| Lin Yun-Ju | |
| Native Name: | 林昀儒 |
| Nickname: | The Silent Assassin[1] [2], Little Lin Classmate (小林同學） |
| Birth Date: | 17 August 2001 |
| Birth Place: | Yuanshan, Taiwan |
| Height: | 1.74 m[3] |
| Playingstyle: | Left-handed shakehand grip |
| Equipment: | Butterfly Lin Yun-Ju SZLC with tenergy 05 hard on forehand and dignics 05 on backhand |
| Highest Rank: | 5 (3 August 2021)[4] |
| Current Rank: | 7 (12 August 2024) |
| Club: | Kinoshita Meister Tokyo (T.League)[5] |
Lin Yun-Ju (born 17 August 2001) is a Taiwanese table tennis player.[6] [7] He is a left-handed player who plays with the shakehand grip.
Lin was born in Yuanshan, Yilan County, Taiwan. He graduated from Taipei Municipal Nei-Hu Vocational High School and is currently studying at Fu Jen Catholic University.[8]
Lin started playing table tennis as a third grader.[9] At age 14, he officially became a member of the national team at the 2016 World Team Championships, the youngest Taiwanese player to do so.
Lin started competing in the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) senior circuit in 2016.[10] He won two major tournaments in a row in 2019, first the T2 Diamond Malaysia in July,[11] followed in August by his first ITTF World Tour title, the Czech Open at the age of only 18.[12] In these tournaments, he had beaten some of the top players, including Ma Long, Fan Zhendong, Dimitrij Ovtcharov and Timo Boll.[13]
Lin trained in China along with members of the Chinese national team and other selected foreigners from late 2020 until early 2021.[14] His first international event was WTT Contender at World Table Tennis' inaugural event WTT Doha, where he reached the finals after defeating Quadri Aruna in the quarter-finals and Simon Gauzy in the semi-finals[15] before being upset by Dimitrij Ovtcharov in the finals.[16] In the WTT Star Contender event, Lin suffered a quarter-final upset against Ruwen Filus.[17] However, Lin walked out of Doha with control of the fourth seed for the men's singles event at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.[18] In April, ITTF amended the Olympic seeding system so that Lin fell back to the fifth seed below Hugo Calderano.[19]
Lin placed fourth at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics after losing to Dimitrij Ovtcharov in the bronze-medal match.[20] Lin defeated Ovtcharov in the team event later, but Taiwan ultimately fell to Germany 3–2 in the quarter-finals.[21]
Lin participated in WTT Frankfurt, and beat Ma Long in the finals, thus winning a WTT Champions title, and stopping Ma Long from getting his first WTT Champions title.
Lin played in the team world championships in 2024. The Chinese Taipei team performed better than expected. In the quarterfinals, they managed to surprise Germany, sweeping them 3-0. But after that, they fell short to France and lost. With this result, Chinese Taipei has qualified for the 2024 Summer Olympics as a team.
| Events | |||||
| Singles | Men's doubles | Mixed doubles | Team | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Olympic Games | 4th | — | 3rd | Quarterfinals | |
| World Championships | Last 16 | Last 16 | Semifinals | Semifinals | |
| World Cup | 3rd | — | — | Semifinals |
| Year | Tournament | Final opponent | Score | Ref |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | ITTF Challenge Plus, Oman Open |  Mattias Falck | 4–2 | [22] |
| T2 Diamond Malaysia |  Fan Zhendong | 4–1 | [23] | |
| ITTF World Tour, Czech Open | Dimitrij Ovtcharov | 4–1 | [24] | |
| 2022 | WTT Contender Zagreb | Xiang Peng | 4–0 | [25] |
| 2023 | WTT Contender Almaty | Xiang Peng | 4–1 | [26] |
| WTT Champions Frankfurt | Ma Long | 4–1 | [27] |