On November 2, Beijing time, the table tennis WTT Slovenia Challenge broke out a super cold door: Zhou Qihao, a national table tennis player and a singles player in the World Table Tennis Championships, fought hard for 5 rounds, and was eliminated by the Belgian youngster Olaf, who was only 19 years old and ranked 385 in the world, and stopped the second round of the qualification round - and because he actually played only 1 game in a singles, it was a veritable "round trip" out!
As a famous player who defeated the three world champions Ma Long, Fan Zhendong and Liang Jingkun in the pass-through race this year, Zhou Qihao's performance is really worrying although the civil war is very good, but the foreign war is so bad! In this regard, many fans have asked: can he really take on the responsibility of the World Table Tennis Championships in November?
See below for details.
Zhou Qihao is a table tennis player who is very familiar to everyone, and he is also the big dark horse of the Chinese table tennis scene last year and this year - the 2020 team direct competition, he won 2 Olympic champions Xu Xin and Ma Long to advance to the final; in the 2021 team direct competition, he won 3 consecutive world champions Ma Long, Fan Zhendong and Liang Jingkun to win 1 crown, and his strength was very good.
It is precisely because of such a brilliant performance, so although Zhou Qihao did not succeed in the end, he still won a valuable singles ticket to the World Table Tennis Championships, and compared with him, the Belgian young player with only 385 places in the world ranking is really not famous, so today's battle seems to be no suspense, but the actual situation is greatly unexpected.
After the game began, Zhou Qihao quickly showed his strong forehand arc ball strength, repeatedly breaking through Olaf's defense line, but the young player on the opposite side was not afraid of the field, and played more calmly in the face of strong enemies, making full use of his height and arm length, arc circle ball momentum and left-handed line advantage to chase points, and the result was to win the first set with a 13-11 reversal.
In the second game, Zhou Qihao learned his lesson and directly competed with Olaf to play a long ball, and then pulled back a city at 11-7, and the two sides returned to the same running line. However, after the start of the third set, Olaf once again occupied the initiative on the field, came up to take a 6-1 lead, then won the set point 10-5, 11-8 and then went down, and the big score of 2-1 led forced the opponent into a desperate situation.
In the fourth set, Zhou Qihao fought back and finally won 11-4, and the game was successfully dragged into the decider. In the fifth set, both sides had no way back, and as a result, Zhou Qihao was reversed by his opponent shortly after taking the lead, until he was still behind 8-9, although he saved a few match points later, he still lost the whole game with a score of 14-16, which was really miserable!
I have to say that Zhou Qihao made a lot of mistakes in this competition, played more restrained, always wanted to control the other side in the near station, but he could not control it, the psychological pressure was too great, and the result was that the other party took the lead, so the performance was a world away from his play in the team, and it was indeed necessary to reflect and summarize well to avoid the situation of "civil war insiders and foreign war outsiders".
I look forward to Zhou Qihao's later play to be more stable and prepare for the World Table Tennis Championships: Come on!