ITTF Pro Tour 2010

The ITTF Pro Tour. World table tennis at its best. Find out what happened in 2010.

The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) took a bold step in 1996 when they initiated a brand new premier competition ... one that was specifically designed to attract the best players in the world ...

The ITTF Pro Tour.

You can read all about it here.

But let's take a look at what happened in 2010 ...

The 2010 Pro-Tour Schedule

The 2010 ITTF Pro-Tour consisted of 13 international tournaments leading up to the Grand Finals held in Seoul, South Korea.

Although the ITTF Pro-Tour consists of men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles and women's doubles, I'll be concentrating on the main event ... the men's singles.

So what were the tournaments which made up the ITTF Pro Tour in 2010? And who won the Men's Singles?...

DATES	Pro Tour Events 2010	MS WINNERS
19-23 Jan	Slovenian Open (Velenje)	LEE Sang Su
17-21 Feb	Qatar Open (Doha)	Wang Liqin
23-27 Feb	Kuwait Open (Kuwait City)	Xu Xin
18-21 Mar	German Open (Berlin)	Ma Long
16-20 June	Indian Open (New Delhi)	Dimitrij Ovtcharov
1-4 July	Japan Open (Kobe)	Timo Boll
7-11 July	Egypt Open (Cairo)	Sharath Kamal Achanta
22-26 July	Morocco Open (Rabat)	Vladimir Samsonov
11-15 Aug	Korean Open (Incheon City)	Vladimir Samsonov
18-22 Aug	China Open (Suzhou)	Zhang Jike
13-17 Oct	Hungarian Open (Harkany)	Jun Mizutani
20-24 Oct	Austrian Open (Wels)	Tiago Apolonia
10-14 Nov	Polish Open (Warsaw)	Vladimir Samsonov

Let's take a look at what prize money was on offer ...

Prize money

The prize money varied from tournament to tournament, but the overall purse for 2010 was $2,441,800.

The top event, the China Open, offered a total purse of $330,000 ... with the men's and women's singles winners receiving $33,000 each.

The Egypt Open and the Morocco Open offered the least amount of prize money, both with a $20,000 total purse. The men's and women's singles winners received $2,800 each.

The Pro Tour Grand Finals offered a total prize fund of $365,000 ... with the men's and women's singles winners collecting $40,000 each and the men's and women's doubles winners collecting $20,000.

So who qualified for the prestigious end of season grand finals?

The Grand Finals

The Grand Finals were held in Seoul, South Korea from 16-19 December 2010 and after all the Pro-Tour events were completed, the players who had accumulated the most points in the men's singles were as follows:

Rank	Elig	Points	Events	Continents	Player
	NE	55300	4	2	ZHANG Jike	CHN
	NE	39150	4	2	XU Xin	CHN
	NE	38250	5	2	BOLL Timo	GER
	NE	36850	3	1	WANG Liqin	CHN
1		34800	3	3	SAMSONOV Vladimir	BLR
	NE	33900	3	2	MA Long	CHN
	NE	33200	3	1	MA Lin	CHN
2		26225	6	2	OVTCHAROV Dimitrij	GER
	NE	21825	5	1	JOO Se Hyuk	KOR
3		20319	7	2	LEE Sang Su	KOR
4		19950	6	2	MIZUTANI Jun	JPN
5		19213	8	2	RYU Seung Min	KOR
	NE	19100	4	2	WANG Hao	CHN
	NE	17563	5	2	APOLONIA Tiago	POR
6		14288	8	2	GAO Ning	SIN
7		12925	7	2	CHUANG Chih-Yuan	TPE
8		12163	6	2	OH Sang Eun	KOR
9		11232	6	2	LUNDQVIST Jens	SWE
10		10907	8	2	SEO Hyun Deok	KOR
	NE	10494	5	1	LEE Jung Woo	KOR
11		10026	8	2	CHEN Weixing	AUT
12		9838	6	2	TANG Peng	HKG
13		9770	8	2	STEGER Bastian	GER
14		8288	6	2	SMIRNOV Alexey	RUS
15		8207	6	3	ACHANTA Sharath Kamal	IND
16		7938	8	2	JUNG Young Sik	KOR

However, although some players had accumulated sufficient Grand Prix points, they didn't meet the additional qualifying criteria of competing in at least six tournaments or playing on at least three continents.

So unfortunately they weren't eligible to take part in the prestigious end of season grand finals.

So, here are the results of the ...

2010 ITTF Pro Tour Grand Finals

Round One

Winner	Result	Loser
SAMSONOV Vladimir	4-1	CHEN Weixing
CHUANG Chih-Yuan	4-1	SMIRNOV Alexey
TANG Peng	4-2	OH Sang Eun
MIZUTANI Jun	4-2	JUNG Young Sik

ACHANTA Sharath Kamal	4-3	LEE Sang Su
RYU Seung Min	4-3	LUNDQVIST Jens
GAO Ning	4-3	SEO Hyun Deok
STEGER Bastian	4-3	OVTCHAROV Dimitrij