OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I just watched it live on TV a few hours ago. I won't say who won (Ovtcharov vs. Mizutani) but it was a real nail-biter, went to six games, and several games went multi-deuce. Checked ITTF, it's already on the web site.

http://www.ittf.com/ittv/

Just curious, though - scanning through the earlier rounds. NO Chinese men entered (and I suspect no women either). Why does this sometimes happen? At the Swedish Open, just one event back, both mens' and womens' finals had two Chinese players each. Weird. I suspect it's deliberate, and might be "to give everyone else a chance to win something".

Iskandar

They couldn't participate ecause they didn't play enough Worold Tou events. This was, however, probably deliberate.

It does make me wonder - who decides who goes and who does not? Are entries individual, or do you need the permission of your country's TTA to attend? Who pays for the entry and all the logistics (hotel, food, etc.)? (Probably varies from country to country..) Can anyone other than the top few make money attending these tournaments, or is it a huge money sink? The Japanese usually send a big contigent, the Chinese a small one or not at all, other countries are variable, host nations (and nations nearby) do have big contigents (as you'd expect). Does the JTTA have a lot of money and the CTTA little? If the CTTA had a lot of money, wouldn't they send at least some up-and-coming juniors to give them experience, if the A Team were busy elsewhere? Are there limited slots? (Typical World Tour event will have 80-150 entrants, if you look at the entry lists).

World Tour home page:

http://www.ittf.com/competitions/compet ... ategory=pt

There seem to be three categories of tournament: Challenge, Major and Super.

Chinese Open list of entrants:

http://portal.ittf.com/ittf_tournaments ... r_ID=2443&

Interesting to note there were more South Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese or Hong Kongers entered than Chinese.

Iskandar

I don't know the answer to the rest of your questions, but it's the country's TTA that decides who goes and who not. At least that's the case for China.