Chen Qi wins English Open Pro Tour

Chen executes his trademark backhand service receive

Finally, Chen Qi stepped out of the shadows of his illustrious team mates. He beat 2nd seed Ma Lin 11-5, 11-4, 11-13, 14-12, 11-4 in the finals of the English Open Pro Tour Table Tennis tournament.

Earlier, in the semi-finals, he beat the formidable Wang Liqin.

China is fielding most of its top players right from the start of the season at all the Pro tour tournaments starting from the Slovenian open. The top players again assemble for the other tournaments that follow soon. The aim seems to be to get them in shape for the World Individual championships at Rotterdam.

Player Profile: Sourav Saha

Sourav executes his powerful forehand topspin stroke

Sourav Saha is one of the most promising youngsters India has produced in the recent years. He was always in the shadows of Sathiyan, Soumyajit, and Harmeet for a while, but his performances this year in the Senior section have brought him applauds. With this, he has proved that he does belong to the elite league.

Sourav adopts a fast paced game and combines it with tremendously quick movement around the table. He does not hesitate to take risks and goes into an all out attack no matter who the opponent is. His double flanked attack helps him dominate his rivals in age categories as well as in the Men's section.

He beat his senior state mate and Commonwealth medallist, Soumyadeep Roy at Kolkata recently. Roy almost annexed the Men's title at the recently concluded Senior Nationals.

Name: Sourav Saha

Date of Birth: 10.08.1993

Club: Naihati Youth Association

Coaches/Trainers: Mr. Mihir Ghosh

TT Idol: Achanta Sharath kamal

Ambition: To win a medal for India at the Olympics

Achievements: Cadet National Champion, Sub-jr National Runners up, Junior Nationals semi-finalist, 10th place in World Cadet Challenge, Silver Medalist in Senior Nationals in Teams.

Best win (over a player): Soumyadeep Roy in Senior Nationals, Kolkata

Best win (a tournament): Cadet National Championship

Ma Lin to clash with Chen Qi in the English Open Pro Tour

Ma Lin beat compratriot, Wang Hao in seven games to book a place in the finals against the younger southpaw Chen Qi at the English Open Pro Tour event at Sheffield.

Qi beat the experienced Wang Liqin 4-3 in a cliff hanger in which the decider went down to the wire. Qi eventually prevailed 12-10 in the seventh game.

Borat at Table Tennis

Sacha Baron Cohen aka Borat with a ping pong paddle.

Hollywood Superstar Susan Sarandon splits from her Table Tennis club owner mate

The great actress of yesteryear, Sarandon reportedly split up with business partner Jonathan Bricklin and is now single.  

The Oscar winner was dating Bricklin since breaking up from her previous partner of 23 years Tim Robbins.

Bricklin and Saradon are co-owners of a franchise of Table Tennis clubs named Spin at New York. It is well known that Sarandon is a big fan of the game.

Liz Hurley gets bitten by Ping Pong on her nose

No, she is not one more of the celebrities that get bitten by the sport.
Liz Hurley, rumoured to be dating Cricket star, Shane Warne, was bitten by her pet parrot, Ping Pong.

It is not clear why they chose to name the pet Amazon blue fronted parrot by the popular sport, but we don't want to complain. Hurley received the bird as a gift for Christmas. She is reportedly hoping that it is just adjusting time for Ping Pong. She is currently spending time researching parrot bites on Youtube!
Here's one that she probably watched. Hope her's gets gentler.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F46-FY5rBYU

Celebrity Table Tennis

Photo by John Schneide. Tennis legend wields the Table Tennis racket with flair.

Name: Andre Agassi

Wikipedia: At age 13, Andre was sent to Nick Bolletteri's Tennis Academy in Florida. He was meant to stay for only 3 months because that was all his father could afford. After ten minutes of watching Agassi play, Bollettieri called Mike and said: "Take your check back. He's here for free," claiming that Agassi had more natural talent than anyone else he had seen.

Sport: Lawn Tennis

Achievements: 8 Grand Slams, 1 Olympic Gold. Only one of two players to achieve a career Golden slam (tied with Nadal)

English Open ITTF Pro Tour starts tomorrow

The Pro tour tournament at Sheffield starts tomorrow. Five of the top Ten players in the World are participating.

Here's a list of the top players:

Sl No. Name     Country  Sex   Rank

1	WANG Hao   CHN	M	3
2	ZHANG Jike   CHN	M	4
3	MA Lin   CHN	M	5
4	WANG Liqin   CHN	M	7
5	XU Xin   CHN	M	9
6	OH Sang Eun   KOR	M	13
7	CHEN Qi   CHN	M	14
8	RYU Seung Min   KOR	M	16
9	GAO Ning   SIN	M	24
10	CHEN Weixing   AUT	M	25

Jun Mizutani wins fifth national title, breaks record

The prodigiously talented Jun Mizutani has broken the Japanese national title record by winning the country's highest Table Tennis title for the 5th time. By doing this, he broke the record held by Fujii Norikazu and Saito Kiyoshi who won the titles in 1946-49 and 1982-85 respectively.

21 year old Jun is currently ranked 7th in the world, the highest he has reached in his young career.

Alexandre Cassin - another prodigy makes his mark

 Does his possess talent? Oodles of it!

Alexandre is just 12 years old and he won the U-15 section at the Hungarian open Table Tennis Championship. He is from CAM, Bordeaux (France).

See him in action. Unbelievable play for a 12 year old.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66aHGGlxVCU

The kid already has a string of titles on his name. Watch out for more of him in the future!