Dutch Open: Ma Lin wins again

Dutch Open Review

Saturday, October 26, 2002

ITTF Press Release

Still future for defenders?

Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 26 October 2002. The Dutch crowd saw one major upset in the quarter finals at the men’s singles. 2nd seed Werner SCHLAGER from Austria was eliminated by relatively unknown Chinese defender YINGCHAO Hou. He beat the Pro Tour-leader 4-1.

“I was a bit nervous, because I hadn’t been playing a match like this before”, the man from Beijing says with help from his interpreter. “However I felt very confident once I was on the court and I am happy with my performance.”
Sometimes it seems like there is just no ending to the number of Chinese top players.

“Well, the way YINGCHAO is currently playing is not very common in the Chinese team either”, the interpreter thinks.

Vladimir SAMSONOV (BLR) couldn’t repeat his excellent performance in Germany last week. In a great match he lost to WANG Hao (CHN). The match were even 1-1,but then SAMSONOV’s game fell apart and he lost twice 11-2. However the Belarus showed great fighting spirit and somehow recovered. Eventually he lost 4-3.

KONG Linghui (CHN) took the lead 2-0 in no time against CHUAN Chih-Yuan (TPE), but the Olympic Champion found himself the loser 20 minutes later.

Also for Zoran PRIMORAC from Croatia the Dutch Open ended on Saturday. He couldn’t change his bad record against MA Lin /CHN) and had no chance at all: 0-4.

One easy – and a cliff hanger

Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 26 October 2002. NIU Jianfeng and LI Jia, both from China, secured their places in the women’s singles final.
In the first semi-final Japanese Aya UMEMURA couldn’t extend her excellent performances from the first rounds of the tournament. LI Jia showed no mercy - the Japanese Brazil Open winner 2002 and 2001 lost 4-0.

The second semi-final showed a more close match. Top Chinese NIU Jianfeng was struggling for three quarters of an hour to break down the defence of team mate FAN Ying. NIU was 2-0 up, then FAN won 3 games in a row but eventually she had to surrender to the top seeded NIU.

One more title for MA Lin

Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 26 October 2002. MA Lin from China took his third Pro Tour title in seven days winning the Men's Doubles final together with KONG Linghui.
Last week the man from Liaoning won both the Men’s Singles and Doubles (also with KONG) at the German Open in Magdeburg.

Today he and KONG beat compatriots MA Wenge and Yan Sen who reached the final in spite of the fact that they normally don’t play together (YAN Sen is World Champion together with WANG Liqin).
However against KONG and MA the pair created for the occasion could not resist. MA Wenge and YAN Sen took the first game, but then KONG and MA Lin took over the match and finished it 4-1.

"I am very pleased with this victory", MA Lin says. "I don't prefer singles or doubles but winning this final makes me feel more relaxed and I don't have too much stress before the singles semi-finals (and final) on Sunday morning."

Chinese hurricane

Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 26 October 2002. NIU Jianfeng and LI Jia (CHN) once more proved to be the best doubles partners in the world at the moment. Four Chinese women repeated last week's final at the German Open on Saturday evenoing in Eindhoven.

In Germany, NIU and LI after an easy 3-0 lead lost concentration and let their opponents GUO Yue/LI Xiaoxia come back to 3-2 - to beat them 4-2 at the end.
In Eindhoven, they showed also to be able of keeping concentration for the entire match.

LI Xiaoxia and GUO Yue had no chance at all. After only 20 minutes the final 4-0 score was on the scoreboard. Tomorrow NIU and LI are competing each other in the Women's Singles final.

← View all Articles

Dutch Open: Ma Lin wins again

Still future for defenders?

One easy – and a cliff hanger

One more title for MA Lin

Chinese hurricane

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