Favorites advance at singles events of table tennis worlds

Men's and women's singles events of the world table tennis championships started on Tuesday as crowds saw all their local heroes advance into the second round at the prestigious tournament.

Ma Long, Xu Xin, Zhang Jike, Fan Zhendong, Fang Bo and Liang Jinkun all beat their opponents in men's singles opening round without too much trouble.

Ma and Fan were as dominant as expected winning 4-0. Zhang was never threatened in his 4-1 win, but made some uncharacteristic mistakes on serve which cost him the fourth game.

Second seed Xu lost the first game before getting into the groove and taking the next four against Yang Zi from Singapore.

Of the other notable players, German players Timo Boll and Dmitrij Ovtcharov, Japan's Jun Mizutani and Portugal's Marcos Freitas all progressed.

The women's singles followed the same path as Chinese contingent all sailed through the opening round.

World number one Ding Ning won through easily, setting up a meet with three-time Paralympic gold medalist Natalia Partyka of Poland in the second round.

Her Chinese teammate Wu Yang lost just 13 points in her 4-0 win while Liu Shiwen, Li Xiaoxia and Zhu Yuling all won at 4-0.

Mu Zi, who reached the main draw from the qualification stage, continued to show her battling qualities as she downed the powerful Kristin Silbereisen from Germany at 4-1.

"I think I had a steady and balanced mood, especially that I could win the last game," Mu said of the tight fifth game which she won at 16-14.

"I just relaxed and thought that even if I lost that game, I was still in the leading place. I think I did that well during the competition and that is also why I won the whole game."

The men's doubles second round match between Ma/Boll and Xu/Zhang was one of the most absorbing matches on a busy matchday 2.

Xu/Zhang rallied from two games down to beat the transnational pair 4-2 (9-11, 7-11, 11-6, 11-4, 11-8, 11-9).

Xu said: "From the third game, we let ourselves loose and played better. The third game is totally different from the first two games both in quality and pressure. I think when we won the third it makes us play easy and let the opponents feel the pressure."

Top seeds of Chiang Hung-Chieh and Huang Sheng-Sheng from Chinese Taipei fell at the second round.

The loss continues Chiang and Huang's poor run at the world championships, with their best result remaining the quarterfinal loss they had in 2013.

Fourth seeds Chen Chien-An and Chuang Chih-Yuan of Chinese Taipei were also knocked out from the event.

In women's doubles, it was all smiles for Chinese Ding/Li and Liu/Zhu as both pairs advanced into third round. Top-ranked team of Feng Tianwei and Yu Mengyu from Singapore also sailed through. Endi