The ITTF Pro Tournament Korean Open ended in Pyeongchang on 23 May. The all-star Chinese team took all the four gold medals as it had expected, yet insidious problems remained behind the glorious victory as the Chinese struggled their way through the course of the tournament.

　　The finals of men’s singles and women’s singles were all Chinese affairs. In the men’s final, WANG Hao challenged WANG Liqin but failed as the latter showed himself in excellent condition and captured the title by a victory of 4-1. They had defeated KONG Linghui and RYU Seung Min from Korea respectively before they met in the final. In the competition for the women’s champion, ZHANG Yining eliminated LI Jiawei from Singapore, who entered the semi-final after knocking China’s GUO Yue out of the running. NIU Jianfeng dominated another semi-final by a sheer victory of 4-0 over her compatriot WANG Nan. However, during the final encounter in the final, it was ZHANG Yining who emerged the victor by her successful fast forehand topspins.

　　In contrast to singles play, the two doubles events were not as smooth as expected. Both finals were between Chinese players and those from other national federations. In men’s finals, the champions of Asian preliminary KONG Linghui and WANG Hao had equal shares with Hong Kong’s KO Lai Chak and LI Ching in the first two games, but they managed to assume command in the rest of the match and won three successive games 11-5, 11-5 and 11-8. In the women’s final, WANG Nan/ZHANG Yining encountered a transnational pairing consisting of Germany’s Elke WOSIK and GAO Jun of the U.S.A, who caused the Chinese duo considerable difficulties in the early part of the contest. Yet by playing positively, WANG and ZHANG recovered and defeated their adversaries 4-1.

　　Despite all the victories, Chinese players as a whole did not give a perfect performance as they had promised. The Olympic seeded pair NIU Jianfeng/GUO Yue was knocked out in the first round by Elke WOSIK and GAO Jun; MA Lin/CHEN Qi were eliminated by a Japanese pair in quarter-final. The most unexpected defeat came when the world top one MA Lin was stopped outside the final eight singles players by Chinese Taipei’s JIANG Penglong. All the above failures cast doubt on China’s prospects for Athens 2004 and merit serious attention from the much exalted Chinese players.