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New balls frustrate Singapore paddlers

SINGAPORE — The new plastic balls in place for tournaments sanctioned by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) were Singapore’s undoing at the World Tour Grand Finals in Bangkok.

Yu Mengyu was stopped dead in her tracks by South Korea’s defensive specialist Seo Hyo-won in their semi-final match. Photo: Getty Images

Yu Mengyu was stopped dead in her tracks by South Korea’s defensive specialist Seo Hyo-won in their semi-final match. Photo: Getty Images

SINGAPORE — The new plastic balls in place for tournaments sanctioned by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) were Singapore’s undoing at the World Tour Grand Finals in Bangkok.

Any hope of a Singaporean making the final in the women’s singles ended yesterday when world No 13 Yu Mengyu was stopped dead in her tracks by South Korea’s defensive specialist Seo Hyo-won in their semi-final match. Seo, the world No 9, beat Yu 4-2 (4-11, 11-5, 11-6, 11-8, 8-11, 11-9), but later bowed to Japan’s Kasumi Ishikawa 4-0 (7-11, 7-11, 3-11, 9-11) in the final.

Yu had easily beaten Seo in two previous meetings this year — the Tokyo World Championships in April and at the China Open two months later — but her defeat in Bangkok did not surprise national women’s coach Jing Junhong.

The key reason, said Jing, was the new plastic ball that became mandatory for all ITTF-sanctioned events in July. It replaced the previous ball made of flammable celluloid material that had to be packed in expensive, special fireproofed containers for air shipment.

“We have been training with the new plastic ball only in the past two weeks and our players have yet to get used to it,” said Jing. “We did not switch to the plastic balls because we were training for the Asian Games in September, and celluloid balls were used there because it was not an ITTF-sanctioned event.”

Jing added the ball seemed to favour defensive players such as Seo who use lighter bats that give them better ball control for their style of play. The Korean also won her quarter-final tie 4-1 over Singapore’s world No 4 Feng Tianwei on Saturday.

Feng and Yu also fell in the women’s doubles semis on Saturday, losing 4-2 to Japan’s Miu Hirano and Mima Ito. Yesterday, 14-year-olds Hirano and Ito beat Polish pair Natalya Partyka and Katarzyna Grzybowska 4-0 to become the youngest-ever ITTF World Tour Grand Finals champions. Singapore’s other representative in Bangkok, Chen Feng, lost all his matches in the group stage of the men’s under-21 competition.

With less than a month to go before the start of the World Team Cup on Jan 8 in Dubai, Jing gave the assurance her players would be up to speed with the new plastic balls by then.

“We will have enough time to train with the new plastic balls and will be ready when we get to Dubai. That is why I am not overly worried by our performance here in Bangkok,” she said. IAN DE COTTA

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