Ma Lin of China returns the ball to Soumyajt Ghosh of India during the men's singles first round match at the 2010 China Open table tennis tournament in Suzhou, a city of east China's Jiangsu Province, on Aug. 19, 2010. (Xinhua/Yang Lei)
BEIJING, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) -- Chinese table tennis star Ma Lin was voted as the World Table Tennis Player of the Year by Table Tennis World Magazine on Monday.
Ma, whose form dropped after he won two gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games, snatched two games in China's 3-1 final victory over South Korea in the world championships in Moscow.
Ma has competed in the five straight world championship team finals with a perfect record.
The 30-year-old Ma, agonizing over his marital problems and the drop of form in the past two years, booked the Chinese team's last ticket to the Moscow worlds after a string of intra-squad playoffs.
The Singaporean women's team, which stunned China in the world championship final under the guidance of former Beijing coach Zhou Shusen, was voted as the Breakthrough Team of the Year by Table Tennis Magazine.
Table Tennis Magazine, whose editor-in-chief is former International Table Tennis Federation president Xu Yinsheng, is run by the Chinese Table Tennis Association.
