BY GARY RUDERMAN, Owner-Producer, Reflex Sports

PART 2 of 4

The games begin with Team Competition

The team events made up the initial week of competition, and we concentrated on the Men's play. The deep Chinese team makes it through its round robin without problems, but Sweden stumbles in its match against Belgium in its opening round robin. The Swedes seem to have the match under control at 2-2, with Waldner having only Philippe Saive to dispose of to allow Sweden to capture first place in their group. Waldner runs into a buzzsaw, however, as Saive attacks every ball ferociously to prevail at 9, 19. This was not a good omen for Waldner, although our experience over the years is that he doesn't seem to get up for team matches as much as for individual competition. This loss puts Sweden in the unfortunate position of having to face China in the quarter-finals.

For the first matchup, the Swedes choose to throw Karlsson at Liu Guoliang. Karlsson plays his usual style in the first game, and loses at 17. In the second game Karlsson tries a new strategy, which seems to be working. He returns deep, soft, no-spin balls to the backhand, and when Liu opens, Karlsson counters hard. Karlsson moves ahead 18-12, but Liu digs in and refuses to lose another point, winning at 22-20. In the second match, Waldner faces Kong and tries similar soft strategy, and Kong counters with the same. It appears that "less is more" and that the first to change loses the point. Waldner wins the first at 15. The second game follows the same approach, until, down 17-18, Waldner's surprise backhand kill of a Kong kill evens the game, and they see-saw back and forth to a Waldner 27-25 victory. Wang Tao's game against Persson is another story, as they play spin and off-the -bounce kill rallies which, is, of course, playing into Wang's strength...and so China goes up 2-1. Kong kills Karlsson 14 and 17, which sends Sweden back to the drawing board for their next team confrontation with China.

France prevails 3-2 against Belgium, with Chila's long spinning rallies against Philippe Saive the highlight of the match. France's match against Germany is a tightly fought battle, until, at 2-2, Eloi dominates Fetzner 15, 11, to send France into the Final. China goes 3-1 against Korea, having no trouble except for number one seed Kong Linghui's surprise loss to Yoo Nam Kyu. This match, however, pitted more than team against team, since it appeared that every person of Chinese or Korean ancestry in Manchester showed up for this event. A sea of opposing flags, cheerleaders and noisemakers in the stands creates an unbelievable din. Now the stage is set for the insurgent French team to meet in the Final against the usually dominant Chinese.

In the first match,Kong recovers to prevail against Gatien in three. The second match, Liu Guoliang against Patrick Chila, might be the most entertaining match of the team event. Chila must have watched Karlsson play Liu, and he tries to adapt Karlsson's strategy to his own style. Liu is the ultimate serve and smash attacker while Chila epitomizes the French artistic style. He throws everything in the book against Liu to see what works, and much of his "tricky" arsenal is effective. He has mastered a backhand return of serve involving a wristy sidespin backspin that curls into a right-hander's body. This allows him to open on Liu's ineffective response. (The Chinese know a good thing when they see it, and later in the tournament Kong is observed trying the same return.) Another effective return of Liu's marvelous serves has Chila letting the spinny serve drop to his ankles, whereupon he rolls the ball back to die on Liu's bat. He mixes no-spin deceptive-spin and an effective lefty sidespin loop that effectively stymies Liu's normal power game. He unveils some unique serves of his own, and it is amazing to see the usually steady Liu miss three of the same serves in a row in a crucial part of the match. The result is a 17, -15, 10 victory that proves to be France's only point in the 3-1 match decision by China. China's depth becomes even more apparent in the individual competition with the introduction of two new stars who went through round after round losing only to the finalists.

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