Exciting Final Day Sees Victories for China and Belarus

Belarus’s Vladimir Samsonov has been crowned men’s singles champion at the Seamaster 2017 ITTF World Tour Australian Open, beating Frenchman Simon Gauzy (FRA).

Before the tournament kicked off 41-year-old Samsonov said that he didn’t think he was a real chance for the title.

“Before the event I had a feeling I wasn’t in good form,” Samsonov said.

“But after the first game and the second game I kept playing better and better.”

In the women’s draw, China’s Chen Meng beat countrywoman Wang Manyu 4-2 in a tightly fought contest.

Wang took the opening game 11-3 and then led 10-8 in the second. But Chen manage to win four consecutive points. It was the start of a trend.

The audience suffered deja vu as the no.3 seed then dropped the third game 11-3 and once again Wang led in the following game but couldn’t close it out; 12-10 again for Chen Meng.

The more experienced player had snuck two games past here opponent. Had any of them gone the other way you could be ready a very different story.

From then on it was one way traffic. Chen led in the fifth game 8-0, taking it 11-2.

“Overall I was very happy,” Chen said.

“It was not an easy match. The first four games my condition wasn’t very good so I had to adjust very quickly to get the win.

“I tried to be very positive and very firm because my opponent performed very well so I had to make sure I was more active.”

Samsonov said winning a World Tour event on the Gold Coast was a dream come true.

“I can’t believe I just won the Australian Open, I don’t know what happened but I played so well especially in the last two days,” he said.

“I’m very happy that I can still compete against the best players in the world and still win.”

The titles brought the Seamaster 2017 ITTF World Tour Australian Open to a close. Samsonov said it was a great initiative to bring an event of such standing to Australia.

“I think we have to organise big tournaments, hopefully it inspires some kids to take up table tennis,” he said.

“You need top players in Australia to get the sport to grow or table tennis has to go large enough that people think that it is a cool sport to play or even live from.

“I think it has a lot of potential so many people in the world playing it has a lot of room to go. I really hope that in 10-20 years prize money will be much higher so that people can really push themselves to play and get involved.