Taiwan’s top table tennis team on Saturday bagged the mixed doubles title at the World Table Tennis Contender tournament in Doha.
After cruising through their quarter-final and semi-final matches without dropping a game on Friday, world No. 4 mixed doubles pair Lin Yun-ju and Cheng I-ching defeated Emmanuel Lebesson and Yuan Jianan of France in the finals.
The world No. 15 French pair proved to be the most formidable competitors for Lin and Cheng at the tournament, as the final stretched into five games.
Photo: AFP
The Taiwanese pair eventually prevailed 11-7, 11-13, 11-6, 16-18, 11-4 to clinch the mixed doubles title.
In the women’s doubles, world No. 6 Cheng Hsien-tzu and Chen Szu-yu of Taiwan lost to the world No. 2 Japanese pair Miu Hirano and Kasumi Ishikawa, 6-11, 8-11, 6-11.
In men’s singles, 19-year-old Lin, who is world No. 7, fell to World No. 12 Dimitrij Ovtcharov of Germany in the finals, 11-7, 14-12, 6-11, 11-6.
With the Contender tournament ending on Saturday, the next event on the International Table Tennis Federation agenda in Doha is the Star Contender competition, which starts today under a revised calendar.
The qualifying draw started yesterday for today’s Star Contender competition.
In the men’s single qualifying draw, Taiwan’s Chen Chien-an, world No. 69, was set to face 29-year-old Noshad Alamiyan of Iran, while Liao Cheng-ting, world No. 119, would play against Romania’s Cristian Pletea.
Under the new branding, most of the matches would be played in a best-of-five format, while the usual best-of-seven format would be retained only for the semi-finals and finals of the men’s and women’s singles.
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