TTBL Confirms Hiroto Shinozuka to Leave Grünwettersbach After 2025-26 Season

ASC Grünwettersbach and Japanese doubles world champion Hiroto Shinozuka will part ways at the end of the 2025-26 season, the Table Tennis Bundesliga reported, with the club's managing director Martin Werner confirming that Shinozuka will return to Japan to continue his career. Shinozuka signed for Grünwettersbach in January 2025 and accumulated an individual Bundesliga record of 12 wins and 9 losses across 21 matches by the time the decision was announced.

The TTBL posted the news on Feb. 25, 2026, and Werner framed the departure with blunt disappointment. “Overall, I had hoped for more,” Werner told the league's editorial staff, and he added that “He had actually already promised for next season, but will now return to Japan.” The league release, citing SID, also relayed Werner's assessment: “Hiroto started the season well, but recently he has been unable to reach his potential. He was often very tired.”

Performance trends underlined Werner's remarks. Tabletennis Tv reported that Shinozuka entered December 2025 with a 9:4 individual record before losing five of his last eight matches to finish 12:9. The same report noted head-to-head highlights in his first full season with Grünwettersbach, including two wins over Borussia Düsseldorf's Kanak Jha and victories against Adrien Rassenfosse of TTC Schwalbe Bergneustadt and Jonathan Groth of TTC RhönSprudel Fulda-Maberzell.

Shinozuka brings top-level pedigree despite the midseason slump. The 22-year-old, born 23 December 2003 in Aichi, Japan, is a left-handed shakehand player listed with Ryukyu Asteeda in the T.League and won the 2025 ITTF World Table Tennis Championships men's doubles title in Doha alongside Shunsuke Togami. Rankings cited in the coverage vary: Tabletennis Tv described him as the world No. 33 in men's singles at the time of its piece and said his results made him the Bundesliga's No. 18 player, while a snapshot from Wikipedia listed a current ranking of 30 on 15 July 2025 and a career-high of 26 on 11 July 2023.

Grünwettersbach signed Shinozuka as its number-one player while the club was relegation-threatened and bottom of the table, and Tabletennis Tv warned the departure will leave the club “without its top left-handed player and one of its most internationally successful young stars,” creating “a massive hole” in a roster that also includes Tiago Apolonia, Tom Jarvis and Ricardo Walther. The TTBL article carried a club photo captioned “Hiroto Shinozuka (Photo: Christian Habel Pixo).”

With Shinozuka set to return to Japan, Grünwettersbach faces the end of the 2025-26 campaign without the world champion who was brought in as their leading signing in January 2025. Martin Werner's comments and the 12:9 ledger now frame the club's immediate task: replace international quality while stabilizing a side that sought the Japanese recruit to help avoid relegation.