U.S. Open Mixed Doubles Championships Decided
by Joshua Dyke
Nikhil Kumar and Amy Wang in the 2022 U.S. Open Table Tennis Championships Mixed Doubles finals at the Ontario Convention Center. Ontario, California. 2022.
On Day 4, the Open Mixed Doubles were in the final stages as the day advanced. It was a pivotal day in moving toward the Open Men’s and Women’s Singles final rounds that will proceed the following day.
As a main attraction for the day, the Mixed Doubles final was the. The doubles teams, one male and one female player, battled through the quarter and semifinal rounds to culminate the evening with a showdown on the show court for the Open Mixed Doubles Championship.
The Mixed Doubles Championship Finals headlined the evening events at the Ontario Convention Center. Nikhil Kumar & Amy Wang were stacked against Rachel Sung & Kai Zhang in the finals. All well-acquainted players from their years of previous head-to-head meetings at 5-star events. Paired with the long history of being teammates on the U.S. National Teams
Amy Wang and Nikhil Kumar won the championship finals match 3-1 (14-12, 7-11, 11-9, 11-7), taking gold in the best of five championships. The pair defeated Rachel Sung and Kai Zhang in the final match of the event.
Nikhil Kumar commented on what it took to win the final, “We took the first set but I kind of felt we didn’t really have much of a strategy going into it, we kind of just played our own game. It kind of went off each other and I worked out in the end. Second set, they got the hang of it more, and we kind of made it too simple for the to attack for them to give them the chance. After that, we found our way to take the initiative, keep the game short, and keep it a little bit lower so that we get the chance to attack first and I think that helped us a lot. Taking more risks by the last set they were able to keep Sung and Zhang guessing to seal the win.
"I think it’s because we’ve played a lot together and I believe and trust Nikhil," said Amy Wang." “We’ve been playing together since 2017 or 2018 or so,” added Kumar, “We’ve built trust between each other. We trust each other’s game, and we also take risks but because we believe in each other so it works out in the end."
Rachel Sung and Kai Zhang, who took silver in Mixed Doubles. In the Semi-finals, taking the mixed doubles bronze medals were Tiffany Ke and Tianrui Zhang, as well as the mixed doubles team of Tao Wenzhang and Sally Moyland.
The tournament stepped closer to the U.S. Open Men’s and Women’s Singles Championships scheduled for Day 5. The players were pushed to the brink of elimination in the knockout rounds to earn a spot in the championship finals.
Open Women’s Singles Semi-final Matchups
Luoxuan Shao vs. Lily Zhang
Xiaohua Cui vs. Amy Wang
Open Men’s Singles Quarterfinal Matchups
Kou, Lei vs. Daniel Gorak
Xiang Jing Zhang vs. Jinbao Ma
Wei Wang vs. Aditya Sareen
Nikhil Kumar vs. Xin Zhou
See the full posted results for the 2022 U.S. Open Table Tennis Championships