It was as expected, it was as the ITTF World Rankings predicted and it was as history suggested.

However, when taking into account past results, it was closer than ever before; that was the scenario in the Women’s Singles semi-finals at the Polish Open in Warsaw on Sunday 30th November 2008.

The top two seeds, both from Singapore prevailed but both were severely tested by their adversaries.


Seeds Succeed
Top seed, Feng Tianwei overcame Romania’s Daniela Dodean, seeded no.13, whilst Wang Yue Gu accounted for Li Jiao of the Netherlands, seeded no.4.


Both contests went the full seven games distance; Feng Tianwei won 12-10, 11-13, 11-6, 6-11, 4-11, 11-7, 11-8 whilst Wang Yue Gu prevailed 8-11, 12-10, 11-3, 10-12, 11-8, 8-11, 11-6.

Boost
Defeat is never success but for Europe the efforts of the splendid Daniela Dodean are a boost; a player born and bred in the continent competing at the highest level is good news.

The notable fact is that it is a Romanian who threatened Asia; the country from whence came the late Angelica Rozeanu, the last non Asian player to win the Women’s Singles crown at a World Championships.

Who would have predicted when Rozeanu won in 1955 that 53 years later we would be still waiting for a European born successor?

Always Europe
Only on one previous occasion, Prague 1936 when Ruth Aarons of the United States won, had the Women’s Singles title not been won by a European and it was not until 1961 that the name of a Chinese player appeared on the golden roll; the player in question was Qiu Zhonghui.

Olga Nemes
However, in European terms Romania has always been strong with names like Olga Nemes and Otilia Basdescu coming immediately to mind.

One wonders if the feat of Olga Nemes when she won the Europe Top 12 in 1983 will ever be equalled; she was 14 years old at the time.

System
Simply, Romania has a system that works and they work on a quite incredibly small basis; their efforts are based on no more than 10 to 15 table tennis clubs, the coach highlights those with talent and basically those players are nurtured and supported to the full.

They are the “Special Ones” and Daniela Dodean is a “Special One”.

Third Meeting
It was the third time she had played Feng Tianwei, it was the third time that she had lost but it was by far her best performance and she had proved herself a quick learner.

The two previous occasions were only one week earlier in the Erke German Open in Berlin. In the quarter-finals of the Women’s Team event, Dodean had lost in four games, in the third round of the Women’s Singles competition she was beaten in four straight games.

In Warsaw it was much better.

Also Third Meeting
Meanwhile, for Wang Yue Gu and Li Jiao it was also their third meeting in a World Ranking event; the previous two both going to the Singaporean.

She won in October 2006 in the first stage of the European Champions League and one year later in September 2007 in the first stage of the Volkswagen Women’s World Cup.

Much Different
On both occasions she had won in straight games, at the Polish Open, it was much different.

Articol publicat de Ian Marshall pe www.ittf.com