After the first two days of competition at the 5th PingPong Parkinson World Championships in Lasko, Slovenia, it is clear which players have qualified for the final round and which for the consolation round in the singles competitions. There were already some surprises on the first day in the ten groups of the men’s singles I, as four of the groups were not won by the top seeds. While Karl-Heinz Gruve (Germany), seeded second in the group, and Ghislain Planty (France), seeded fourth, remained unbeaten, Hiromichi Kawai (Japan) and Uwe Dahm (Germany), seeded fifth, pulled off the biggest surprises, but both had to settle for a defeat, leaving two players with the same number of wins behind them due to the better set ratio in the direct comparison. In the six other groups, however, the seeding was confirmed and all six group winners remained unbeaten. These were Thorsten Flues, Holger Teppe, Heiko Probst and Norbert Hase (all Germany) as well as Ilya Rozenblat (USA) and Premysl Kouril (Czech Republic).
There were even more surprises in the women’s singles I preliminary round groups on the second day of the tournament than in the men’s 1. Reigning world champion Rie Koyama (Japan) was the only to confirm her seeding. She did not lose a game, which was also achieved by the three group winners Elke Busch-de Groot, Melanie Jeska (both Germany) and Eszter Agnes Nagy (Hungary), all three of whom had only been expected to finish third in their group. Biserka Mursec (Slovenia), who was seeded second in her group, was the only group winner in the women’s singles who lost a preliminary round match.
The men’s singles final rounds start on Thursday and the women’s final rounds on Friday.