WTT Finals Men Doha 2023

[NextLevel]

It seems to me that Occam's razor is at work here. If Fan looked and played worse than usual, then he was simply out of shape.

Their loss in doubles and the way they accepted it as matter of fact was telling.

 

[blahness]

Smart

Unethical, but can't fault a player for bending the rules a bit.

It's not just WCQ but Ito also borderline hides the serve with her head with her serves which fooled everyone in the beginning.

Imo its the umpires who are at fault here. FZD and other players can also train up more head hidden serves to fight fire with fire until WTT comes in to clean up the mess.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

View attachment 27988

This is funny

ITTF/WTT should have one of those "guess where the ball is" post on social media

Everyone talks about WCQ both on and off the table, and the officials pretend everything is fine.
WCQ hiding the ball with his head is probably one of the worse I have seen from CNT over the past 1 to 2 decades

 

[zeio]

But this FZD definitely seems like a kinda overworked FZD. He doesn't seem to care about this title as much as he does for the Olympics, but he should be very wary about giving confidence to WCQ at this point.

I have a feeling that FZD is keeping most of his weapons up his sleeve to be unleashed closer to the Olympics and is intentionally holding back some stuff as a surprise (kinda like how Ma Long does it). FFS he was trying chopblocks and even a sideunderspin loop in the 4th set. Whereas WCQ is desperate for any wins (to justify his inclusion in the Olympics over Ma Long, as WCQ doesnt have a WTTC title) and is going 120% in every match he plays and using up all of his best weapons (for eg his hook serve)

Some folks on PTT are saying the same thing after that final. Some folks on Tieba also feel the same about FZD but most are focusing on WCQ's hidden serve.

https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/tabletennis/M.1703950823.A.19E.html

 

[zeio]

LGY/LSD after SF
https://weibo.com/7556183438/NAsEbzqoH

Yuan Licen/XP after SF and F
https://weibo.com/7556183438/NAt70g1dC
https://weibo.com/7556183438/NAudg9qZj

WCQ after F
https://weibo.com/7556183438/NAuPKbZ8C

 

[Choosikick]

I found information somewhere that WCQ plays H8 on the backhand. I wonder if this is true?

 

[zeio]

Harimoto looked competitive with WCQ, at least in the first two games. Whatever he was doing didn't allow WCQ to break out the heavy artillery or get in a groove (until Game 3 at least) and WCQ to make a lot more unforced errors than in any other match. It was an ugly match all around, but was promising for Harimoto to be able to force that sort of dynamic. A few key balls going his way and he could've been up the first 2 games. The quality of WCQ's play would've eventually shown through for the vast majority of circumstances though.

You could hear the unease in FB and Fang Yinchi even in G3 (at 12:28 of the douyin video). He also made note of Harimoto's FH issue when dealing with jamming shots, not moving his feet which Harimoto knew about in 2019 and alleviated (not eliminated) in 2022.

https://v.douyin.com/iLJc6UuD