia. Unfortunately the latter had to give up during the final because of an injury.

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Other interesting changes:
37 (52) Zhou Yu
72 (100) Par Gerell

79 (275) Li Fen ^
103 (142) Shiho Matsudaira
152 (354) Zhu Chaohui


Men's World Rankings

01 (<<) Xu Xin
02 (03) Ma Long
03 (02) Zhang Jike
04 (<<) Wang Hao
05 (<<) Timo Boll
06 (07) Chuang Chih-Yuan
07 (06) Ma Lin
08 (10) Jun Mizutani
09 (08) Dmitrij Ovtcharov
10 (09) Wang Liqin
11 (12) Vladimir Samsonov
12 (11) Joo Se Hyuk
13 (<<) Hao Shuai
14 (<<) Jiang Tianyi
15 (16) Oh Sang Eun
16 (15) Gao Ning
17 (<<) Chen Qi
18 (19) Michael Maze
19 (18) Adrian Crisan
19 (20) Ryu Seung Min
21 (<<) Lee Jung Woo
21 (22) Koki Niwa
23 (<<) Zhan Jian ^
24 (74) Fang Bo
25 (27) Marcos Freitas
26 (24) Chen Weixing
27 (25) Bastian Steger
28 (26) Seiya Kishikawa
29 (45) Taku Takakiwa
30 (32) Chan Kazuhiro
31 (28) Adrien Mattenet
32 (38) Tan Ruiwu

Take a look at the full World Rankings here.

Women's World Rankings

01 (<<) Ding Ning
02 (<<) Liu Shiwen
03 (<<) Li Xiaoxia
04 (<<) Guo Yan
05 (<<) Kim Kyung Ah
06 (<<) Feng Tianwei
07 (08) Shen Yanfei
08 (07) Ai Fukuhara
09 (08) Kasumi Ishikawa
10 (<<) Chen Meng
11 (<<) Wu Yang
12 (13) Feng Yalan
13 (12) Guo Yue
14 (15) Viktoria Pavlovich
15 (16) Tie Yana
16 (17) Wang Yuegu

Take a look at the full World Rankings here.


So, will February's top 3 shift again soon? Could Fang Bo or Zhou Yu reach the top 3 in the future as well? Discuss!

 

[T!Christian]

What about Fang Bo from 74 to 24?

 

[Der_Echte]

He waz under-rated due to lack of international matches. The cat is already out of the bag...

Same thing with North Korea and the Olympics.

 

[TableTennisDaily]

Fang Bo's jump is incredible! 50 places! He can only go up i think... Give it a few years and Fang Bo, Yan An and Zhou Yu will all be inside the top 10 if they get the chance to play more Internationals. I think we are going to see more Chinese players inside the top 15 very soon that's for sure.

Fantastic update Steven, thanks