On January 5, Beijing time, the schedule of table tennis "WTT Macau Champions 2021 China Star" was officially announced: the competition time was From January 19 to 23, there was no men's doubles and women's doubles, only three individual events of the Olympic Games (men's singles, women's singles, mixed doubles), 22 days mixed doubles finals, 23 days singles finals.
According to the news previously released, the main force of national table tennis in this competition is almost all out, including veterans Ma Long, Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen, who have faded out of the line for many hours, while Japanese experts such as Zhang Benzhihe and Ito Mimachi will most likely not join, so this Macao match is expected to stage a world championship mix within the national table tennis.
As early as 2020, Macau, China, hosted the first WTT tournament, which cited many special formats, especially the final nine sets and five wins. Compared with the previous competition, the 2022 WTT Macau Competition has added a mixed doubles event, which is closer to the Olympic Games.
However, due to prevention and control and time arrangement reasons, this time is mainly for Chinese athletes, so the point of view will be relatively small, but the joining of Ma Long, Xu Xin, Liu Shiwen is exciting, after all, the three of them have not participated in the game since the end of the National Games last year, and even the news of retiring, so fans and friends are looking forward to seeing them return to the field as soon as possible.
It is reported that the WTT Macau Competition will be held in the round of 16 of the three major events from January 19 to 20, and the round of 8 on January 21. On January 22, the semi-finals and finals of mixed doubles will be prioritized, and the singles will continue to be played in the quarterfinals. On the last day (January 23), the singles semi-finals and finals officially started, and the competition will also come to an end on this day.
However, combined with previous news reports, there will be 32 men and 32 women in singles, so there may be singles 1/16 finals in the first two days, as for how to arrange it, we have to wait for the latest news.
What makes fans and friends curious is that if the mixed doubles are to be combined with 16 pairs, it is obvious that the main force of national table tennis alone cannot be made up, so which athletes will join? Since the Japanese National Championship will be held on January 24, it is highly likely that Japanese players such as Zhang Benzhihe and Ito Mimachi will not come to play the Macau Tournament, and who will give the remaining places?
At present, the known non-national table tennis players are Hong Kong, Macau, Du Kaixuan, He Junjie, Zhang Zicheng, Zhang Zijun, Li Jie from the Netherlands, li Qian from Poland, but this is far from enough, so let's sit together and wait for the full list of participants to be released!