46^th World Table Tennis Championships

Osaka, Japan · April 23 - May 6, 2001

A Mixed Blessing?

The Mixed Doubles Final at the Worlds

By Tim Boggan 

Mixed Doubles Final, copyright 2001 by Julian Waters.

The Mixed Doubles at these Osaka 46^th World Championships was won by—who else?—China. For the 11^th time in the last 12 attempts.

Actually, the winners (who’d earlier beaten compatriots Yan Sen and Li Ju in 5) might have been any Chinese pair, for, as most everyone watching agreed, the final between Qin Zhijian/Yang Ying and South Korea’s Oh Sang Eun/Kim Moo Kyo was, unfortunately, no contest. The Koreans were just outclassed.

Chinese and South Korean supporters tried to drum up some noisy drama in an otherwise dead Hall. But there was little necessity for the relatively small band of enthusiastic white-shirted watchers to shout again and again the by now so familiar cry of “CHIN-A!…CHIN-A!” Nor was there any need for the progressively faster drumbeats and furious flag-waving from the answering Korean contingent. Granted they served to signify a sense of urgency that something had to be done—but what?

Complementing one another’s play were the very experienced Yang, a righty pips-out penholder once ranked #1 among the best, now #6, who had a previous World (Women’s) Doubles title to her credit, and the left-handed fellow penholder Qin, about whom many knew nothing at all. These two played ever confidently before the 25 or so often up-close, cramped-in cameramen vigilantly training their can’t-miss-a-move lenses on them.

From 12-all in the 1^st, the Chinese team went on a 23-8 rampage that carried them to a decisive lead in the 2^nd. The Korean rally, from 19-10 to 19-15 down in that hopelessly lost 2^nd game, was more the cooperative Qin’s doing, for in this stretch he failed to return three serves—much as if he were trying to save face for the seemingly intimidated Koreans.

Not that Oh and Kim ever embarrassingly gave up. Kim, who had this habit of kicking up her heels, as if these extremities of hers had gone to “sleep,” occasionally pierced her readiness-to-play concentration with one-syllable shouts of self-encouragement. But to counteract Yang’s superb backhand blocks of hard-hit balls and Qin’s at times startling forehand winners, Kim needed not only a barrage of words but shots to back them up.

It was no disgrace of course to lose to the Chinese, and, not to knock the Koreans—Oh, after all, is World #35 and Kim #18, and obviously they, too, can execute marvelous shots—but the Chinese really were just too good.

Mixed Doubles Medalists at the Victory Stand. Copyright 2001 by Julian Waters.

Indeed, in the semi’s, the Koreans’ best rooters, so to speak, were their opponents—China’s World and Olympic Champion Liu Guoliang and his partner, World #4, Sun Jin (who the round before had eliminated the last remaining European team, the Czechs Richard Vyborny and Renata Strbikova). Liu’s play, particularly, was suspect. Pushing into the net, setting the ball up, missing a counter like I would, he could be seen repeatedly shaking his head. “I can play better,” he had to be telling himself…and others.

In the companion semi’s, the eventual winners, in a largely unnoticed match, won in four over the Chinese team of Zhan Jian and Bai Yang who in the quarter’s with youthful ease had knocked out China’s Defending Champions Ma Lin and Zhang Yingying.

With the Chinese now having won all three of the completed Championships, and threatening to sweep all seven, one wonders whether such awesome prowess is really so good for table tennis…or for China.

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