Chicago’s Robert Gardos (SPINDEX: 2838) and New York’s Koki Niwa (2788) have been named Major League Table Tennis’ Players of the Week for Week 10, the league announced on Tuesday.

Texas’s Hiromitsu Kasahara (2787) and New York’s Tao Wenzhang (2747) also received nominations for Week 10 Player of the Week.

This is the first time in MLTT history that two players of the same gender earned a Player of the Week award for the same weekend. It’s also the first time multiple players have won this award since Week 7, when the league moved away from handing out Male and Female Player of the Week.

Gardos won six of his nine singles games during Week 10 in Willowbrook, Ill., all of which came during Singles 1. The 47-year-old faced Kasahara, Tao and Florida’s Marc Duran (2697) and took two games from each of them.

Gardos leads the league in singles wins this season with 33, which helps explain his power rating of 769.1 and ranking as MLTT’s No. 4 player. He is currently tied with Bay Area’s Lily Zhang (2592) for the highest singles percentage among players with more than 20 singles games played (73.3%), and he has 50% of his doubles games (6-6) and Golden Game points (48-48).

Niwa won seven of his nine singles games against Duran, Kasahara and Emmanuel Lebesson (2767) during Week 10. Those seven wins tie teammate Haocheng Wang (2720) for the highest number of singles wins in Willowbrook, and he also won six doubles games alongside Kaden Xu (2690) and Yiran Wu (2692).

Niwa’s 715.0 power rating makes him the league’s No. 23 ranked player, as do his singles percentage of 52.4% (22-20), doubles percentage of 54.2% (13-11) and Golden Game percentage of 47.1% (49-55) in his first season with MLTT. The Olympic silver medalist is the league’s only player ranked in the Top 10 in singles wins (No. 8), doubles wins (No. 9) and Golden Game points (No. 6).

This is the first time either Gardos or Niwa has earned Player of the Week, adding the league’s most prestigious in-season award to both players’ MVP candidacies.

Gardos now becomes Chicago’s second Player of the Week this season after Lebesson won for Week 7. Niwa’s win gives New York its third Player of the Week award this season, which also makes him the team’s second different recipient following Haeeun Choi’s (2562) wins in Weeks 4 and 5. 

Gardos and Niwa are the sixth and seventh different rookies to win Player of the Week this season. Niwa was the second overall pick in the Season 3 MLTT Draft, and Gardos was taken with the seventh pick that year.

Both of these players’ teams won two of their three matches in Willowbrook, and Gardos’s Wind took down Niwa’s Slice 12-9 in their match on Saturday. The Wind have a 10-5 record and 182 points while the Slice sit at 9-6 with 161 points, which makes both teams the second seed in their respective divisions.

Gardos and the Wind will next play during Week 11 in Houston, where they will play the Atlanta Blazers (3-9, 101 points), Texas Smash (6-6, 133 points) and Carolina Gold Rush (4-2, 61 points) from Jan. 31-Feb. 1. 

Niwa and the Slice will return for Week 14 in Charlotte, N.C. and face the Gold Rush, Portland Paddlers (10-2, 169 points) and Bay Area Blasters (5-7, 117 points) from March 13-15.

These will be the final regular season matches for both of these teams. They will be streamed on Table Tennis TV, which can be found on TableTennis.TV, iOS, Android, Apple TV, Roku and Amazon Fire TV.

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