Hosts China have made it sure ahead of Sunday's finals that trophies of men's singles, men's doubles and women's doubles will all stay home at the 330,000 U.S. dollars table tennis China Open.
The women's singles title contest, however, is left wide open as Chinese-born Shen Yanfei, having represented Spain since late 1990s, produced shocks in a row on Saturday to set up a semifinal showdown against South Korea's Kim Kyung Ah, who beat China's Guo Yan in full sets.
Shen, a 31-year-old mom of a 10-month baby girl, repeated her giant-killing run at the Korean Open earlier this month, beating all the odds again at the star-studded China Open to oust former world champion Guo Yue 4-2 before upsetting Singapore's top woman paddler Feng Tianwei 4-3.
Shen will next face Kim, the only survivor of defensive players at the Aug. 18-22 ProTour event, who was seeded the fifth at China Open but beat No. 3 seed Guo Yan 4-3.
One week earlier at the Korean Open in Incheon, Shen Yanfei was the surprising winner after beating Feng in the women's singles final.
The other women's singles semifinal will pit China's Li Xiaoxia and Ding Ning, as Li went through from an all-Chinese match against current world No. 1 Liu Shiwen 4-1 and Ding beat South Korea's Seok Ha Jung 4-3 in the quarters.
On the men's part, three-time world champion Wang Liqin advanced to Sunday afternoon's semifinals after beating reigning world title holder Wang Hao 4-3, while his younger teammate Zhang Jike beat Singapore's Gao Ning 4-2 to survive the quarters.
Also, veteran Ma Lin won over South Korean chopper Joo Se Hyuk and Xu Xin upset world No. 2 Timo Boll of Germany to make the men's singles semifinals a Chinese domestic affair.
The men's and women's doubles finals will be Chinese matchups, too, as Chen Qi/Wang Liqin beat Hong Kong's Jiang Tianyi/Tang Peng and Ma Lin/Xu Xin defeated teammates Wang Hao/Zhang Jike in the men's range, and Guo Yue/Li Xiaoxia and Ding Ning/Liu Shiwen respectively downed their semifinal opponents 4-1 and 4-0.
Featuring more than a dozen of the world's top 20 paddlers in the women's singles competitions, the China Open offers the highest prize on this year's ITTF Pro Tour.