(By Amy Karpinski, President of Cape Fear Table Tennis Club/Photo by . Press the Enter key to open the contact card.">Tony Murnahan)

BREAKING NEWS FROM DAY 2 DOUBLES ACTION

Women’s Doubles

The big news of today’s doubles action was the young USA Team of the Sung sisters. Joanna and Rachel Sung (ranked 455th in the world) defeated Russia’s Sibel Altinkaya and Ozge Yilmaz 3-2. The young USA team faltered a bit after a 2-0 lead letting the Russian team sneak back in and tie it 2-2. The Sung sisters pulled it together and won the fifth game decisively 11-5.

USA’s team of Olympians Yue Wu and Lily Zhang (currently ranked 33rd in the world) battled hard in their match against Belgium’s unranked team of Nathalie Marchetti and Margo Degraef. However, Belgium eeked out a victory against the favored US pair.

Canadian’s Mo Zhang and Joyce Xu fell to Sarah DeNutte and Xia Lian Ni of Luxembourg 3-1.

Fan team favorites Suthasini Sawettabut/Orawan Paranang of Thailand, Sofia Polcanova of Austria/Bernadette Szocs of Romania, and Mima Ito/ Hina Hayata of Japan all stood their ground and defeated their opponents easily 3-0.

There are still a few matches left to play including China’s number one team of Chen Meng (world #1) and Qian Tianyi.

Please click this link to keep up with all the women’s doubles scores: https://eventresults.ittf.com/eventInfo?subEvt=WDOUBLES&selectedTab=Draws&eventId=2346

Men’s Doubles

The second biggest upset in USA’s favor was the team of Nikhil Kumar and Kai Zhang (ranked 75th in the world). Kumar and Zhang pummeled the higher ranked team of Aleksandr Khanin and Pavel Platonov from Belarus (ranked 53rd in the world) shutting them down 3-0.

Fan favorite teams of Patrick Franziska/Timo Boll of Germany, Kristian Karlsson and Mattias Falck of Sweden, and Jao Monteiro/Tiago Apolonia of Portugal cruised through to the next round by defeating their competitors 3-0.

There are still a few men’s doubles matches left to play including Puerto Rico’s power duo of Daniel Gonzalez and Brian Afanador.

Men’s doubles results can be found at: https://eventresults.ittf.com/eventInfo?subEvt=MDOUBLES&selectedTab=Draws&eventId=2346

Photo of day 2 doubles can be found here

Men’s and women’s singles round of 64 action begins at 3:20 EST.

Stay “In The Loop” with Butterfly professional table tennis equipment, table tennis news, table tennis technology, tournament results, and We Are Butterfly players, coaches, clubs and more.