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 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, 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.
Egypt’s Ahmed Saleh made of one of the biggest moves by jumping 28 spots to move inside the top 50 after he reached the round of 32 at WTT Star Contender Doha while Brazil’s Gustavo Tsuboi surged eights places to 36th after progressing to the round of 16 where he was later knocked out by Korea Republic’s Jeoung Youngsik.
Austria’s Daniel Habesohn, who bowed out in the first round, tumbled down the rankings, slipping eight spots to 44.
Japan leads the charge featuring the most male players in the top 100 with 10, followed by China with eight and Germany, seven.
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 as 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) occupy pole position 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 ensured a strong 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 jumped two places to seventh (805 points) in the women’s double ranking where the Japanese pair of Miu Hirano and Kasumi Ishikawa are in pole position (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).