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Top-level sport in Frankfurt: TTBL stars aim for the title at the WTT Champions
From November 4 to 9, the table tennis world will be watching Frankfurt: at the WTT Champions, the top 32 women and 32 men will compete for the title in the Main metropolis. Thirteen players from the Table Tennis Bundesliga (TTBL) will also be taking part.
Benedikt Duda has enjoyed a meteoric rise: Fan Zhendong, Hugo Calderano, Alexis Lebrun, and many more—the list of top players that the 31-year-old has beaten in recent months is long. Tomorrow, Tuesday, Duda will start the WTT Champions Frankfurt as the eighth-ranked player in the world, making him the highest-ranked German and also the highest-ranked player from the Table Tennis Bundesliga (TTBL). In the first round at the Süwag Energie ARENA, the top player from TTC Schwalbe Bergneustadt faces a tough challenge: at the end of the evening session (around 8:50 p.m.), Duda will take on double world champion Shunsuke Togami from TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen.
Duda and Togami are two of a total of 13 players from the TTBL who are competing for the title in Frankfurt – meaning that the Bundesliga accounts for more than a third of the starting field and proving once again that it is home to the top stars. Other TTBL internal first-round matches will be between Darko Jorgic (1. FC Saarbrücken TT) and Kanak Jha (Borussia Düsseldorf) as well as between Dimitrij Ovtcharov (TTC RhönSprudel Fulda-Maberzell) and Andre Bertelsmeier (TSV Bad Königshofen).
“No easy task”: Ricardo Walther starts against Lee Sang Su
Ricardo Walther finished last year's WTT Champions as the best German player. The 33-year-old from ASC Grünwettersbach advanced to the quarterfinals – this time he will face Lee Sang Su in the first round. “Lee Sang Su is not an easy draw, but there are only good opponents here from the first round onwards,” Walther told tischtennis.de about his task. “I've never played against him before, but I'll try to prepare myself as well as possible and want to get the crowd here going.”
Jonathan Groth will be the first TTBL player in action tomorrow, Tuesday. The new signing for TTC RhönSprudel Fulda-Maberzell will face Tomokazu Harimoto in the morning session at around 11:35 a.m. Other TTBL starters include Anders Lind (Borussia Dortmund, against Hwan Bae), Patrick Franziska (1. FC Saarbrücken TT, against Lilian Bardet), Hiroto Shinozuka (ASC Grünwettersbach, against Lin Yun-Ju), Dang Qiu (Borussia Düsseldorf, against Omar Assar), and Anton Källberg (Borussia Düsseldorf, against Truls Möregardh).
An overview of all matches can be found on the WTT Champions event page. The matches will be broadcast live on Dyn, where all TTBL matches can also be viewed live and on demand. Tickets for the tournament are available here at Reservix.
