Ding Ning triumphs at 2015 ITTF World Tour Grand Finals

 Success at the fifth attempt, the runner up on four previous occasions, at last Ding Ning won the Women’s Singles title at a Grand Finals.

On the evening of Sunday 13th December at the GAC Group 2015 ITTF World Tour Grand Finals in the Portuguese capital city of Lisbon, Ding Ning, the no.4 seed, beat Chinese National Team compatriot, Chen Meng, the no.10 seed, to arrest the title.
She won in six games (13-11, 10-12, 11-7, 11-2, 9-11, 11-7) and thus ended a sequence of being the runner up.
Prior to the duel in Lisbon, she had reached the final on four occasions; on each occasion she had been the bridesmaid.
At the 2009 Grand Finals in Macau, when only 19 years old, she had been beaten by her more experienced compatriot Guo Yan, before on three consecutive occasions experiencing defeat at the hands of Liu Shiwen, likewise from China.
She was beaten by Liu Shiwen in London in 2011, the following year in Hangzhou before at the 2013 Grand Finals, staged in January 2014 in Dubai once again having to give second best to her colleague
There was a debt to settle and there was another score to settle.
Ding Ning had lost their most recent meeting prior to the contest in Lisbon; it was somewhat the same against Chen Meng.
Earlier, Ding Ning had beaten Chen Meng at the 2012 Grand Finals and on the GAC Group World Tour in Austria in 2013; Earlier this year in February she had also won in Kuwait.
However when they met just under six months ago at the semi-final stage of the Women’s Singles event in Japan, the verdict had gone the way of Chen Meng.