by Ian Marshall, Editor
Illustrious company, all are players who have won the women’s singles title at the end of year Grand Finals, as has the next name on the Budapest list, Singapore’s Feng Tianwei; it is surely a major goal in 2019 for Wang Manyu to join the club.
However, the 19 year old already has successes to her credit which match her peers. She is the only player to retain the girls’ singles title at a World Junior Championships; she won in 2014 in Shanghai and the following year in La Roche-sur-Yon. Thus she matched the feat of Zhu Yuling who succeeded in 2010 in Bratislava and regained the title two years later in Hyderabad, after Chen Meng had won in the intervening year in Manama.
Equally, Wang Manyu is one of the very few players to have won three ITTF World Tour women’s singles titles in a calendar year; it puts her amongst illustrious names.
China’s Wang Nan achieved the feat in 2000 and 2001, Li Xiaoxia in 2007 and Guo Yan in 2011. Likewise, in 2012 and 2015 Korea’s Kim Kyungah won three times as did Japan’s Ai Fukuhara in 2015. All have now retired from international duty; also not present at the Seamaster 2018 ITTF World Tour Hungarian Open, Ding Ning gained the distinction in 2011 in Austria, Dubai and England as well as in 2013 in Doha, Ekaterinburg and Wels.
However, present in Budapest Liu Shiwen and Feng Tianwei have each performed the hat-trick. Liu Shiwen succeeded in 2009 in Fredrikshaven, Suzhou and Tianjin; Feng Tianwei won in Subic Bay, Sydney and Yokohama in 2014.
Three ITTF World Tour Women’s Singles titles in a year; Wang Manyu was the only player to gain the distinction in 2018 and no current player has exceeded the number. Now in 2019 can she go one better? Can she match or even better the most successful of all?
Colleague, Guo Yue succeeded on four occasions in 2007, emerging victorious in Kuwait, Nanjing, Velenje and Zagreb but the queen of them all is Zhang Yining. She is the only player to have won five ITTF World Tour women’s singles titles on the ITTF World Tour in one calendar year; in 2003 she emerged successful in Aarhus, Bremen, Guangzhou, Malmö and Zagreb.
