He did not make it past the round of 16 last year, he stopped one step further this season. Félix Lebrun was eliminated in the quarter-finals of the WTT Finals, the table tennis Masters, beaten by the Japanese Tomokazu Harimoto (4-3), Saturday in Hong Kong.
In this last tournament of the year, which pits the 16 best players on the circuit against each other, the Japanese obtained his first success on the WTT circuit against the Frenchman (4 victories for Félix Lebrun so far) after more than 50 minutes of play. Finally, Lebrun lost (12-14, 11-8, 12-10, 11-3, 8-11, 7-11, 11-9).
If he managed to make a great comeback by struggling to snatch the beauty, the Montpellier native notably paid for a third set where he completely collapsed. While he was leading 10-5, Félix Lebrun conceded a 10-0 in the process which allowed his opponent to take off by winning the third then the fourth set sharply.
At the same stage as Alexis
The Frenchman then had the resources to return to three sets everywhere. The beauty was once again hotly contested between the two protagonists. But Harimoto, after coming back from 6-3, did not let himself be asked to convert his first match point and bring down a second Frenchman in Hong Kong, after Simon Gauzy in the first round.
Félix Lebrun’s season ends at the same stage as that of his brother Alexis, beaten the day before by world number 1 Wang Chuqin. In addition to two tournaments won on the circuit this season (WTT Star Contender in Muscat and WTT Contender in Tunis), the 19-year-old table tennis player also reached the final of a Grand Smash in Beijing, the equivalent of a Grand Slam tournament.
