Now that the third day of the tournament is over, all the doubles preliminary round groups have been finalised. While there were no surprises in the men’s main class and the top 4 are all still in the field, the women’s doubles group surprisingly saw fourth seeds Ofra Mark/Anat Robinson (Israel) fail to make it through to the main round. In the mixed doubles, the third seeds Marita Siegel/Thorsten Boomhuis (Germany) are now the favourites in the consolation round.
While the singles finals in all the women’s categories start on Friday with the matches of the best 16, the men’s singles already had to play at Thursday. In the men’s 2 category, matches even had to be played in the round of the best 64, while the other two men’s categories began with the round of the best 32. This is where the first surprises came, as two of the men’s 1 players expected to be among the top eight are no longer in the field. PPP newcomer Stefan Schmechel (Germany), seeded second due to his previous playing strength, lost to former world champion Hamid Ezzat-Ahmadi (USA) in four games, while Jurij Kure (Slovenia), seeded fifth, was eliminated by Jörgen Sjöstedt (Sweden) with the same result. In both cases, the favourites only won the first game.
If all goes according to plan, the men’s 1 event will see a repeat of last year’s final between world champion Thorsten Flues (Germany) and Ilya Rozenblat (USA), who has a record nine podium places at the PPP World Championships. But there are still three rounds to play before then, and a lot can still happen! Ghislain Planty (France, playing for the first time) and Hiromichi Kawai (Japan, fourth start), who have played very strongly so far, could still spring some surprises.
With the round of 16 and quarter-finals in all singles, doubles and mixed competitions on Friday, the penultimate day will bring a lot of highly interesting matches on the 30 tables in the Tri Lilije hall in Lasko.