VIENNA - When Torbjörn Blomdahl was still struggling to stop the small Korean Jae Ho Cho, at the table next to them another world class player had already been sentenced. Eddy Merckx, the fifth in the world, was defeated 3-0 by one of the Koreans: Dong Koong Kang.
He is not even one of the great players in his country, such as Kyung-Roul Kim, Sung-Won Choi, Jae Ho Cho, Jung Han Heo and Chung-Bok Lee, but Kang is a player with a great heart and without any doubt able to rise up quickly on the rankings, on which he now is number 26th.
Eddy Merckx, after his World Cup victory in Trabzon not in his best form, could only watch from his chair how his Korean opponent dominated the game, first by a 15-4 win in the first set, then 15-11 and 15 - 12.
The difference in average was clear too: Kang had 1.956 Merckx 1.285.