Mattias FALCK of Sweden reached the first-ever World Table Tennis semifinals of WTT Macao after fantastic win over XU Xin. The World’s no 2 stumbled in four games (11-7 11-10 2-11 11-8). It is FALCK first ever win over XU.
China’s Xu had the pick of the lot as the top seed after Top 4 Seed Battles had been concluded and he chose FALCK to be his quarter-final opponent. That seems to have been a decision which costed him as the Swede was simply in stunning form winning the first two games to establish control.
Despite Xu’s win in the third the day belonged to FALCK who – having previously lost times to the Chinese (2010 2015 2017 & 2019) – managed to become the third European to claim victory over XU. Most recently XU has lost out to Simon GAUZY at the 2019 ITTF World Championships and also against Liam PITCHFORD a few months ago at the 2020 ITTF World Tour Platinum Qatar Open.