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The 1997 World Championships in Manchester, England featured Jan-Ove Waldner winning the men’s singles going 21-0 in games in winning his 7 matches all 3-0 (matches then were best 3 out of 5 to 21 points each).
I think this feat may never be matched. Waldner is considered by many to be the GOAT of table-tennis as he has won every major title in singles, the Worlds (twice), Olympics, World Cup, European Championships, and many other titles. In these same 1997 Worlds, Waldner had a lot of bad losses in the team event that preceded the singles. I remember reading an article where Chinese team member Wang Tao said Waldner was too old after his losses in the team event. I wonder if that was the reason Waldner steamrolled everyone then. Wang Tao saying that was probably like poking a tiger.
Waldner was the key player in Sweden breaking the Chinese dominance in the sport in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000 as Sweden won 4 World Team Championships. Sweden has only 10,000 table-tennis players and China has 100,000,000 table-tennis players so this is pretty incredible that they were able to beat them. When the Swedes beat the Chinese pips-out penhold style of the 1980s, the Chinese switched most of their players to the European two-winged looping game soon after and short pips play is almost extinct now for attacking players at the world-class level. Even in China, the public prefers seeing China play foreigners like Waldner instead of China vs China.
Waldner is the only foreigner to be honored with a stamp in China and more people knew he who was in China in the 1990s than who Bill Clinton was. When he won gold at the 1992 Olympics, he was on the front page of every Swedish newspaper. He was voted one of the top 3 Swedish sportsmen of all-time behind only tennis legend Bjorn Borg and soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Waldner’s home club in Stockholm, Sweden is Angby. I was fortunate to practice there many times but Waldner was usually not there as he was traveling for tournaments and such. Once I was in the same training group as him and we were playing winner’s table and if I won my winnable match, I would have had the chance to play him. However, I lost so lost my chance to play the GOAT! Someone at Angby told me that Waldner can lay his hand on his forearm so has a really flexible wrist which could be a reason his serve is so hard for even the world-class players to return well. In the 1997 Worlds semis when he played China’s Yan Sen, Waldner fooled Yan Sen so badly with one serve that the ball missed far and wide off the table that it looked like a beginner returning a sidespin serve for the first time. This happened in the semis of the Worlds!
I played with Waldner’s practice partners and Angby teammates, Patrick Torsell and Linus Eriksson. I was able to beat them and they also beat me. They are both likely 2700 as Torsell has played the Swedish elitserien (the top league in Sweden) for a long time and Eriksson has wins against legends Vladimir Samsonov and Kong Linghui. I also played with Waldner’s World and European Champion teammate and good friend Mikael Appelgren at Angby and could win games to 11 against him but of course, he won most. Appelgren was retired from the Swedish team at this time but was playing for Angby in the elitserien and in his late 30s.
Here’s the video of the World Championships 4th best moment showing Waldner highlights on his way to gold in 1997:
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