World Championships

USA Men at the Worlds

By Dan Seemiller, USA Men’s Coach

USA Results

We arrived in Shanghai on April 24, which gave us five days of training before the start of the 48th World Championships.  Our early arrival also helped to deal with the 13-hour time difference and jet lag.

There was plenty of excitement in Shanghai in anticipation of these championships.  The Chinese organizing committee did a first-class job in all aspects.  I would consider this the best World’s that I have ever been to and this was my 15th.

How did our Men do?  We lost several close matches that could’ve been won.  Cheng Yinghua, our national champion, was the first one to lose.  His group consisted of four players, but two were no shows.  He then played Emad Moselhi of Egypt.  Cheng was leading 2-0 in games and 10-8, but lost this game in deuce and after winning the fourth to lead 3-1 he couldn’t win the match.  Cheng ended up losing 4-3.

Han Xiao defeated Carlos Chiu of Mexico 4-0 but two games went to deuce.  To win his group he would have to defeat Bence Csaba from Canada.  Han played well, leading two games to one and 9-8 in game four.  After losing the fourth game to even the match at two games each, Bence took control, winning game five and leading 5-2 in the sixth.  Han battled back with brilliant shot-making to even the score 3-3.  In game seven, Bence lead 5-2 at the turn but Han quickly erased the lead to go up 7-6 and again 8-7 and 9-8.  But the more experienced Csaba pulled it out 11-9 in the seventh.  Han played well and showed he’s a fighter, but lost a heartbreaker.

David Zhuang won his group with ease, defeating Petursson from Iceland 4-0 then advanced to play Pablo Tabachnik from Argentina, who also won his group.  David lost the first game after leading 9-8 and then won the next three games rather easily to lead 3-1.  With the air conditioning turned off, the humidity was very high and pips out players tend to struggle in moist conditions.  Pablo came back to win the match 4-3.  This was a disappointing loss for David.

Khoa Nguyen won his first two matches in his group.  He then played a young Chinese Jiang Pengfei from Turkey.  Khoa had early leads in three of the games he lost but just couldn’t get in the lead as he lost 4-1.  Jiang Pengfei had an excellent reverse penhold backhand loop that pinned Khoa on his backhand and he was unable to use his powerful forehand.

Ilija Lupulesku was seeded into the first round against Denmark’s Martin Monrad.  Denmark had just won the European team championship in April so Monrad is tough and well trained.  Lupi won the first game but just couldn’t stay in the lead.  These two are evenly matched as once again we see a seven-game battle.  In game seven Lupi is down 5-0, but fights back to 7-all.  In the end it’s Monrad, 11-9.

Four of our five men’s team players lost their matches 4-3.  This mostly came down to lack of international play which led to poor decision making during the crunch points in game seven.  I was proud of the fight in our players – always coming back when the match began to look lost.