WTT Contender Skopje 2026...

[AJ Scott]

The main draw started yesterday morning and continues on this morning
(Friday) at 5 am and goes on through Sunday:
https://www.worldtabletennis.com/eventInfo?selectedTab=Matches&innerselectedTab=Scheduled&eventId=3239
[today's schedule].  When looking at the schedule, remember that North
Macedonia is 6 hrs. ahead of us.  There are 4 tables in play and all of
them are being livestreamed at the WTT YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@WTTGlobal/streams. For an American, "Skopje"
sounds almost like "SCOPE-yeah"

The top 5 men's seeds were Anders Lind, Darko Jorgic, Flavien Coton,
Simon Gauzy and Oh Junsung, followed Kanak Jha, the US no. 1, at 6.   On
the women's side, the top 5 seeds were Ohdo Satsuki, Hashimoto Honoka,
Joo Cheonhui, Adriana Diaz and Hana Goda.  I say "were" because some of
the seeds lost today in the 1st round.

Pips-out players...  The only ones still alive in the main draw are on
the women's side: Yoo Siwoo of South Korea (short pips/bh), Kihara Miyuu
of Japan (short pips/bh), Satoh Hitomi of Japan (no. 3 chopper in the
world), Yuan Jianan of France (short pips/fh), Sasao Asuka of Japan and
Hashimoto Honoka of Japan (top chopper in the world).  Speaking of
Hashimoto, she has teamed up with Adriana Diaz in the women's doubles. 
It'll be interesting to see how far in the draw they go.

Americans...  None of the Americans who were in the qualis advanced to
the main draw, which left the 3 Americans who were seeded into the main
draw--Kanak Jha, Lily Zhang and Adriana Diaz.  Adri won easily, Lily
lost easily, but Kanak had a close match:
https://youtu.be/_98l3xp5V88?t=8136 [Kanak Jha vs. Deni Kozul, the
Slovenian no. 2--full match].

I only watched a few matches today and another close one I saw was this:
https://youtu.be/A3UQ01wg4vM?t=7530 [Quadri Aruna vs. Flavien Coton of
France--full match].

As for the schedule going forward, there's a lot of TT this month--this
event goes on through Sunday, then everyone goes over to Croatia for WTT
Contender Zagreb which starts next Tuesday, then the following Tuesday
it's WTT Star Contender Ljubljana and then, at the end of the month,
everyone will make a mad dash to LA for the US Smash--from June 26 thru
July 5th.

[Albert]

Men's singles final, Kanak Jha vs. Darko Jorgic: https://youtu.be/UdtAJ97RtnQ?t=7557