Spring 2011 Tourney – Night 2

The second night of Championship Table Tennis at the Colburn School featured seven matches, eleven competitors, twenty-two pizzas, seventy-five spectators, ninety-one ping pong balls, and sixty-seven thousand calories.

Leading off was a mid-seed matchup between 8th seeded Paul Macres and 10th seeded Jeff Myers.  Fresh off his doubles tournament runner-up performance, Macres looked to take down the penhold style of Myers and advance to the next round.  Myers put up a fight, but he was no match for Macres, who has clearly put in his work in the off season.  This sportswriter looks on in anticipation to see how far the strong 8th seed will go.

Next was the tournament debuts of 17th seeded Eugene Lifschitz and 20th seeded Hanbyul “Onestar” Jang.  The wily lefty Lifschitz easily took the first two sets and looked to run away with the match.  Settling down in the third, though, Onestar fought back to make it a 10-10 deuce.  Going back and forth, Lifschitz did end up running away with the match 3-0, but he at least had to work a bit for that final 14-12 set win.

Match 3 had the former champ, the 5th seed Jimmy Kang square off against the 13th seed Stephen Tavani.  Tavani, fresh off his win against Colin Sieg in night 1 stormed off to a great start to lead Kang 7-3.  Tavani has a brutal, spin heavy serve that kept the champ off-balance for the first half-set, but that wouldn’t last long.  After figuring the tricky serve out, Kang swept up the remainder of set 1 and pummeled the 13th seed the next two sets to claim a 3-0 match victory.

Former runner-up and 3rd seeded Nigel Armstrong made his tournament entrance against the 17th seed, the lucid lefty Eugene Lifschitz.  In what was a surprise to this sportswriter and many of the spectators, Lifschitz led off with a first set win.  Armstrong’s game hinges on one cold, hard idea:  attack like a rabid terrier.  He has one gear, and that gear is fast, aggressive, and intimidating.  The downside to that mantra is it opens the door to plenty of errors if the slams don’t fall.  Not to take any credit away from the lucid lefty, whose first set was cleaner and tighter than Armstrong’s, but Armstrong simply couldn’t keep the ball on the table.  Luckily, he found his rhythm and forced his will on the match to take the next three sets to advance.

Next up was a showdown between a former champ and the current champ.  5th seed Jimmy Kang squared off against the 1st seed Christopher Zack in a match that would make history.  Zack, who began this match with a 19-0 record, quickly padded that number to make it an eye-rubbing 21 big wins to 0 losses.  Down 0-2, most people would simply get out of the way as quickly as possible and back in line to get some more pizza, but Kang didn’t become a CTTA champion because he’s “most people.”  Down but not out, he survived  Zack’s freaky-deaky serves to stand on the precipice to a set 3 victory 10-9.  As chance would have it, Kang served his own fate, and got Zack’s return to sail long.  With that, Kang did what no one, even Grand Champion Jeremy Berry, in the history of Championship Table Tennis at the Colburn School has ever done - taken a single set from Zack in singles play.  Now, if you’re scratching your head and wondering why we’re making such a big deal over a single set loss, then WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN???  Zack took out the three-time champ Berry 4-0 in the finals last tournament, so yes, it’s a huge deal!  Just when we thought that Zack was a robot, alien, or artificially created in a lab for the sole purpose of dominating at table tennis, he shows just how fundamentally human he really is.   So there it is, gentlemen.  Can he be defeated?  Thanks to Kang, it’s possible, that much we know.  (In case you couldn’t tell, Zack won the 4th set to take the match 3-1)

In what appeared at first to be a filler match on our way to the Armstrong/Bian match rounding out the night, two-time runner-up, the 4th seed Radu Paponiu faced off against tournament newbie 19th seeded John Winstead.  Paponiu found Winstead’s clean defensive game hard to crack and somehow fell behind early in the first set.  He was unable to claw back and fell as Winstead took the set lead 1-0.  Rallying back, Paponiu won set 2 to even the match 1-1.  Perhaps it was overconfidence, but Paponiu somehow couldn’t rattle Winstead, who out-concentrated the king of concentration himself.  Winstead won the 3rd match to take the lead 2-1 and stood on the brink of a huge victory.  Like the week before, Ben Lash “LaRue” snickered to himself in the corner and this time a certain sportswriter demanded from LaRue any information on the somehow impervious 19th seed.  Apparently, Winstead practices everyday, and studies from LaRue, who looks to be the first ping pong pedagogue in the CTTA.  As the fourth set got underway, we again, for the second match of the evening, were set to witness history as Winstead’s backspin heavy style kept Paponiu off balance enough to take the set and match.  With this, we saw the biggest upset in CTTA history, as never before has a 19th seed taken out a 4th seed in early round play.  As this tournament’s instant Cinderella story, Winstead looks to keep fighting his way through the ranks.

The final match of the evening was the much anticipated battle between 3rd seeded Nigel Armstrong and 7th seeded Feng Bian, and it certainly lived up to the hype.  At first their styles seem strangely similar, as they both use the penhold grip, but outside of that, they couldn’t be more different.  Armstrong, as stated before is like a terrier going constantly for his opponent’s juggler.  Bian, on the other hand, is like a venus fly trap, waiting patiently for the perfect time to close in around his prey.  The first four sets went along this way as they went back and forth, Armstrong attacking full throttle and Bian strategically setting up every play, until we were tied 2-2.  Bian’s calculated manner seemed to be wearing down the aggressive Armstrong as he slowly worked his way to a fifth set lead.  Unable to contain Bian, Armstrong fell behind 10-7, and had to deal with 3 match points from his opponent.  Somehow, somewhere, Armstrong found another gear and graduated from terrier to pit bull as he savagely tore into Bian the next five straight points to secure the match victory.

With that, another night of Championship Table Tennis at the Colburn School comes to a close.  With one more night before the finals, and either finalist yet to be chosen, the best is yet to come!

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