The “TTBL Player of the Season”: Feng Yi-Hsin from TTC Zugbrücke Grenzau

The fans of the German Table Tennis League (TTBL) have decided: In a social media poll, the followers of Europe's strongest league voted Feng Yi-Hsin from TTC Zugbrücke Grenzau as the “TTBL Player of the Season 2023/24”. In addition to the team World Championship bronze medallist from Taiwan, the nine other of the ten TTBL stars with the best records of the season as well as - due to their top international performances - German idol Timo Boll and top 10 ace Hugo Calderano were put to the vote.

The unexpected often happens: not TTBL top finisher Ricardo Walther, not Germany's new top player Patrick Franziska, not crowd favorite Timo Boll or another of the numerous stars from the teams of the play-off participants, but Feng Yi-Hsin is the “TTBL Player of the Season”. At least somewhat surprisingly, the Taiwanese player from TTC Zugbrücke Grenzau received the most votes of all twelve candidates in the vote in the social media community of the German Table Tennis League (TTBL).

As many as 44% of the survey participants voted for Feng. This means that the 21-year-old received almost twice as many votes as the hardly less surprising second-placed veteran Bastian Steger (TSV Bad Königshofen), who came in at 23% - possibly also due to the very high participation of a considerable fan base in his home country. Franziska (1. FC Saarbrücken TT), who was named “Player of the Month” three times last season, came third with nine percent.

Grenzau coach Slobodan Grujic commented on the fan vote for Feng, who is preparing for the Olympic Games in Paris with Taiwan's national team. “He's earned it,” said the Serb when asked by the TTBL media team, referring not only to the 20:10 record of the fifth-best TTBL ace in the past season: ”Feng has developed enormously in the past few years that he's been with us, which has been even faster in the TTBL than at international level. In the meantime, he was even at the top of the TTBL rankings and has established himself as our real number one.”

In fact, Feng, who was originally only accepted as a “guest player” in the Westerwald, has improved impressively over the course of his almost two and a half years at Brexbach. In his first full season for the Zugbrücke team, the right-hander impressed with 17 wins in 25 matches and polished up his record even further last year: With an initial run of six successive victories and another five wins in a row in the second half of the season, Feng played a major part in Grenzau's hopes of a comeback in the play-offs right up to the end of the season.

But his international ranking has also been on a steady upward trajectory for some time now. From 168th position in January 2022 shortly before he joined Grenzau, the Asian has gradually moved up the rankings, even briefly entering the top 50 a year ago and currently ranking among the 60 best players in the world.

Accordingly, Feng is also maturing into a permanent fixture for his national team: Grenzau's star won bronze for Taiwan at the World Team Championships in South Korea in the winter, and Feng is already part of his home country's squad as a substitute at the Olympic tournament.

Grujic believes that Feng, who only extended his contract in Grenzau until 2026 a few months ago, still has “great potential. He lives and breathes table tennis, works meticulously on himself, is nowhere near the end of his potential and can still achieve a lot internationally”.

Grujic naturally also expects Feng's progress to have a positive effect on Grenzau's TTBL performances: “He feels very comfortable with us, is very popular in the team and therefore always plays a few percent better in the TTBL. That's why he's very important for us.”

Florian Manzke

Featured image: Yi-Hsin Feng and Timo Boll (Photo: Tom Neumann)