Lim Jonghoon storms from qualifying to win Zagreb title

Lim Jonghoon turned a qualifying place into the biggest men’s singles result of WTT Contender Zagreb 2026, finishing with a 4-2 win over fellow Korean An Jaehyun and a final that kept swinging until the end. He closed it out 19-17, 7-11, 11-8, 7-11, 11-6, 11-8 at Arena Zagreb, a title run that began in the preliminaries and ended with a trophy few would have expected at the start of the week.

The final mattered because of the route as much as the score. Lim survived qualifying, then kept moving through a draw that had already been torn open by upsets. Top seed Lin Shidong was gone in the round of 16 after Chen Junsong beat him in five games, 7-11, 11-9, 11-9, 5-11, 16-14, and Dang Qiu was the next seed to fall as the men’s singles bracket kept shifting. By the time Lim met Qiu in the semifinals, the event had already lost its center of gravity.

Lim handled that stage with a 3-1 semifinal win over the No. 2 seed, taking it 11-9, 5-11, 12-10, 11-5. That result sent him into an all-Korean final against An, who had also been part of a men’s singles field that included Lin Shidong, Wen Ruibo, Darko Jorgic, Xiang Peng and Dimitrij Ovtcharov. In the title match, Lim kept answering every time An threatened to take control, winning the first game 19-17 and then finishing stronger in the last two games to seal the title.

The Zagreb run carried extra weight because Lim also won the men’s doubles title at the same event, giving him a double crown in Croatia. That kind of week is rare in any WTT tournament, let alone one with USD 100,000 in prize money and a field packed with established names. It also reinforces why Lim should be treated as a live threat in the next stretch of the WTT summer schedule.

Lim’s standing backs that up. WTT’s ranking page had him at No. 3 in men’s doubles in the June 8, 2026 update, and Olympics.com lists him as a Republic of Korea athlete born in 1997 and an Olympic bronze medalist from Paris 2024. Zagreb did not just give Lim a title. It gave him a reminder that when the bracket breaks open, he can be the player who takes full advantage.