2003 U.S. Team Trials

The main match this round was the long-awaited Banh-Reed match, the #2 and #3 seeds. Banh was rated higher coming in, but Reed had the winning record between the two of them - Reed, the vintage European-style all-around player, and Banh, a vintage Asian shakehand style, close to the table with short pips on the backhand. The key points were in the first two games. In the first, Reed led 9-7 and 10-9, and won on a net. In the second, Reed was again up 9-7 and 10-9, but this time lost, 10-12. The last point of this game was the point of the match - why does this happen so often? Banh was all over the court, looping forehands at full power but further back than normal; Reed was at the table, backhand killing each of them. It took six loops before Reed finally missed, with Banh looping each of her smashes back until then. However, from there on it was all Reed, who wins the next two at 3 & 3. In the fifth, it's 8-all, 11-8 for Reed.

Men

There were two wild matches this round: the upset of Nguyen by Wang, and the wild Zhuang-Owens match. We'll start with one, and end with the other.

The big upset this round was Jiachen Wang's 4-0 (10,10,9,6) win over many-time U.S. Team Member and #4 seed Khoa Nguyen, essentially ending Nguyen's chances for making the U.S. team. Nguyen led 10-8 in the first, and 10-9 in the second, but Wang won both 12-10 - winning the second one on an edge ball. Wang won the next two at 9 & 6. Both are very athletic loopers, but Nguyen has more experience and a stronger backhand. "I dropped his serve short forced backhand-backhand rallies on his serve," said Wang. He had had to play a number of matches in the Qualifier to reach the Final Twelve, and said he was totally exhausted in most of his matches - but in this match, he had had a spurt of energy. After starting off by losing his first six matches (seven, if you include the no-longer-counting match with Shodhan), he had now won two in a row - and looked like a different player than the one who had started out so poorly.

De Tran continued his unexpected drive for the U.S. Team, defeating current team member Ashu Jain in a long, 6-game battle. It was a match-up of Jain's shot-making versus Tran's strong two-winged looping. Tran wins, -7,6,9,-6,6,8

Darko Rop, another dark horse still in the running for the team, had a nice match with Adam Hugh. Rop easily won the first two, and the third at 9. He played very aggressively into Hugh's forehand, especially with his lefty backhand, until Hugh missed, popped it up, or was so out of position that he was open on the backhand side. When Rop did go to the backhand after driving Hugh to the forehand, Hugh would often play great fishing points, winning many of them. This strategy seemed to backfire - by game four, Hugh was out-steadying Rop, who is not a raw power player. "I kept spinning, when I should have just smashed," Rop said. Hugh won the four at 7 with long steady rallies, and led 8-5 in the fifth. From there on, Rop was more forceful, and won the next five points, and the match, 3,5,9,-7,9.

Lupulesku and Pace, predictably, had a crowd-pleasing counterlooping match, with Pace's pure pace against Lupi's steady loops. Lupi won the first, but Pace was up 10-8 in the second. They then played the best point of the day: Pace ripped ball after ball after ball, and Lupi topspin fished them all back from way back. Suddenly, Lupi counterlooped - and the two then had a mind-bogglingly fast counterlooping exchange that, against all odds, went on and on, with no let-up, until Lupi - yes, Lupi - blinked first, and missed. Game two to Pace, 11-8. However, the rest of the match was all Lupi as he won 8,-8,6,3,3. One interesting shot: In the first point of game four, Pace miss-hit a loop off the side of his racket - and the ball flew sideways, reaching the table in the next court on the fly!

We've saved the best for last - David Zhuang versus Eric Owens. But it took four games for a match to break out. Zhuang easily won the first three at 8,6,3, and Zhuang was looking better and better each game. Most of the fourth was close - but you could see that the "old" Owens was back, not the Owens who had already been upset three times. Owens goes up 10-7 in the fourth, wins 12-10. From about here on, the points are almost uniformly fantastic, with both players' reflexes as mind-boggling as the counterlooping rallies of Lupulesku-Pace. ("It was like he could read my mind," Owens said afterwards of Zhuang's blocking.) In the fifth, Zhuang goes up 9-6, but Owens scores five in a row. In the sixth, Owens grabbed a small lead from the start and held it. So, this match that didn't start out as a real match, was suddenly a seven-gamer.

Zhuang starts out fast, goes up 3-0, 5-1, 7-4. The next six points are all highlight reel points. Owens went on an absolute all-out forehand looping blitz, covering the whole table with his forehand no matter how wide Zhuang blocked the ball - and Zhuang wasn't missing either. But six points later, the score has gone from 7-4 to 7-10, and even a time-out by Zhuang at 7-8 couldn't stop it. Finally, up 10-7, Owens finally misses one -but only one as he wins the match, -8,-6,-3,10,9,8,8.

So we ended today's matches with the best played match of the Trials - and can only wait to see what awaits us tomorrow....

Current Standings
Note - the matches played by Priscilla Umel and Shashin Shodhan no longer count in the standings, due to their defaults from the tournament, and so their matches have been taken out of the results.
Men			Women
1	Ilija Lupulesku	8-0	1	Chang Jun Gao	7-0
2	David Zhuang	7-1	2-3	Tawny Banh	6-1
3	Mark Hazinski	6-2		Jasna Reed	6-1
4-5	Eric Owens	5-3	4	Lily Yip	5-3
	De Tran	5-3	5	Jackie Lee	4-4
6	Darko Rop	4-4	6-7	Simone Yang	3-4
7	Khoa Nguyen	4-5		Virginia Sung	3-4
8	Adam Hugh	3-6	8	Judy Hugh	2-6
9	Jiachen Wang	2-6	9	Moji Kuye	1-6
10	Ashu Jain	1-7	10	Amanda Dubina	0-8
11	Brian Pace	0-8

2003 USA Table Tennis World and Pan Am Trials

Final Twelve - Round Nine

Women

Men

Current Standings

Men

Women