CHENGDU, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) -- Romanian table tennis star Elizabeta Samara was sent packing on the opening day of the ITTF women's World Cup after losing both her Group D matches here on Friday.
The 30-year-old, runner-up in the 2012 World Cup, kicked off her campaign with a straight-set loss to Wu Yue, a Beijing native who's representing the United States, and needed a win to stay in the hunt for a last 16 spot.
Her next rival Zhang Mo of Canada, however, took her chance when it was mostly needed, edging Samara in seven sets.
"I was 2-7 behind in the seventh game, but I did not give up and tried my best to come back point by point," Zhang Mo, the 2018 Pan American Cup winner, commented after beating Samara 5-11, 11-4, 11-9, 3-11, 11-9, 1-11, 11-9.
Both Wu Yue and Zhang Mo reached the second stage of the 250,000 U.S. dollars annual event, joining reigning world champion and four-time World Cup title holder Liu Shiwen and other star paddlers like Zhu Yuling, Miu Hirano and Feng Tianwei in the last 16 competitions.
With the top eight seeds qualifying automatically for the women's singles main draw, the players ranked 9th-20th were divided in four groups with top two finishers of each preliminary group joining the top eights in the knockout stage.
Other qualifiers from the group stage are Bernadette Szocs of Romania and Lily Zhang of the United States from Group A, South Korean Jeon Ji-hee and Egyptian Dina Meshref from Group B, and German top single Petrissa Solja and Chen Szu-Yu of Chinese Taipei from Group C.
