WTT Contender Skopje 2025...

[AJ Scott]

For those of you who are interested, this starts tomorrow at 4 am
tomorrow (Monday) morning and goes on through next Sunday:
https://worldtabletennis.com/eventInfo?selectedTab=Matches&innerselectedTab=Scheduled&eventId=3090
[tomorrow's schedule].  4 tables are in play, but I don't quite know
where it will livestreamed, because, for those of you who are not aware,
the WTT YouTube page was apparently hacked yesterday and then later
taken down by YouTube.  There is a WTT Youth event ongoing in Sweden and
I see that they are streaming it at the ITTFWorld YouTube page, here:
https://www.youtube.com/@ITTFWorld/streams.  Maybe livestreams and
videos from this event will appear there tomorrow...

The top 5 men's seeds are Darko Jorgic, Benedikt Duda, Oh Junsung,
Matsushima Sora, and Uda Yukiya.  The top 5 women's seeds are Ohdo
Satsuki, Sofia Polcanova, Shi Xunyao, Prithika Pavade, and Nagasaki
Miyu, followed by Yokoi Sakura, Ohdo's doubles partner, at 6.

Penholders...  The only ones I recognize are Yu Fu, the traditional
penholder from Portugal and Ojio Yuuna, the "katana-penholder" from Japan.

Pips-out/anti-spin players...  On the men's side, it's Ylane Batix of
Cameroon (long pips/bh), Amirreza Abbasi of Malta (long pips or
anti-spin/bh?) and Sun Yang of China (chopper).  For the women, it's
Yuan Jianan (short pips/fh), Manika Batra (long pips/bh), Satoh Hitomi
(chopper), Linda Bergstrom (chopper), Yuan Wan (short pips/fh), Yu Fu
(short pips/bh, but she doesn't use them), Guo Jiangshan (long pips/bh),
Ojio Yuuna (short pips/fh), Ivana Malobabic (chopper), Cheng Pu-syuan
(long pips/bh), Mateja Jeger (short pips/bh), Zhu Ziyu (chopper), and
Deng Zhen (medium pips/bh).

Americans...  Ma Jinbao, the US no. 2 man, and Guo Jiangshan and Deng
Zhen, the US 5th & 6th women.   In the qualis, Ma is in Group 2 which I
believe he should win.  Deng is in Group 10 with a Chinese no-namer Feng
Yixuan and the top Chinese Taipei chopblocker, Cheng Pu-syuan.  Now that
will be an interesting match--medium pips vs. long pips.  I think she
should try to force bh-to-bh exchanges and sometimes turn the corner and
try to fh-smash or fh-loopkill any low-quality shots.  That said, I've
been following Cheng Pu-syuan for about a year now and she is very
fast.  This is going to be a tough match for Deng.  That'll be on table
4 on Wednesday at 5 am.

Also, Ma will play mixed doubles with Guo.  Their 1st match is on table
4, 4 am Wednesday, vs. Yoshimura Kazuhiro (just won WTT Feeder
Kosovo)/Nagasaki Miyu.  That's another tough match...  Ma will also play
men's doubles with Liao Cheng-ting of Chinese Taipei vs. a Macedonian
pair.  Should be an easy win for Ma/Liao...