At nine o'clock the next morning, the second day of competition officially kicked off.
Usually the second match day is already the day of the main match. This time, although the second stage of the qualifying round was successfully postponed to the second day, it still failed to receive the same attention as the main match. At 9:10 sharp, 16 games started at the same time on 16 tables.
There is still no dedicated live broadcast and commentary, it is still a step-by-step qualifying tournament, and the main draw players gather in front of many tables to watch the game, like watching monkeys.
This also makes every qualifying player swear in their hearts that they must enter the main round and become one of that glamorous group of people.
After an hour, all the games were decided.
Those who Wang Chao is familiar with basically won the game easily, with the exception of Zhang Benkuang.
Zhang Benkuang met Swedish brother Morad in this round.
This is recognized as the only interesting game in this round. Before the game started, almost everyone was optimistic about Zhang Benkuang, because Zhang Benkuang has performed quite well in the past six months, showing an excellent upward momentum, while Morad only appeared briefly on T2 and was never heard from again.
But this time Morad finally showed his claws and fangs.
When T2 faced Sissifield, perhaps it was because Sissifield's standard European style of play focused too much on strength and stalemate. Therefore, although Morad won, it felt like he was just playing poorly. Most of his points were caused by forcing Sissifield to make mistakes.
But this time facing Zhang Benkuang, who is also a younger generation player, the two showed extremely clear differences in style.
Zhang Benkuang is the most standard playing style of the new generation players. The rhythm is extremely fast, especially the fast tearing and twisting of the backhand. It can almost make many older players unable to react at all. However, the disadvantage is also that due to their young age and lack of strength, the forehand has insufficient lethality.
Morad, an 18-year-old young man, has a very strong body. His forehand is very lethal, but his backhand lacks offensive ability. He mainly focuses on rubbing, cutting, swinging and flicking. His entire technical and tactical system does not look like a new generation player, but like the traditional Chinese two-sided loop play, with the typical characteristics of "scoring with the forehand and seeking stability with the backhand".
But he is actually different from traditional players because he has maintained the habit of "not retreating" very well. At the same time, his playing style often seems casual, undisciplined, and unconstrained.
This trait not only makes his skills seem a bit rough, but also makes his playing style eclectic, and he often has unexpected ways of handling the ball, which makes Zhang Benkuang suffer a lot.
This also proves that the Swedish guy has a very delicate touch, so he can hit such random balls with sudden inspiration.
Zhang Benkuang felt tremendous pressure, and he began to roar continuously to encourage himself. His roar was as hoarse as rubbing iron, which made the spectators extremely uncomfortable. Some even covered their ears. It must be said that although his talent called "prestige" sounds a bit funny, the actual effect is indeed good.
But Morad has a bad temper and has extremely poor self-control. After being yelled at by Zhang Benkuang for more than ten times, he got angry and hit him with a racket. It almost hit Zhang Benkuang in the face. It was so frightening that Zhang Benkuang's roar turned a corner in the middle, and then rose again when it was about to be interrupted, forcing a broken tenor.
The audience burst into laughter, but Zhang Benkuang was so frightened that his face turned pale.
Many viewers remembered at this time that the grumpy boy seemed to have smashed his racket when he played T2 last time, but last time he smashed it on the ground, this time he smashed it on his opponent's face.
The referee reacted quickly and gave Morad a red card and a serious warning. If he does it again, he will be directly disqualified from the game.
In fact, this level of bad behavior is enough to directly ban him from the game, but Morad has been recognized in Sweden as the successor of Old Wa. The referee did not kill Morad out of respect for the legendary Old Wa.
However, Morad was not convinced, cursed, picked up the racket, and continued playing.
This twist obviously affected Zhang Benkuang. The 15-year-old boy was so frightened by the irritable brother that he couldn't shout, and his performance began to change. He originally led 2:1 in the first three games, but from this moment on, the situation took a turn for the worse. He was actually chased by Morad for three consecutive games, and won with a big score of 4:2.
In the end, Zhang Benkuang, who had high hopes in Sakura Country, was eliminated and fell in the last step of the qualifying round.
At this point, the qualifying rounds are all over, and the 16 players entering the main round include Wang Chao, Lu Feiyang, Morad, Qiu Shang, in addition to Some people have very intimidating names but are not too strong, such as Gananaka, who is known as the first brother of the Peacock Country, and Arul, who is known as African top player.
Although there are many Yi brothers, they all come from the Ping Pong Desert and do not deserve special attention.
The organizers drew lots again, and this time, it really attracted everyone's attention, because at this stage, almost all the players are already well-known big names to the fans.
So every time a name is read out, it can trigger exclamations and cheers from the audience.
Half an hour later, the dust settled, and the battle situation of the eight groups clearly appeared on the big screen.
Area 1/8: Xiao Fei, xx, xx, Yan Ping'an.
Zone 2/8: Bayer, xx, xx, Lin Zijun.
Zone 3/8: Mizutori Hato, Wang Chao, xx, Zhu Shixian.
Zone 4/8: k. Michel, xx, Lu Feiyang, Li Zhengzhi.
Zone 5/8: Ochomirov, Arul, xx, Wolf.
Zone 6/8: Weng Chunting, Morad, xx, He Junjie.
Zone 7/8: Hook, Qiu Shang, xx, Pike.
Zone 8/8: Lin Li, Gananaka, xx, Fang Xiaobo.
For those in the know, just by glancing at this matchup table, you can roughly know which games are worthy of attention.
In the first round of the group stage, strictly speaking, there is only one game worth focusing on, and that is Wang Chao playing Mizutori Hato.
This is an absolute feud.
Last year in T2, Sakura Country people were full of confidence and wanted to keep the championship in China, but in the end they were disrupted by Huaping. During the whole disruption process, the most heartbreaking thing for Sakura Country people was undoubtedly the match between Mizutori Hato and Zhu Ding.
"Mizutori Hato with a bad waist" almost became the laughing stock of the world table tennis community in the following months. The screenshot of Mizutori Hato holding his waist and screaming with his mouth went viral on the Internet. He himself was almost attacked by Sakura Country's anti-fans on the forum. He dared not go out for more than a month because there were fans who threatened to beat him every time they saw him.
Mizutori Hato is only good at moving his mouth, not his fists. In order not to suffer physical pain, he lived a very miserable life, that is, he only dared to relax a little when he went abroad.
He urgently needs a game to restore his reputation, but unfortunately, he will never meet Zhu Ding again, so he will never think of revenge in this life.
Then, the next best thing is that he must defeat a Chinese table tennis player with enough weight to make the anti-fans forgive him. He does not ask the anti-fans to give him praise, but at least does not want to beat him once.
Then, Wang Chao, who won the T2 championship, is of course the best candidate.
It is also because of this that Mizutori Hato made a special trip to watch Wang Chao's qualifying match. He really, really wanted to meet Wang Chao.
Now he was benevolent, and he was very happy, but by no means relaxed, because he saw some terrible things from the game when Wang Chao played Zou Zhengyu.
It's good to win, but if you lose, you will really be torn apart.
Not only do the anti-fans beat you once you see them on the street, they also send razor blades and dead rats to your home.
There are even more extreme black fans who may bring tools and knock on the door directly.
In addition, there are two games worthy of general attention, namely Lu Feiyang vs Li Zhengzhi and Weng Chunting vs Morad.
Lu Feiyang currently only has one winning record that has reference value, that is, T2 eliminated Zhuang Huishen, but Zhuang Huishen is old after all, and his strength has declined seriously, which is far from enough to test the true strength of Lu Feiyang.
And Li Zhengzhi, although temporarily ranked 15th in the world, which is quite high, was beaten so badly by Lin Zijun in T2 that many people thought that Li Zhengzhi had been beaten back to its original shape.
After all, Japanese penhold single-ply blade's style of play itself is extreme. On the one hand, it has an invincible attack power, and on the other hand, it has a fatal weakness that can be easily mobilized. So when Li Zhengzhi encounters an opponent, whether its strengths cover its weaknesses or whether its weaknesses drag down its strengths depends entirely on the opponent's style.
In Lu Feiyang's debut, his playing style was very simple and rough. However, because he comes from Huaping and has a good evaluation within Huaping, no one in the world table tennis dares to say that Lu Feiyang can only be simple and rough.
After all, Huaping is rich in all kinds of silver coins.
So whether Lu Feiyang can perfectly restrain Li Zhengzhi with his delicate ball control style is the biggest suspense of this game.
And Weng Chunting fights Morad...
To be honest, before today, no one thought that Morad would pose a threat to Weng Chunting, because Weng Chunting is ranked 9th in the world. This ranking is really very high. He can be regarded as a top player other than Chinese Table Tennis Association.
But the problem is that Morad exposed too many things in the game against Zhang Benkuang.
What he relied on to defeat Zhang Benkuang was of course not just hitting him in the face with a racket, but the delicate touch behind his unconstrained and unstructured playing style.
Being able to use non-standard postures to hit unconventional balls at will means that his control of the ball has reached the level of perfection.
And his many changes in line, speed, and length in that game proved that although this guy was irritable, he was by no means brainless. On the contrary, he played smarter than 99% of professional players.
This has to remind people of table tennis legend Old Wa.
Back then, Old Wa had an invincible forehand, a steady and thin backhand, and at the same time, his playing style was unconstrained and very smart.
You see, all these characteristics are almost exactly the same as Morad.
The Swedes have long ago claimed that Morad is the successor of Old Wa, but the world table tennis community actually does not believe it, because Old Wa is a very arrogant person. If the seedling is not good, he will not be willing to cultivate it even if he brings his unique skills to the ground.
Characters like k. Michel and m. Michel can reach the world ranking of 11. They are definitely super geniuses, but because of their different styles, Old Wa is not inferior to them.
But now the world table tennis world believes that this Morad is probably the direct disciple of Old Wa.
This means too much.
In fantasy novels, for those peerless holy places hidden in the world, once a disciple comes out of the mountain and walks around the world, they must have extremely strong strength, because only in this way can the holy land not be disgraced.
Now, could this Morad be the one representing Old Wa?
With this conjecture, everyone's evaluation of Morad's combat effectiveness was raised by three points out of thin air, and an 18-year-old rookie was suddenly raised to the level that he could compete with Weng Chunting. Even his strange racket was given a mysterious meaning.
After a brief break of half an hour, the first round of Hong Kong Open finally officially started.
The biggest difference between the main game and the qualifying round is that now every game will have commentary, multi-angle cameras, and wonderful picture replays.
Of course, in order to ensure efficiency, it is impossible for everyone to focus on one table. The eight tables are still playing at the same time, and the live broadcast sources of each table are all open. The major live broadcast platforms will naturally arrange different commentators to explain different games according to the importance of the game.
On the Silver Ball Dance live broadcast website far away in China, within just a few minutes, Brother Da Ma, who was responsible for the live broadcast commentary on the No. 1 table, found that his live broadcast room was flooded with barrages.
Wang Chao vs Mizutori Hato, it is on this table.
At this moment, the backend statistics of the Silver Ball Dance website operation department clearly showed that 90% of the current users had already poured into the Brother Da Ma live broadcast room.
As for Lu Feiyang vs Li Zhengzhi, which started playing at the 8th table at the same time, it did not get the remaining 10% of users, because after all, there will be some fans who simply like a certain player and watch his live broadcast.
Aren't people like Xiao Fei, who is number two in the world, and shy, innocent little puppies like Lin Zijun, not worthy of attracting fans? If you dare to say that you are not worthy, my mom fans will dare to kill you.
Standing in front of the table, Wang Chao looked calm.
In a sense, Mizutori Hato is the most difficult non-Chinese associations player he has encountered since time travel, and is also the highest-ranked non-Chinese associations player in the world. He has only encountered a player of this level once before, when Chinese Table Tennis base beat Bai Feng.
He calculated that game from beginning to end, and finally used Bai Feng's character flaws to kill Bai Feng.
But Mizutori Hato does not have the same character flaws as Bai Feng.
This person just has a bad mouth, but he is not stupid. On the contrary, Mizutori Hato is a very smart genius. He is praised by Sakura Country people as a unique genius who meets once in a thousand years.
In the past, Mizutori Hato had the common problem of geniuses, weak will and lack of fighting spirit. Many times he would choose to give up because the battle situation was too difficult, but today, there is no doubt that Mizutori Hato has unprecedented fighting spirit, and he must win.
If he loses again, he will hardly be able to survive in the country.
God knows how long it had been since he'd been to Ginza.
For the nightclub, for the female star, and for the old waist that has been recuperated to wear out again, he will risk everything to win this victory.
Wang Chao smiled.
He was thinking that, coincidentally, he had the same need.
Because not long ago, Mizutori Hato had a bad mouth about Luo Jiu, and his statement was exactly the same as that of Sun Tianlong. He said that there was something wrong with the rubber of Luo Jiu, and that applying granular rubber on the back was completely opportunistic. He also predicted that when the granular rubber becomes familiar to other players, Luo Jiu will fall off the altar and never get up again.
Luo Jiu was so angry that he couldn't do anything about it.
Because it is obvious that Mizutori Hato, who dares to say such things, is mentally prepared to "strategically avoid Luo Jiu", just as he has been strategically avoiding Sun Tianlong all these years.
Throughout this year, Mizutori Hato will never let himself appear in the same open tournament as Sun Tianlong and Luo Jiu.
With his status as the first brother of Sakura Country, he can choose the games he wants to participate in at will.
And if he really encounters these two people in the three major competitions that are difficult to give up, he can choose whether to abstain based on the situation on the spot.
Don't doubt it, Mizutori Hato can do this kind of thing.
He is both a Mizutori Hato with no taboos and a shameless Mizutori Hato.
Even this time, the reason why he must win Wang Chao is not to regain the lost face.
He just wants to be able to go shopping with female celebrities in the country normally.
So Luo Jiu called Wang Chao, please Wang Chao must avenge himself if he has the chance.
For this reason, he even said disgusting words, "You and I are brothers, and humiliating me is humiliating you."
Tell me, how could Wang Chao refuse?
The referee blew the whistle and he threw the coin high, drawing a bright silver line under the lights.
The game begins.
(I heard that many people don't read "Author's Words", so I can only announce the reader group number here: 697577249. It's new and hot. Hurry up. Only a few people have come in now. As the leader of a group of 2,000 people, my face hurts.)