TABLE TENNIS Preview: No. 1-ranked Fan and Zhu top Swedish Open

One of the top fields on the ITTF World Tour this season is in the Swedish Open, at the Eriksdalshallen in Stockholm, with both of the no. 1 and 2-ranked players in the singles events. The top seeds:

Men’s Singles:
1. Zhendong Fan (CHN:1)
2. Xin Xu (CHN: 2)

Men’s Doubles:
1. Kwan Kit Ho/Chun Ting Wong (HKG)
2. Long Ma/Xin Xu (CHN)

Women’s Singles:
1. Yuling Zhu (CHN: 1)
2. Shiwen Liu (CHN: 2)

∙ Women’s Doubles:
1. Jihee Jeon/Haeun Yang (KOR)
2. Honoka Hashimoto/Hitomi Sato (JPN)

The men’s Singles field includes the nos. 1-2-3-5-6-8-9 players in the world, also including no. 3 Gaoyuan Lin (CHN), no. 4 Dmitrij Ovtcharov (GER) and no. 5 Long Ma (CHN), the 201216 Olympic champion. The women’s field includes the top 14 players in the world rankings, also including no. 3 Meng Chen (CHN), no. 4 Kasumi Ishikawa (JPN) and no. 5 Manyu Wang (CHN).

The Swedish Open dates back all the way to 1954 and this year’s field is full of prior champions. Among the men, Ma won in 2011, Fan in 2014-15 and Xu won last year. In the women’s division, Xingtong Chen (CHN) is the defending champion; Ishikawa in 2016, Zhu in 2014 and Chen in 2013.

Look for results here.