OOAK Table Tennis Forum

It's on again. At one stage billed as the Australian Commonwealth Games male & female teams take on teams from China, Korea and Japan. I don't think William Henzell is taking part. I think that all Australian players are currently ranked in the Australian top 10. The Chinese team is from the winner of the Chinese Super League.

Yours truly will be umpiring. It is on Friday night, Saturday afternoon (free) and Saturday evening in Ryde, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

http://tabletennis.org.au/Competition/Hyundai-Bennelong-Cup

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Retriever (sometimes golden, but often leaden)
Moderator, Inverted Retriever Technique sub-forum - http://ooakforum.com/viewforum.php?f=74

Well, surprise, surprise, we only had 2 umpires for the whole thing (me a state level umpire and an international umpire), except for the Saturday afternoon session when there was only me. Pretty poor if you ask me, however they schedule it when the Australian Vets is on.

The format was modified Hopman Cup: mens singles, womens singles, mixed doubles, mens singles, womens singles. Best of 5 games. Two tables per session. Teams match finished when one team had won 3 rubbers.

Friday night I umpired Japan v Korea. Korea won pretty easily. The Korean woman played with long pimples on her backhand. She was able to block loops to almost double bounce, but also attacked with the pimples. Meanwhile on the other table, Australia v China. Australia won, which the Chinese were not happy about.

Saturday afternoon, on account of heat was allowed to umpire without tie & coat by the referee. I was asked to umpire Australia v Japan, while one of the NSW juniors was asked to umpire China v Korea. China I think beat Korea 3-0, 3-0, 3-0. Australia beat Japan but took a little longer.

This left Australia leading the tournament with one round to go. The referee thought that Australia may have been able to win the tournament if they got 2 rubbers in the final round against Korea.

Saturday evening, and again I was asked to umpire the Australian match against Korea, while the other umpire did China v Japan. China defeated Japan fairly easily. Australia lost the 1st 2 singles matches (Heming Hu & Miao Miaio) and I think were down in the mixed doubles (Miao Miao & Kane Townsend). They ended up winning that one & Kane then won his singles I think 3-1. That left it down to the womens singles - Fiona Zhu. Well it went to 2-2 in games. Then it went to 10-10 in points in the 5th game. It see-sawed for a few points, but ultimately the Korean woman (penhold, rubber on only one side) won and Korea got the Teams match.

The result was a tie between Australia, China & Korea in match points and wins. However it was China 1st and Australia as runner up in the final result. This is the best Australia has done in the 4 years that the cup has been running.

I must point out that the Australian team was a near rep team while the other international teams were effectively club or school teams from the respective countries.

One of the local table tennis organizers is talking of piggy backing a singles tournament on to the Bennelong Cup, in a similar way to how the Mounties tournament is piggy backed on to the Australian Open here in Sydney.

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Retriever (sometimes golden, but often leaden)
Moderator, Inverted Retriever Technique sub-forum - http://ooakforum.com/viewforum.php?f=74

Just remembered, I saw jevansau there, for the 1st time in a year. Like me, he is not playing comp at the moment. Unlike me he is playing only socially.

_________________
Retriever (sometimes golden, but often leaden)
Moderator, Inverted Retriever Technique sub-forum - http://ooakforum.com/viewforum.php?f=74