HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — This Thanksgiving, Chicago Wind (8-4, 145 points) fans should be thankful for Emmanuel Lebesson (SPINDEX: 2758).
There aren’t many words that can describe Lebesson’s performance during Week 7 in Hollywood, Fla. “Exceptional” comes to mind. “Immaculate” feels appropriate.
So when words fall short, we turn to numbers and statistics to provide context to Lebesson’s outstanding weekend:
A weekend against Elsayed Lashin (2732), Ľubomír Pištej (2749) and Daniel Gorak (2704) would have many players afraid of what could happen to their SPINDEX ratings. Not Lebesson. Those star players were little more than three unfortunate victims in what became the most dominant weekend a single player has had this season.
“You can’t ask for anything better than an absolute flawless performance all weekend,” Wind coach Eric Owens told Table Tennis TV after Sunday’s match.
Those nine wins helped add to three jaw-dropping final scores. 14-7 against the Bay Area Blasters on Friday. 17-4 against the Los Angeles Spinners on Saturday. 18-3 against the Florida Crocs. Any morsel of hope the Wind’s opponents had of salvaging any of these matches, Lebesson crushed with no remorse as soon as Singles 4 ended.
Lebesson had plenty of support from his teammates. Rookie Robert Gardos (2810) won seven of his nine games this weekend, sweeping Bay Area’s Jinbao Ma (2686) and taking two of three from Los Angeles’ Kou Lei (2784) and Florida’s Asuka Sakai (2739). Mo Zhang (2591) earned consideration for Women’s Player of the Week with five wins, which included a near-perfect record on Saturday against Los Angeles’ Matilda Ekholm (2559) and Sunday against Florida’s Angela Guan (2479). Jeongwoo Park (2782) matched up against Bay Area’s Taehyun Kim (2760), Los Angeles’ Alexandre Robinot (2726) and Florida’s Marc Duran (2721), and he ended each of those sets with two of three wins.
Each member of the Wind played an important role in securing an undefeated Week 6, their first of the season. That’s a feat only Carolina (4-2, 61 points) and Portland (7-2, 125 points) have accomplished so far this year, and those teams have championship aspirations. Chicago clearly does too.
The hottest team in the league hopes to add to its winning streak on Jan. 16 for Week 10. More weekends like Lebesson’s could make it difficult for anyone to stop them.
“I think our preparation was perfect, and we came out 3-0,” Owens said. “It was a great weekend.”
Friday was a bittersweet day for the Florida Crocs (3-6, 79 points). On one hand, it was the first match of the Crocs’ first homestand of the season, a chance for the team that’s undergone plenty of tumult throughout the year to bask in the support of its fans. On the other hand, they would have to take the table against Spinners star Matilda Ekholm, an old friend.
Ekholm spent the start of her MLTT career with the Crocs, but their contract ended over the summer when Ekholm joined the Spinners. She has spoken with her former coach, Frank Arias, but the two had yet to see each other in person. That all changed this weekend, and to the Crocs’ coach, it felt like nothing changed at all.
“I said I respect her a lot, and I love her game, and I wish her all the luck,” Arias said. “She said the same for the Crocs.”
Who would be the one to face her? Free agent Angela Guan. She took the roster spot of Peiyu Zhu (2597), who missed her team’s Week 7 matches due to her participation in the China National Games. Guan ended up winning one game, which set the Crocs up for a successful rest of the match.
“To come and play directly like this [as a free agent] is very difficult,” Marc Duran said after Friday’s match. “It was very good that she could take one set, even when we were losing in the first [set].”
The next set brought the return of Angel Naranjo (2616) and Chihwei Yeh (2680), perhaps the most dominant doubles duo of the weekend. Naranjo and Yeh swept Ľubomír Pištej and Andrew Cao (2571), but that was just the start. The tandem left Broward Table Tennis Club on Sunday with six wins, which tied the Blasters for the most of any team in Week 7.
The Spinners hoped that Marcos Madrid (2663) could take one of his Singles 3 games and expand their dwindling lead. But Marc Duran wouldn’t have any of it. He led a complete sweep of Madrid, which gave his team the lead for the first time in the match.
Though Pištej got the better of Daniel Gorak in Singles 4, the Crocs still entered the Golden Game at just a one-point deficit. And who else to lead the Crocs in Golden Game points but Gorak, who scored six and held Alexandre Robinot to just two. And when the Spinners had 16 points, the Crocs hit 21 to earn their first victory of Week 7.
That was the only win the Crocs earned this weekend. They lost to the Bay Area Blasters 7-14 on Saturday before the Chicago Wind toppled them 3-18 on Sunday. But winning on the same day they welcomed Ekholm back to Florida? That’s a moment that the team will certainly celebrate.
“It was very nice to have her on the team those first two seasons,” Duran said. She contributed so much on [our] team, and I’m so happy she can continue in the league.”
Any victory for the Crocs is worth celebrating after they lost superstar Liam Pitchford (2897) for the season with a hip injury. The news crushed the team, who had postseason ambitions with Pitchford leading the way. But this Crocs team has managed to rally without him, and they believe in their ability to cause some noise going forward.
That won’t be easy. They will have to go through Chicago, Texas (4-2, 74 points) and New York (6-3, 101 points) when they return for Week 10. That’s three teams who could say they’re among the biggest threats in the league. But if the Crocs have more nights like Friday, they could be chomping their way to playoff position by the end of this season.
And if not, they will have this special Friday night to look back on, one that Ekholm was happy to be a part of.
“I’m really happy to see all my friends,” Ekholm said before Friday’s match. “I’m happy to be here.”
It didn’t seem possible for Lily Zhang’s (2587) season to get any more impressive. But it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Bay Area Blasters (3-6, 75 points) superstar is once again defying all expectations.
Zhang finished MLTT’s sixth week in Duluth, Ga., with seven wins and 13 Golden Game points, which earned her the Women’s Player of the Week award. She had an incredible week, but it was apparently just the start of something even greater. Not only did she win seven of her nine games in Week 7, but her three-game sweep of Chicago’s Mo Zhang on Friday made her the first woman to top MLTT’s official power rankings list.
She continued her hot streak into Saturday with another sweep of Florida’s Angela Guan. Though she stumbled a bit against Los Angeles’ Matilda Ekholm on Sunday, she still showed how valuable she is to her team with her performance this past weekend.
“When she’s here, she’s totally committed to the team,” Blasters coach Tim Wang said. “She’s warming up and she’s doing everything that she can to make sure that everybody else is also able to perform at their best.”
This week also featured the first moments of consistent action for Taehyun Kim this season. He missed his team’s Week 1 matches in Pleasanton, Calif., as he recovered from foot surgery, and he only played in one doubles set and two Golden Games during Week 6 in Duluth. Kim comfortably participated in all three matches this week, though he only won two of his nine singles games.
His doubles performance more than made up for those seven losses. Not only did Kim anchor his team in all three of their doubles sets, but he thrived in them. He won six of his team’s nine doubles matches, and the dynamic duo of Kim and Baek Kwang-il dropped just one game throughout the entire weekend.
Kim’s presence on the sidelines has been crucial for the Blasters over the past few weeks. Now, they’re stoked to see him on the table.
“Throughout the days that he’s playing, and every match that he plays, he gets better and better and back into his original co-MVP form,” Wang said.
The Blasters’ individual success didn’t translate to success over the weekend. For the third time this season, the Blasters finished with a 1-2 record. Their 14-7 win against the Florida Crocs on Saturday was impressive, but it fell in between a 7-14 loss to Chicago on Friday and a 4-17 defeat from Los Angeles on Sunday. A week that began as a prime opportunity for the Blasters to rise up the West Division ended with the team still in fifth place.
They’ve still got plenty of chances to turn their fortunes around. They will face New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta (1-5, 46 points) from Dec. 12-14 for MLTT’s eighth week. If Zhang maintains her excellent season, and if Kim returns to his MVP form, Bay Area could be blasting off to another playoff spot.
When we last saw the Los Angeles Spinners (2-7, 79 points), they sulked out of Westchester Table Tennis Center after Week 5 ended. They had suffered three heartbreaking losses, including a 5-16 beatdown from Texas and a Golden Game collapse against New York. That winless weekend earned them a 1-5 record, and it felt like their playoff hopes had already been dashed.
This week started fairly similarly. They lost to Florida 8-13 on Friday before falling 4-17 to Chicago on Saturday. That would be five consecutive losses to just one win over the season. They couldn’t lose any longer. Something needed to change.
And on Sunday, that’s exactly what happened. The Spinners clobbered the Blasters 17-4, snapping their skid and coming out of the weekend with a win.
Everyone on the team played their part to make that win happen. Alexandre Robinot took all three games against Taehyun Kim to start his team on the right foot. Matilda Ekholm managed to take two of three from a red-hot Lily Zhang, and those two games were the only ones she lost all weekend. Though Ľubomír Pištej and Marcos Madrid won just one of their doubles games, Pištej redeemed himself after sweeping Jinbao Ma in Singles 3. And after Kou Lei (2784) took two games from Elsayed Lashin, the Spinners earned themselves a five-point lead heading into the Golden Game, which they won without any trouble.
Even in their losing efforts, the Spinners played much better than their record showed. Robinot and Pištej won all three of their games against the Crocs on Friday. Matilda Ekholm won the majority of her set against Angela Guan. Marcos Madrid stepped in for Aditya Sareen (2636) and helped the Spinners take two of the six doubles matches he played in.
All of that hard work led to a well-earned win, a beautiful catharsis after five painful losses. The last time the Spinners felt the joy of victory was in Week 3, when Madrid led a Golden Game comeback against the Wind. But Sunday’s victory wasn’t a stroke of luck; this match was decided well before the Golden Game began.
This was, far and away, the best match the Spinners have played all season, and a very positive note to end the weekend. If they keep this up, Bay Area, New York and Atlanta should be scared to come to Los Angeles when the Spinners host them for Week 8.
