EXCLUSIVE PONG BOMB! ROSTERS FOR MYRTLE BEACH EAST DIVISION WEEK 2 REVEALED
Scenic Myrtle Beach will be the 2nd stop on the Eastern Division tour, at the Myrtle Beach Sports Center from October 13 - 15. Tickets have just gone on sale for the matches at this great venue, so make your plans to catch all the action and purchase your tickets here.
Majorponghead has scored yet another exclusive! With still 2 weeks before the Eastern Division’s 2nd week of play, we have been given exclusive access to the initial rosters for all four teams, as posted by team coaches. Although this comes via neither insider leak nor subterfuge (MLTT has now granted us this exclusive access..all the more reason to check back here often!), this information does create a great basis to do a way-too-early preview of the 2nd week of competition in the East. We’ll approach this preview on the basis of player changes to each team’s roster compared to their week 1 lineups.
Coach Eric Owen’s Chicago Wind team shows early season consistency by returning with the exact same lineup as week 1, which turned in a solid performance in Daytona Beach.
First up, the Chicago Wind have posted the exact same lineup as the fielded in Daytona Beach, where the players ran into some trouble closing out Golden Games (1-2) despite owning the second-best record (18-18) in singles. Damien Provost and Dan Liu return as a solid 1-2 punch up top, with Daniele Pinto, Alexandre Cazacu and Aleksandr Khanin rounding out the guys’ list and the take-no-prisoners Emily Tan as their female player. If it ain’t broke, why fix it. That said, hey Damien Provost can someone else get a turn at the massage table???
Who is this mystery man from Northern Macedonia? The Carolina Gold Rush’s Petar Kostovski might be a hidden gold nugget for Coach Shigang Yang’s Carolina Gold Rush.
The Eastern Division leading Carolina Gold Rush make just one roster change, replacing the Harry Potter of table tennis Bastien Dupont with International Man of Mystery, Petar Kostovski of Northern Macedonia. There’s little data available to judge Kostovski’s level, but from the one online video of his 2019 World Championships singles match, you can see that he’s an aggressive close-to-the-table attacker with a plus backhand. Perhaps in a move to temper expectations and/or fly Kostovski under the radar, Coach Shigang Yang has placed him down in the 5 spot. He joins #1 draft pick Enzo Angles, Hong Lin, Kai Zhang, Romain Lorentz and Jeremy Hazin in an attempt to create some breathing room between them and the pack. This will be a home game for the Gold Rush, so we expect their fans from BOTH Carolinas to travel and get behind their team in a LOUD manner. Despite posting a dominant 23-13 record in singles and a 6-3 record in doubles, the Gold Rush find themselves just a single point out of the reach of the Florida Crocs’ perpetually chomping maw.
Puerto Rican sensation and Florida Croc Daniel Gonzalez will see his first action in the MLTT soon, where he hopes to add to Florida’s romping’ and chompin’!
The Pan Am Championships called Daniel Gonzalez away from week 1 action, but the MLTT player-ambassador will make his debut in two short weeks for the 3-0 Florida Crocs. Although Coach Frank Arias has also placed Gonzo in the 5 hole, we expect him to make a major impact as his reputation in the Americas and internationally precede him. In any event, there is no flying under the radar for anyone wearing the distinctive gator green Florida Crocs uniform…and while Myrtle Beach is a home game for Carolina, we are also expecting a strong contingent of the vocal Florida Crocs fans to travel and cause some good trouble. Daniel Gorak will put his incredible Golden Game record to the test, along with Matilda Ekholm, Marc Duran, Benjamin Brossier, and Ono Onaolapo. The Crocs actually only posted a 16-20 record in singles, but their winning doubles combo of Gorak-Ekholm was key to their week 1 success and that should continue. But let’s just call it as we saw it…the Crocs ruled the all-important Golden Game (3-0) because Daniel Gorak is The Man, and the Crocs rose to meet the pressure of the GG spotlight better than any other team. Will that dominance continue?
Help is on the way for the Princeton Revolution! Koyo Kanamitsu, in a file photo from his younger years, will seek to give the Princeton team a much-needed shot in the arm.
The Princeton Revolution went into week 1 with a couple key players absent, but they certainly expected to do better than the total whitewashing they received. There won’t be any excuses after Myrtle Beach, as Coach Mathias Habesohn brings his team to South Carolina with a fully armed and operational Death Star lineup, starting with Koyo Kanamitsu, a late round flyer of a draft pick by the Revolution. The experienced veteran of the Euro Champions League and Austrian Bundesliga might even be sitting next to Coach Habesohn on their flight from Vienna. Team USA’s lefty bombshell Jishan Liang also makes his MLTT debut (fresh off impressive wins over world #67 Brian Afanador at the Pan Ams, and Florida’s Ojo Onoalapo in the finals of the Westchester TTC September Open), driving down from North Carolina with wife and potential opponent Hong Lin of the Carolina Gold Rush. Ever the gentleman, Jishan has refused to let his wife do any of the driving so Coach Yang, how about giving Princeton a 1-0 lead in the GG as a thank you?
Jishan Liang will need to unload a volley of his trademark lefty forehand bombs to help his team climb out of the Eastern Division cellar.
Princeton rounds out its roster with Jinxin Wang, Mathieu de Saintilan, Ievgen Pryschepa (for all 3 days this time), and the angel of defense, Angela Guan. They’ll need to play with a sense of added resolve, as another repeat performance from Daytona would be disastrous.
Perhaps the best part of covering the MLTT Eastern Division beat is all the early season beach hopping. Daytona was beautiful, but Myrtle Beach offers 60 miles of this white fluffy stuff, more if you add up all the sand traps at its over 90 golf courses. So plan your MLTT-centric beach and golf weekend now and get your tickets here. They start at just $10 for general admission.
