On the third tournament day of the 4th PingPongParkinson World Championships in Wels, the wheat was separated from the chaff.
In the singles, almost half of the participants have been eliminated after the group phase of the main and consolation rounds.They had to finish in the top three in the predominantly six-player groups to qualify for the knockout phase.
The players still in the running have a big match day tomorrow. The sixteenth, eighth and quarter-finals in doubles (morning), singles (noon) and mixed (afternoon) will demand up to seven matches from the best men tomorrow. The women will play a maximum of five matches on Friday due to smaller fields.
Men’s 1 singles
In the men’s 1 singles, not only the two tournament favourites Thorsten Flues (GER) and Ilya Rozenblat (USA) managed this in the five main round groups without losing a game, but also Holger Teppe (GER), the World Champion of 2019, who benefited from the absence of the two preliminary round group winners Andreas Abend (GER) and Robert Turner (IRL) due to illness. Norbert Hase (GER) also prevailed without losing a match, while Karlheinz Gruve (GER) won his group with 4:1 victories. The dream final between Flues and Rozenblat is still possible, who will meet Gruve and Hase respectively in the semi-finals if the tournament goes according to plan.
Women’s 1 singles
In the women’s 1 singles, Silke Kind (GER) surprised with her 3-0 win over Margie Alley (USA), the 2019 winner, making the player from Fulda the only one in the women’s singles without losing a game in the main round matches. However, the two tournament favourites Rie Koyama (JPN) and Elisabeth Ildal (DEN) also only dropped a single game and finished the third day of the tournament without defeat. In the semi-finals, Ildal and Alley or Anat Robinson (ISR) could now face each other as well as Kind or Yurie Kato (JPN) and Koyama in the other half of the tournament.