Louis Laffineur

Only 13 years and listed at no.412 on the current Under 18 Boys’ World Rankings, not only did Louis Laffineur cause a major opening day shock, he caused one of the biggest upsets of the year; he beat Japan’s Takeru Kashiwa in a tense five games duel, determined  by the very minimal two point margin in the deciding fifth game (11-7, 3-11, 11-13, 11-5, 12-10).Not only was Takeru Kashiwa, the no.4 seed, he is listed 370 places higher on the rankings at no.42. Meanwhile, last year on the ITTF World Junior Circuit he was the runner up in Slovenia and earlier this year a quarter-finalist in the Czech Republic.The young man put in shade the efforts of his more illustrious Belgian colleagues.