Favourites fail to fire at Otago Open

Jayden Ralston (Canterbury) in action during a BS13 match at the Otago Table Tennis Open held in...
Jayden Ralston (Canterbury) in action during a BS13 match at the Otago Table Tennis Open held in Dunedin on Saturday.PHOTO: GERARD O'BRIEN
Both top seeds were upset in the open section of the Otago Table Tennis Open over the weekend.

Dean Shu and Kim Wang beat the favourites at the Edgar Centre, on the way to winning the men's and women's titles respectively.

Fifth-seed Shu came up against the men's No 1 seed - former Dunedin player Nathan Xu - in the quarterfinals, but emerged a 3-0 victor.

He then had a close semifinal encounter with Ivo Mikulec, although came away with a 4-3 win.

The other semifinal between Hongy Li and Yi-Sien Lin was similarly close, Li claiming a 4-3 win.

However, Shu had too much in the final and after dropping the first game, won four in a row for a resounding 4-1 win.

Yesterday Shu and Xu faced off again, this time in the under-21 grade.

But Shu did not yield, claiming a 3-2 win.

In the women's singles the second-seeded Wang and top-seeded Guiting Li both cruised into the final.

There Wang took the ascendancy in winning the first three games, eventually taking a 4-1 win.

Meanwhile in the women's under-21 final Zhiying Cheng beat Maia Cavanagh 3-1.

Cheng and Li paired to beat Wang and Lisa Yue in the women's doubles final 3-0, while Hongy Li and Vladmir Ivanov beat Yi-Sien Lin and Ivo Mikulec 3-2 in a close men's doubles final.

There were 136 competitors in action over the weekend across various age-grades.

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