Los Angeles, June 29 (IANS) India’s Manav Thakkar overcame France’s Flavien Coton 3-2 in a hard-fought first-round clash, while Sathiyan Gnanasekaran failed to progress past the first round, even as top global stars progressed to the next round of the World Table Tennis (WTT) United States Smash.

Thakkar won the first game 12-10 but lost the second by same score, 10-12 before recovering to win the match 12-10, 10-12, 11-7, 7-11, 11-7 while Sathiyan saved a match point in the third game but could not take the match into the fourth game as he went down to Yuta Tanaka of Japan 3-0 (5-11, 7-11, 10-12) in a first round clash at the Ontario Convention Center on Sunday.

Among the other Indian players, Yashaswini Ghorpade will start her campaign against the third seed Yuling Zhu of Macao (China), while Manika Batra will take on Japanese wildcard Sakura Yokoi in another Round of 64 match.

Top Indian singles player and Olympian Sreeja Akula will run into 16th-seeded Cheon-hui Joo of South Korea in a Round of 64 match, while the mixed doubles pair of Manush Shah and Diya Chitale, seeded fifth, will start against American wildcards Jishan Liang and Sally Moyland.

In the women’s doubles, the seventh-seeded pair of Ghorpade and Chitale will start their campaign on Tuesday, as will Manav Thakkar in the men’s singles against World No. 1 Wang Chuqin. In the men’s doubles, Thakkar and Maunsh Shah, seeded fifth, await their next opponents in the Round of 16 on Tuesday.

Wang Chuqin led the march of the stars into the next round, notching a straight-game victory over teammate Zhou Qihao to advance into the men’s singles last 32, which started on Sunday.

Wang kicked off his title defense in emphatic fashion, surviving a tense second game in an 11-6, 15-13, 11-3 win, in his first match in more than one month after helping China win its 12th straight men’s title at the ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships in London.

Wang credited the win to mentality. “Win or lose, it won’t go beyond your expectations when you play against a teammate, as the level of play is quite close. Coming into this match, I had a positive mindset and tried to figure out how I fared after a long time without playing any competitive matches,” he said.

China’s Lin Shidong and Chen Yuanyu also reached the men’s singles last 32, according to a report by Xinhua.

Lin sailed past South Korea’s Park Gang-hyeon 11-5, 11-2, 11-6, while Chen dispatched host wild card Nandan Naresh 11-6, 11-8, 8-11, 11-4.

“Park played very well recently, and his first three strokes and forehand are high-caliber, so I approached this match with a mindset of challenging him and tried to adjust my mentality,” Lin said.

Lin Yun-ju of Chinese Taipei became a standout victim in the main draw’s opening day action, as the No. 7 seed lost in five games to teammate Kuo Guan-hong.

In women’s singles, China’s second seed Wang Manyu made little work of defeating 15-year-old U.S. player Irene Yeoh 11-5, 11-3, 11-4, and was joined by teammates Kuai Man and Shi Xunyao in the last 32.

“The first match against a young player was mainly about getting used to the venue,” Wang said. “Competition and training venues are different, and I will face opponents with different styles of play, so I need to make quick adjustments as the tournament progresses.”

The two China-U.S. pairs were both eliminated in the first round, with Xue Fei and Kanak Jha losing to China’s Yuan Licen and Wen Ruibo 3-1 in men’s doubles, while Bosman Botha and Qin Yuxuan fell in three games to host duo Naresh and Jessica Reyes Lai.

–IANS

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