WTT Finals 2025...

[AJ Scott]

This season's finale will be held in Hong Kong and it starts tonight at
9:30 pm (3 hrs. from now) and goes through Sunday:
https://www.worldtabletennis.com/eventInfo?selectedTab=Matches&innerselectedTab=Scheduled&eventId=3112
[schedule for tonight and tomorrow].  Again, China is 13 hrs. ahead of
us and the action on the sole table in play will be livestreamed on the
WTT YouTube channel starting at 9:30 pm.

Player lists and draws:
https://www.worldtabletennis.com/eventInfo?eventId=3112&selectedTab=Player%20List&innerselectedTab=Scheduled
and
https://www.worldtabletennis.com/eventInfo?selectedTab=Draws&eventId=3112&innerselectedTab=Scheduled.
There are 16 men and women competing for $1.3 million in prize money. 
The top 5 men's seeds are Wang Chuqin, Lin Shidong, Hugo Calderano,
Truls Moregard and Harimoto Tomokazu.  The top 5 women's seeds are all
on the CNT: Sun Yingsha, Wang Manyu, Chen Xingtong, Kuai Man and Wang
Yidi.  Harimoto Miwa is the no. 6 seed and the former CNT and World's
no. 1, Zhu Yuling is at no. 7.

Penholders...  It'll be only 3 this time around--Felix Lebrun, Dang Qiu,
and Wong Chun Ting (Mixed Doubles only).

Pips-out players...  Only on the women's side this week--Itoh Mima
(short pips/bh), the 8th seed, and her Japanese Nat'l teammate,
Hashimoto Honoka (chopper), the 11th seed.

The 1st 2 matches scheduled for tonight will be in the Mixed
Doubles--Matsushima Sora/Harimoto Miwa vs. Alvaro Robles/Mario Xiao,
then Lim Jonghoon/Shin Yubin vs. Hugo Calderano/Bruna Takahashi.

Speaking of Hugo Calderano, in the men's singles draw, he's on Lin
Shidong's side of the draw, which means, he won't face his nemesis, Wang
Chuqin, until the final.  I noticed that, in the China Nat'l Games a
couple weeks ago, Wang Chuqin lost in the semifinal to Fan Zhendong, who
is retired (from international play)!  Rumor has it that Fan wants to
play another Olympics so, he's kept himself in shape, because he wants
to be back on the Chinese Nat'l Team.  Anyhow, if Hugo can get to the
final and face Wang this weekend and he's looking for ideas on how to
play him, he should look at this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpPndULva_o [full match--1 hour long].

Even though he's retired, I still say that Fan Zhendong has the best
offensive backhand of all time!  And you see why in this match

As far as the matches are concerned, one match I'm looking forward to
seeing is Wang Chuqin vs. Matsushima Sora--scheduled for 6:20 am
tomorrow (Wednesday) morning.  I think it's possible that Matsushima can
surprise Wang if he's feeling ok and if he's coached by Morizono
Masataka, who appears to have a good rapport with him.