DAWEI ITTF PRO TOUR GRAND FINALS 2001

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FIRST MATCH, FIRST UPSET

10/01/2002
Peter Jensen, ITTF
Tianjin, China

In the very first match of the Grand Finals the crowd saw a surprising victory for Jean-Michel SAIVE (BEL). The Belgian beat Nr. 4 on the World Ranking LIU Guozheng (CHN).

LIU Guozheng earlier this year had problems with his shoulder and obviously he is not quite fit yet. In any case he did not play his best and SAIVE knew very well how to exploit the situation.

The Belgian star won the first game, LIU evened to 1-1 but from then on SAIVE was in charge. Each and every game was still close but SAIVE went to 3-1. In the 5^th game he was down 6-10 but he came back and won the match on his second match point.

“LIU is the Chinese – among the best – that I feel I can beat. I had a very close match with him at the US Open and today I felt very well against him. Even when I was down with 3-4 points I still felt I had the chance”, says Jean-Michel SAIVE who actually after the draw on Wednesday claimed that he had been unlucky having to face nr. 4 in the World.

“On the other hand, I went in there having nothing to lose and after a bad period with many losses I really needed this one”.