by Wade Townsend
The Japanese crowd celebrated this morning as Jin Ueda defeated Chinese Taipei’s Chuang Chih-Yuan (11-9, 7-11, 11-8, 6-11, 11-6, 11-6).
Ueda is currently ranked at no.80, a considerable distance from Chuang’s spot at 10. It was solid win but not completely surprising.
“I am in very good condition and today he was nervous. But three years ago at the Japan Open I also beat Chuang.” Jin Ueda
Having already won at the 2017 ITTF Challenge Thailand Open and at the Japan Top 12; 2017 is looking like a good for Ueda. Why does he think he is in such good form this year?
“Now I’m married! I fight very hard now!” Jin Ueda
It was doubly good for Japan as Koki Niwa denied Germany’s Ruwen Filus a comeback win. Niwa led three-nil but Filus took the fourth game 12-10 and was able to level at three-all but the defender seemed to run out of steam; Niwa picked up where he started off and took the deciding game 11-5.
Meanwhile it was heartbreak for Japan’s Kazuhiro Yoshimura. He led three-nil against China’s no.7 seed Fang Bo but it wasn’t enough. Fang made a recovery and levelled the match three-three and 10-10. He then decided to use three long serves during the crucial stage of the game. A risky strategy but it paid dividends. With some huge shot making it Fang took the seventh to win four-three (8-11,9-11,5-11,11-4,11-8,11-7,14-12).
Kazuhiro’s brother Maharu Yoshimura gave the Japanese fans a glimmer of hope in his opening game against China’s Ma Long. He had a game point but failed to capitalise. It was one way traffic from then on in and Ma ran away with the match four-nil (18-16, 11-7, 11-2, 11-2).
However, there were other upsets at the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium. Hong Kong’s Ho Kwan Kit upset expectations taking down Brazil’s Hugo Calderano (7-11, 12-10, 11-7, 6-11, 6-11, 12-10, 11-4) while Korea’s Lim Jonghoon defeated Portugal’s Tiago Apolonia in six games (6-11, 12-10, 11-6, 10-12, 11-5, 12-10).
Find the full results from the Men’s Singles matches here and why not checkout this behind the back shot from Xu Xin this morning.
