WTT Star Contender Chennai 2026

[AJ Scott]

The main draw for this event starts late tonight after midnight at 12:30
am and goes on through Sunday morning:
https://www.worldtabletennis.com/eventInfo?selectedTab=Matches&innerselectedTab=Scheduled&eventId=3233
[tonight & tomorrow morning's schedule].  There are 4 tables in play and
all will be livestreamed at the WTT YouTube channel at
https://www.youtube.com/@WTTGlobal/streams.  When looking at the
schedule, please remember that India is 10.5 hrs. ahead of us.

The player's list:
https://www.worldtabletennis.com/eventInfo?selectedTab=Player%20List&eventId=3233&innerselectedTab=Scheduled.
As you will see, the top 5 men's seeds are Oh Jun-sung (son of former
long time South Korean no. 1, Oh Sang-eun--currently a coach on the
Team), Dima Ovtcharov, Flavien Coton, Manav Thakkar (Indian no. 1), and
Thibault Poret (almost sounds like "tee-BO po-RAY").  The top 5 women's
seeds this week are Ohdo Satsuki, Nagasaki Miyu, Joo Cheonhui, Cheng
I-ching and Kihara Miyuu.

Pips-out/anti-spin players...  On the men's side, the only ones I
recognize are Luka Mladenovic (anti-spin/bh--plays in the very 1st match
tonight at 12:30 am on table 1), Remi Betelu of France (chopper), and
Kang Dong-soo of South Korea (chopper).  On the women's side, I see
Kihara Miyuu (short pips/bh), Satoh Hitomi (chopper), Jee Min-hyung of
AUS (medium pips/bh?--she'll team up with Mladenovic in the mixed
doubles this week), Yuan Wan (short pips/fh), Ayhika Mukherjee
(anti-spin/bh, short pips/fh), YD Ghorpade (long pips/bh), Sutirtha
Mukherjee (short pips/fh), Divyanshi Bhowmick (long pips/bh--very good
chopblocker--has won a few titles in the Youth circuit--she will be the
Indian no. 1 woman in the near future), Peng Yu-han of Chinese Taipei
(long pips/bh, short pips/fh?), and Syndrela Das (short pips/fh).  There
are a lot of Indians playing whom I unfortunately am not familiar with,
so I may have missed someone.

Americans...  There's only one playing this week--Satya Aspathi, a U-15
cadet girl.  I'm not familiar with her so I looked her up on YouTube and
the most recent video I could find of her was one of her matches in an
Indian Nat'l Ranking event back in Dec. '24, so she must be a recent
immigrant to the US of A and/or she has dual citizenship.  Oh wait,
there's another American playing this week--Armaan Dalamal, a U-19
junior boy.  I'm not familiar with either one of them.

Rankings...  Did you see the latest ranking update this week? Amy Wang
has passed Lily Zhang to became the US no. 1 woman again.  And Hugo
Calderano of Brazil is now the world's no. 2! This is the highest a
Brazilian has ever been ranked!  As I've said before, I see him at no.
1.  I see him catching up to and passing Wang Chuqin soon.  Also
Matsushima Sora of Japan, who made the top-10 last year has gotten a
modest boost which puts him closer to the longtime Japanese no. 1,
Harimoto Tomokazu.   He's now 7th in the world, just 3 spots under
Harimoto who's at no. 4. Again, I see Matsushima passing Harimoto.  I
also see him at no. 1 in the world.