At the 2021 Houston World Table Tennis Championships, the first women's singles semifinal, Tokyo Olympic women's singles champion Chen Meng led 2-0, and finally was eliminated by teammate Wang Manyu 3-4, without the opportunity to break Zhang Jike's fastest "Grand Slam" record in 445 days.
In the first two sets of the game, Chen Meng entered the state faster and soon took a 2-0 lead. Subsequently, Wang Manyu stepped up the aggressiveness of the forehand and pulled the score to a 2-2 draw. In the fifth set, Wang Manyu once led 10-8 to take the lead to get the match point, but Chen Meng shot more decisively, winning with a big score of 13-11, leading 3-2. In the sixth set, Wang Manyu strengthened the change of line and won another set. In the decisive moment, Chen Meng made a series of mistakes, and finally lost 8-11! Chen Meng saw that he had lost his "Grand Slam" and blackened his face!
The match also broke the rumors that the Chinese National Table Tennis Association guaranteed Chen Meng to take the Grand Slam. There was a saying on the Internet before that Ding Ning has been getting a Grand Slam for 5 years, and now with her retirement, the national table tennis urgently needs to cultivate a new Grand Slam, so it will definitely let Chen Meng win the championship. But in fact, Wang Manyu, who has been in a state of explosion in the past year, did not give Chen Meng a chance, breaking the rumor that the national table tennis played "human love and sophistication ball"!
The reason why Chen Meng did not achieve victory was in the words of the Great Demon King Deng Yaping: "Wang Manyu's play is very stable, and Chen Meng's unnecessary mistakes are too many!" "And the difference in the performance of the two sides is related to the aura, pressure resistance, and strain level of the two sides." Deng Yaping also comforted Chen Meng: "It doesn't matter, there is the next World Table Tennis Championships!" ”
Liu Shiwen only won the Women's Singles Championship of the World Table Tennis Championships when she was 28 years old, for Chen Meng, who is already 27 years old this year, it is nothing to win the championship in the next World Table Tennis Championships, but it is far from winning the championship in this World Table Tennis Championships to prove herself, after all, the young teachers and sisters behind Chen Meng will not stay where they are waiting for her.
Since Wang Manyu came on as a substitute for Liu Shiwen at the Tokyo Olympics, she not only won the women's singles championship at the Shaanxi National Games, but now defeated Chen Meng to enter the women's singles final of the World Table Tennis Championships.