In the early morning of May 18th, Beijing time, the table tennis WTT Cappadocia branch tournament came to an end, in the absence of all the national table tennis and most of the masters of foreign associations did not participate, the Japanese team won 3 championships and 1 runner-up became the biggest winner, and Indian and Chinese Taipei players each won 1 championship, and the final results are as follows-
- Women: Hitomi Sato (Japan), Satsuki Ofuji (Japan);
- Men's Singles: Champion Yutai Tanaka (Japan), runner-up Kojik (Croatia);
- Women's Doubles: champions Hitomi Sato/Hashimoto Honoka (Japan), runners-up Baithea/Roy (India);
- Men's Doubles: Champions Huang Yancheng/Feng Yixin (Chinese Taipei), runners-up Dole/Burrasso (France);
- Mixed Doubles: Champion Parr/Baisia (India), runners-up A. Ghosh/S Ghosh (India).
Because of the low level of this feeder tournament and the time stuck between the higher-level WTT Saudi Grand Slam and the WTT Taiyuan and Rio regular seasons, most of the famous players are not interested, but Japan, South Korea, Chinese Taipei, India and other teams still sent some high-level athletes to participate in the competition, and they naturally became the focus of everyone's attention.
In the doubles, the competition was not very fierce, and the teams did not actively sign up, but in the end, Japan's "doubles" pair Hitomi Sato/Hashimoto Hashimoto Honoka won the women's doubles, Chinese Taipei's Huang Yancheng/Feng Yixin won the men's doubles, and India's Parr/Baisia mixed doubles won the title.
Relatively speaking, the singles competition is more interesting, Japan's former main player Hitomi Sato played bravely, first defeated India's first sister Batra 3-1 (the person who eliminated Wang Manyu at the WTT Saudi Grand Slam not long ago), and then swept teammates Hashimoto Honoka and Satsuki Oto 3-0 in a row, and finally won the women's singles championship, worthy of the athlete who has won the national table tennis Grand Slam Ding Ning twice.
However, even though Hitomi Sato is only 27 years old now, he has already been squeezed out of the top five lineup by the "back waves" in the team, and he can only be regarded as a second-tier player in Japan at present, which shows how fierce the competition in the table tennis world of the island country is.
In men's singles, Yutai Tanaka, who defeated Wang Chuqin at the Asian Championships last year, successfully passed, defeated South Korea's World Table Tennis Third Runner-up Ahn Jae-hyun 3-1 in the semifinals, and defeated Croatia's dark horse player Kojik 3-2 in the final, thus becoming the final winner.
In terms of overall performance, Japan's men's singles two advanced to the semifinals (Tanaka Yutai and Shinozuka Daito), the women's singles trio reached the semifinals (Hitomi Sato, Satsuki Oto, Hashimoto Honoka Hashimoto), and the women's doubles also successfully reached the top.
Next, on May 20th, there will be two WTT regular season competitions, and I look forward to the national table tennis athletes achieving good results in Taiyuan!