On the afternoon of March 19, Beijing time, the table tennis WTT Doha regular season once again broke out of the cold, the national table tennis star Zhou Qihao in the qualifiers "one round" out, after a hard battle of 5 sets lost to the 21-year-old, world ranking 133 direct shooting young player Xu Haidong. Before that, Zhou Qihao also lost to 21-year-old Xu Yingbin at the Doha Regional Championship, and it is hard to imagine that this is the athlete who defeated Ma Long, Fan Zhendong, Liang Jingkun and Wang Chuqin last year and was selected into the five main squads of the men's singles of the World Table Tennis Championships!
Born in 1997, Zhou Qihao is a player who has risen very fast in the national table tennis men's team in recent years, although he has only ranked 99th in the world so far, but as mentioned before, this athlete has defeated a number of national table tennis world champions, in addition to the just mentioned Ma Long, Fan Zhendong, Liang Jingkun, Wang Chuqin, Zhou Qihao also won Xu Xin in the 2020 direct competition, almost winning the main players over and over again, so the coaching team will promote him to the men's singles main squad of the Houston World Table Tennis Championships.
However, what is disappointing is that Zhou Qihao's achievements in international competitions are unbearable, his foreign war can be described as a layman in the civil war, and he has lost to foreign association athletes many times, not to mention, the recent confrontation with his teammates is also a defeat, the Doha branch game is 7 innings of defeat to Xu Yingbin, this time the Doha regular season encountered another teammate Xu Haidong also planted his head.
Compared with Xu Yingbin, Xu Haidong is actually inferior in both playing style and technical tactics, but Zhou Qihao still did not win this game: after the game began, Zhou Qihao lost two consecutive sets 10-12, 6-11, and then equalized 11-7, 11-6. However, the decisive battle Zhou Qihao collapsed again, and even the key points were not hit to lose 8-11, and only one game was played to end the men's singles tour, which was really miserable!
I have to say that Zhou Qihao's current position in the team has been very embarrassing, it seems that he is the main force of the World Table Tennis Championships, but other aspects have not kept up at all, and the front Fan Zhendong, Liang Jingkun, Wang Chuqin, Lin Gaoyuan is far away, if it were not for Ma Long, Xu Xin last year took the initiative to give up the competition, Zhou Qihao is difficult to go straight to Houston to succeed.
Now that March has just arrived, Zhou Qihao has played two races, the first time is to escort to participate in the main competition, the result is stopped in the round of 16; the second time there is no guarantee, the result is that the qualification match is not qualified, and it is eliminated in the first round, which is indeed difficult to satisfy. So will the 2022 Asian Games and World Table Tennis Championships still have his name? Will Liu Guoliang and the coaching staff still give him a chance? Everything can only be left to time to test.