Winner of the Under 21 Women’s Singles title at the Slovenian Open in January, the victor last week in Kuwait; Romania’s Daniela Dodean made it three in a row when she clinched gold on the afternoon of Friday 21st March 2008 at the Erke Doha Open.

At the final hurdle she overcame Singapore’s Yu Meng Yu.

Meanwhile, in the counterpart male event it was success for Russia’s Kirill Skachkov; he accounted for Korea’s Lee Jin Kwon to win the second ITTF Pro Tour Under 21 Men’s Singles title of his career. In November 2007 he had succeeded at the Liebherr German Open in Bremen.


Played Badly
“I played really badly here and in Kuwait in the senior events; I wasn’t in a good mood”, said Daniela Dodean. “Today I was in a good mood and now I’m acclimatised to the conditions in the hall, so maybe if we can start again, in two days time I’ll be in the latter stages of the Women’s Singles event!”

The appraisal is accurate, in the Women’s Singles event in Qatar, her end of competition report would no doubt have read “Can do better” whilst for the Under 21 events she gained top marks.

Good Form
On both the semi-fnals and finals, the “Moody Miss” was in fine form, overcoming Russia’s Elena Troshneva to book her place in the final against Yu Meng Yu who had defeated Hu Melek at the penultimate stage.

Typical
In many ways the final was a trademark Daniela Dodean performance, attacking strongly from the off.

“In the final I concentrated on staying close to the table and to attack strongly with the backhand”, the Romanian explained. “The major difficulty for me was the way she received.”

Modern Method
The method of receiving service was the very modern day method of raising the elbow high, the form vertical and rotating the racket around the back of the ball to create a very deceptive mixture of sidespin and topspin.

“It took a little to time to get used to the return of service”, explained Daniela Dodean. “However, gradually I was able to adjust and that helped my confidence.”

Toughest Match
A third of the year for Daniela Dodean and a second of his career for Kirill Skachkov who believed the toughest match en route to gold was his victory in the semi-finals over Germany’s Patrick Baum, the player he had beaten in the final in Germany.

“It gave me confidence that I’d beaten him last year but when it was three games all I thought I might lose”, said the victorious Russian. “Last year in the final I made a good start in the seventh game and here today I did the same; it made all the difference.”

Previous Win
A place in the final was duly booked where his opponent was Lee Jin Kwon and against before the match started Kirill Skachkov was confident. “I’d played him before and won, I knew he was good at topspin to topspin so whenever I could I tried to play short; he made mistakes trying to flick the ball near the net.”

They were mistakes that cost the Korean dear; the power of Kirill Skackov prevailed, the title belonged to Russia.

Articol publicat de Ian Marshall pe pagina oficiala a Federatiei Internationale de Tenis de Masa, www.ittf.com.