T2 Diamond 2019 Singapore
German player Patrick FRANZISKA reached T2 Diamond quarter-finals as he beat Korea’s LEE Sangsu 4:1 (11:2 11:10 11:10 4:11 5:3) in the opening day of the event hosted by Our Tampines Hub in Singapore.
Men’s Singles no.1 seed XU Xin progressed among the best eight after victory over Hong Kong’s WONG Chun Ting who was forced to withdraw after two games due to injury. Japan’s Tomokazu HARIMOTO overcame host CHEW We current world no.276 4:1 (11:6 7:11 11:5 11:10 5:2).
Tomorrow November 22nd another two European players will play their Round of 16 matches: Dimitrij OVTCHAROV (Germany) vs. Jun MIZUTANI (Japan) 15:15 CET and LIN Gaoyuan (no.2 seed China) vs. Mattias FALCK (Sweden) 06:00 CET. FRANZISKA’s next opponent is going to be the winner between no. 3 seed LIN Yun-Ju (Chinese Taipei) and JANG Woojin (Korea).
Four Women’s Singles encounters took place in the opening day: CHEN Xingtong (China) – YU Mengyu (Singapore) 4:2 ZHU Yuling (China) – WANG Manyu (China) 3:4 Mima ITO (Japan) – Kasumi ISHIKAWA (Japan) 4:1 Hitomi SATO (Japan) – WANG Yidi (China) 4:1.
T2 Diamond Table Tennis League is organised in collaboration with the ITTF. As a core tenet of ITTF innovation lab T2 Diamond functions as a testing bed for new rules and formats of table tennis assess their impact on the game and to prime them for wider usage within the ITTF circuit. Collectively the 32 participating players are awarded 16 600 bonus ITTF World Ranking points – a significant boost as they battle their way to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic qualification – and USD 500 000 in prize money.
