Nineteen year old Daniela Dodean gave her best, she gave one hundred per cent and when she reflects on her fourth round Women’s Singles match against Wang Chen of the United States at the Liebherr World Championships in Zagreb, she will think about what might have been.
In both the first and third games she established a lead, in both games she held match points and on both occasions she suffered defeat

Wang Chen won 13-11, 5-11, 15-13, 11-5, 11-9.

Watershed
The third game was to prove the watershed, time and again Daniela Dodean attacked strongly from the backhand; time and again the onslaught was staved off. The consistency of Wang Chen shone through, the fact that her skills had been honed in China won the day for the naturalised American.

“Mentally I was good today, I fought for every point even when I was losing”, said Wang Chen. “In the end I think Daniela became a little nervous but that’s normal with young players; I didn’t give up, I kept going; it’s the first time I’ve played her and I’m impressed.”

Defence
Success for Wang Chen and also there was success for the superb defensive skills of Korea’s Kim Kyung Ah.

The best female defensive player in the world, she beat Singapore’s Wang Yue Gu in five games. The Singaporean is notably good against defence, well that was the case up to a month ago; give Wang Yue Gu a defender and she won but at the Liebherr Brazilian Open in April 2007 she lost the elegant Russian defender Svetlana Ganina.

In Zagreb it happened again, she could not penetrate the defensive skills of Kim Kyung Ah.

Kim Kyung Ah won 8-11, 11-3, 11-7, 11-3, 11-9.

Top Seed Through
Also through successfully in the morning’s matches in the Women’s Singles came top seed, China’s Zhang Yining. She beat Hong Kong’s Lau Sui Fei; the latter employed her high thrown service time and again but Zhang Yining was focused and in straight games prevailed.

Zhang Yining won 11-6, 119, 11-5, 112.

A 2012 Champion?
The one remaining match in the fourth round of the Women’s Singles event played on the morning of Friday 25th May 2007 saw two players who could well dominate female table tennis in the next ten years.

If you want the name of the Women’s Singles winner at the Olympic Games in London in 2012, it will be either Guo Yue or Yao Yan.

Both are teenagers, both are attackers; Guo Yue is left handed whilst Yan Yan is right handed. The former has the greater experience and it showed. Guo Yue won 10-12, 11-7, 11-5, 11-7, 8-11, 11-8.

Articol publicat de Ian Marshall pe site-ul www.ittf.com.