Japan’s Tomokazu Harimoto moved up one spot to fourth place in the latest ITTF Table Tennis World Ranking after winning WTT Star Contender Doha last week.
The 17-year-old defeated Germany’s Dimitrij Ovtcharov and Ruwen Filus in the semi-final and final respectively to join four other Chinese players (Fan Zhendong, Xu Xin, Ma Long and Lin Gaoyuan) inside the top-five after amassing 9833 points.
Ovtcharov, who won WTT Contender Doha the week prior, climbed one spot up to sit in ninth position on 8006 points. Chinese Taipei’s Lin Yun-Ju remained in sixth place while Brazil’s Hugo Calderano and Sweden’s Mattias Falck are ranked seventh and eighth respectively.
European players were the biggest movers of the week with Filus’ WTT Star Contender Doha semi-final run helping him surge seven places and Darko Jorgic and Anton Kallberg reaching career high ranking positions.
Jorgic, Slovenia’s leading male player, jumped four places up to 27th spot after falling to Filus in the semi-final, while Sweden’s Anton Kallberg climbed five spots to 53rd place after reaching the quarter-final where he lost to Ovtcharov despite having numerous match points.
In the women’s singles ranking, Singapore’s Feng Tianwei jumped two places to 10th position after making it into her first final in almost four years at WTT Star Contender Doha where she took on Japan’s Mima Ito.
Ito proved too strong for the Singaporean as she went on to capture back-to-back titles at the WTT Middle East Hub. The 20-year-old remains number two (12081 points) in the world, one spot behind China’s Chen Meng (13825 points).
Korea Republic’s Lee Sangsu and Jeoung (2084 points) reclaimed top spot in the men’s doubles ranking following their win over Spain’s Alvaro Robles and Romania’s Ovidiu Ionescu at WTT Star Contender Doha. Despite that defeat, Robles and Ovidiu became the highest ranked European presence in the ranking as they moved six places up to fourth on 1194 points.
Czech Republic’s Hana Matelova together with Barbora Balazova from Slovak Republic went two places up to seventh (805 points) in the women’s doubles ranking where the Japanese pair of Miu Hirano and Kasumi Ishikawa are in pole position on 1909 points.
Chinese Taipei’s Cheng I-Ching and Lin Yun-Ju, who clinched the mixed doubles title at WTT Star Contender Doha are currently ranked number one in that category (2393 points) with France’s Emmanuel Lebesson and Jia Nan Yuan making their move up two places to seventh position (917 points).