Jha and Zhang deliver home-crowd breakthroughs at U.S. Smash

Kanak Jha beat Japan’s Shunsuke Togami 3-2 and Lily Zhang followed with a 3-1 win over France’s Jia Nan Yuan to send two of the United States’ most recognizable veterans into the singles Round of 32 at the U.S. Smash. In a tournament built to test whether American table tennis can turn home-crowd noise into real results, those two wins carried as much weight as any early bracket shock.

Jha’s result was the sharper statement. The American, ranked No. 24 in the June 29 World Table Tennis rankings, took down Togami, who sat 14th in the same rankings, by scores of 11-6, 12-10, 4-11, 7-11, 12-10. It was the kind of match that demanded poise after momentum swung away from him in the third and fourth games. Jha had already climbed to world No. 24 after his runner-up finish at WTT Contender Skopje on June 12, and beating a player seeded in the top 16 at home gave that rise a more visible edge. At the Ontario Convention Center in Ontario, California, the win played like the clearest sign yet that the highest-ranked American man in the field was not just part of the draw, but a threat inside it.

Zhang’s match told a different version of the same story. She opened fast, taking the first game 11-3, then had to reset after Yuan answered with an 11-6 second game to level the contest. Zhang steadied herself from there and closed out the next two games to win 3-1 in the women’s Round of 64. USATT said both players were working through nerves early, and that showed in the swing from Zhang’s dominant start to Yuan’s response. The finish, though, looked like the veteran composure that has kept Zhang among the faces of American table tennis for years. Team USA lists her as a four-time Olympian, and Olympics.com notes that London 2012 was her first Olympic Games.

The wider backdrop only sharpened the stakes. The 2026 United States Smash is one of only four WTT Smash events on the international calendar, with USD 1,550,000 in prize money and 18 Americans in the field. USATT said Jha, Zhang and Amy Wang were the highest-ranked Americans to earn direct entry into the main draws, while Butterfly noted the tournament landed in the run-up to July 4 and the United States’ 250th anniversary celebration. Jha’s next test was England’s Tom Jarvis, and Zhang was set to face Germany’s Ying Han, a reminder that a home breakthrough in the first rounds still has to survive the kind of draw that quickly strips away sentiment.