Giannis Sgouropoulos advanced one round to the Feeder ping pong tournament in Qatar and to the central board with a very difficult victory in the seven sets and stopped in the second from an insurmountable Chinese obstacle.
The four-time European champion in the youth junior made his debut in Doha in the international tournaments for 2022. In general, he did well in solid tests and certainly gave matches that are offered for useful conclusions.
In the “64”, he eliminated the Austrian Masie Kolojietsik at noon on Tuesday 15/3 with his 4 favorite 4-3 set. A few hours later, he was defeated in the “32” with a 4-0 set by the first favorite of the match, the Chinese Zao Zihao.
We remind you that George Stamatouros and Malamatenia Papadimitriou also competed in Feeder and the former, together with Sgouropoulos, will remain in Doha to take part in the Contender tournament (18-24 / 3).
Sgouropoulos (number 155 in the current world ranking) was directly on the board, where, unlike the qualifiers, each match is judged by the “best of seven” system. In the first round, he was drawn with his peer Masie Kolodziecic. He gave a “battle” of almost an hour, but, even when he accepted the draw from 3-1, he knew that he would continue with the ρο superiority of his incredible tradition when the games go to the seventh set! This is exactly what he did with composure and determination and reached the final victory. The sets: 8-11, 11-9, 11-9, 11-4, 11-13, 7-11 and 11-4.
In the “32” of the tournament, the degree of difficulty was clearly raised. At the age of 25, Zao Zihao is at number 36 in the international ranking list and is one of the top penholder players in the world.
The Eleusinian ace could not really compete with him and submitted to his superiority with a 4-0 set. He put more pressure in the second set, claimed the equalizer, but “bent” with a very small difference (5-11, 8-11, 5-11, 5-11).
Zao won his first World Tour title in 2018 in Belarus. In 2019 he was a finalist in the finals of the singles in the respective tournaments of Bulgaria and Austria, while in the same year he had won two gold and two silver medals at the World University Games.
This year he comes from very strong tests in Macau and Muscat, where he came face to face with his top compatriots, such as Wang Chukin and Su Xin. In the first round in Qatar, in fact, he was very strong against one of his compatriots and specifically Zhang Yudong, whom he defeated with 4-1 sets.
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