2021 WTTC Houston USA Nov. 23-29

The most egregious was setting up 6 of the 9 tables in the playing hall without any possibility of spectators being able to see matches on those tables thru the round of 32.  An example of a match on those back tables that no spectators attending the WTTC could watch was 2019 WTTC runner up Mattias Falck losing his Men’s Singles R64 match vs Alexandre Cassin.

The convention center is huge, they could have used 2 playing halls and distributed the tables such that all tables would be spectator friendly.

Also, going to the WTTC, I was very unhappy that Ma Long (and to a lesser extent Xu Xin) were forced to sit out.  I had really wanted to see Ma Long play live and was hoping for an epic 7 game final against FZD.

Despite all of that, the WTTC was a wonderful experience.  It turned out so much better than I had imagined.  While the CNT and JNT players were shielded from the fans, the rest of the players were very accessible.

I was acting like a star struck 13 year old girl and got many autographs and selfies with Aruna, Darko Jorgic, Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, Koki Niwa, Lee Sangsu, Suh Hyowon, Adam Bobrow, Omar Assar, Alexandre Cassin, Simon Gauzy, Jeorg Rosskopf, Timo Boll, and Kanak Jha.  Timo and Jha had formal autograph signing sessions.  All the others were players and coaches that were either walking the hallways or after their matches.  I spoke with many others such as Falck and Persson but forgot to take selfies with them.  I could have gotten many more autographs and selfies if I wasn’t so hesitant the first couple of days.  Timo is extremely gracious.  I couldn’t believe that he did the autograph session after sustaining his injury.

 I sat with the S. Korean team during the LJY vs. LJH match.  Talk about bedlam by the Koreans.  Sat with the Germans, including Thomas Wiekert during the Patrick F vs. Moregard match.  Sat with the French in the mixed doubles match with Lebesson/Yuan vs. LGY/Lily Zhang.

 I saw LGL, Ryu Seungmin, Jean Michel Saive, and Primorac (had dinner one night a couple of tables away from Zoran.)

TT fans are LOUD, especially the Chinese fans (insert name here - JAIYO!)  I watched the Calderano vs. LJK quarters.  The arena was absolutely ROCKING with huge support for both players. Such tremendous atmosphere!

To my amazement, what I didn’t find LOUD at all was Harimoto.  I can’t watch his videos with the sound turned on due to his loud CHOs.  However, in person, the CHOs didn’t seem all that loud. 

FZD has so much more power than everyone else on both FH and BH.  And he doesn’t miss.  I would have loved to see Ma Long try to tame him live, but it was not meant to be.  With ML out of the picture FZD will dominate Men’s TT for a long time as long as he stays healthy.

Watching TT live at this level is a whole other experience vs. watching it streamed.

The VIP pass included a tour of the facilities, access to the training hall, entering the main arena thru the lighted star thingy and onto the main court itself (table 1) and the media center. 

At the media center someone was introduced as the director of media.  I told him about the WTT app, the side camera angle, lack of full match videos, etc.  He thanked me for the feedback and said there is a group in Singapore looking to improve presentation of TT and he would provide them with this feedback.  I told him to read some of the English language TT forums as these topics are frequently discussed and TT fans are really frustrated due to these issues.  Unfortunately, the VIP tour moved on so I couldn’t really talk too much.  I’m not hopeful that anything will change but I said my piece.

The matches were wonderful.  With so many great matches that were going on at the same time, it was often hard to decide which one to watch or to go to the training hall to watch players practicing there.  Matches started at 11 AM and didn’t finish until midnight or later.  There weren’t any lunch breaks built into the schedule so my friends and I would need to figure out which matches to skip so that we could eat.  Restaurant Kutchens in downtown Houston close at 9 PM and with matches going on until midnight we had to figure out our dinner break.  They were using very young ball boys and ball girls and they were working the matches into the late hours of the night.  I’m not sure who thought that was a good idea.

There was no signage regarding the WTTC in Houston.  Just a mention of WTTC outside the Convention center itself.  You could easily walk past outside the venue and have no clue that there was TT going on inside.  They said they didn’t have budget for advertisements but claimed there was a lot of coverage by local media.

VIP lounge was nicely stocked with water, soft drinks, coffee, tea, a barista, and various snacks.  It was a good spot to take a break from TT.

For those of you on the fence whether or not attend a future WTTC; GO.  You won’t regret it.  Once the high level action starts you will soon forget all the stuff they did wrong or didn’t do at all.

pongfugrasshopper wrote: Would be interesting to hear from forum members who went to Houston for the WTTC their thoughts and impressions regarding the tournament.  Anyone?

• Instructions on redeeming your week long VIP pass did not match what they actually wanted from you when you got to the ticket booth. People who were not tech savvy were very frustrated, and there was no real help, they just shunted you to the side and told you to figure it out.
  
• They were obsessed with not allowing different people to use the badge (even though it was still only one spectator) so they made you wear a ribbon on your wrist the entire week, which could not be removed.
• There was a program, but it only appeared on the final day, long past the point it would be useful.
• Screens displaying the score only worked occasionally.
• They divided day 6 into 2 sessions without allowing enough time to clear and re-admit the spectators.