Singles, Men

For the singles, each nation was allowed to register two athletes from the respective team competition. An additional 22 qualified through continental qualifying tournaments. There was also the possibility of qualifying in an international qualification tournament. Also, the best placed athlete in the ITTF world rankings who had not yet qualified received a quota place.

Like in Rio, the first rounds were limited to the lower ranked players. Higher ranked players were gradually introduced until the third round when the world’s 16 best ranked players joined the tournament. This scheme had already been applied in previous Olympics. All matches were played to the best-of seven, with the first to win four games taking the match.

China occupied the top three spots in the world ranking list but could only nominate two players who turned out to be top seed Fan Zhendong and third seed Ma Long. Ma Long had taken two team golds previously, and in Rio also won singles gold. Additionally, he won three singles and two doubles titles at World Championships. In 2010, he topped the world ranking list for the first time. Nearly nine years younger than Long, Fan Zhendong had never won the world singles title, but was once the doubles and three times the world team champion. Both Chinese players had to fight hard in their semi-finals going through seven games taking more than 80 minutes. Former world No. 1 Dimitrij Ovtcharov, the same age as Ma Long, never managed to beat the Chinese in 19 matches throughout their careers and maybe he never came closer to winning than in Tokyo before eventually losing the deciding last game by 11-9. In the second semi-final, the tournament fifth seed Lin Yun-Ju from Chinese Taipei was equally close to outplaying Fan Zhendong. In the final Ma Long had less difficulty to beat his compatriot 4-2. Ovtcharov of Germany, something like a specialist for long matches, trailed Lin Yun-Ju in the bronze medal match 3-2 but came back in a grueling sixth game saving four match points and eventually took bronze by winning the deciding seventh game. Like the final, the veteran, 32-years-old Ovtcharov, prevailed against one of the sport’s next generation, 19-years-old Lin.