Chilled! National table tennis dark horse Zhou Qihao WTT Challenge singles debut 2-3 round trip, stopping the qualifiers

At 16:30 Beijing time on November 2, the second round of the men's singles qualification tournament of the WTT Slovenia Challenge, national table tennis player Zhou Qihao faced Belgian Kosorrowski. A total of 7 players were sent in this competition, including Lin Gaoyuan, Liang Jingkun, Wang Chuqin, Zhou Qihao, Liu Dingshuo, Wang Yidi and Liu Weishan. Among the 7 contestants, 5 will participate in the 2021 Houston World Table Tennis Championships, which will play a role in substitute training.

In the first set, Zhou Qihao was slightly passive in the face of this strange opponent with his left hand, losing the first set at 11-13; in the second set, Zhou Qihao controlled the situation on the field, taking a 4-0 lead, in the game, Zhou Qihao was chased by the opponent continuously in the case of 9-3 lead, fortunately, Zhou Qihao finally won back a set at 11-7; in the third set, Zhou Qihao lost 4 points in the opening game, and Kossolovsky led the score 6-1 with a serve rush. Zhou Qihao fell into passivity, once 2-9 behind, although trying to chase points, but finally lost another set 7-11. In the fourth set, Zhou Qihao gave full play to his forehand offensive advantage, maintaining the score advantage 9-3 and equalizing the big score 11-4. In the decider, Zhou Qihao started actively and maintained a 4-1 lead. But the Belgian players did not give up at all, fighting the whole game, chasing the score to 4-5 and winning the score 7-6. After that, the score of the two sides rose to 9 draws, and finally Zhou Qihao stopped the qualifiers at 14-16, and suffered a round of travel.

Zhou Qihao is widely known by fans for defeating Ma Long and Fan Zhendong to win the first men's singles championship in the first direct match of national table tennis in May this year, but he is also frequently evaluated by fans as "power outage" due to the large fluctuations in the state in the game. From 2018 to 2019, Zhou Qihao went out 13 times and lost to foreign association players 11 times, which also became a major obstacle to his promotion to the main level. However, the national table tennis coaching staff does not want to give up this young player with strong technical and tactical strength, and this World Table Tennis Championships still gives Zhou Qihao the opportunity to participate in singles, hoping that Zhou Qihao, as a dark horse, can overcome psychological problems and prove himself with more excellent results.