On Saturday, the World Championship in table tennis kicked off in Doha, Qatar, and on the first day, several Swedes impressed.
Among them were Olympic heroes Truls Möregårdh and Anton Källberg, who started the tournament with a match against the Mexican team consisting of Marcos Madrid and Rogelio Castro.
The Swedish duo took hold directly and never looked back from there. Möregårdh and Källberg won in three straight sets with the scores 11–8, 11–9, 11–5.
"A nice feeling"
It was a good match. It's 3–0 in the first match at a World Championship, it's always great to get in. Then we can of course play better, but it's a really good result, says Möregårdh to SVT.
In the next round, the Swedes will face Santiago Lorenzo and Horacio Cifuentes, Argentina.
It's always nice to get a match in the body before, because you never know how it will feel before the first match in a new tournament and so on. So a nice feeling, says Källberg.
The feeling held up to the first round of the singles tournament. On Saturday evening, Källberg won with 4–0 in sets against the Egyptian Mohamed El-Beial. In the next round, the home player Mohammed Abdulwahhab awaits.
Möregårdh plays his first singles match on Sunday against the Austrian Andreas Levenko.
Karlsson also won
Kristian Karlsson also won his first singles match. It was a victory with 4–1 in sets against the Czech Lubomír Jancarík and in the next round, Karlsson will face the Spaniard Alvaro Robles.
Mattias Falck and Linda Bergström won their opening match in the mixed doubles with 3–2 in sets and in the next match, Sofia Polcanova and Roberto Gardos, Austria, await.
Linda Bergström and Stina Källberg later fell in the evening directly in the doubles tournament against a South Korean pair with 1–3 in sets.
