WTT will be holding two WTT Contender events these next two weeks in Laško, Slovenia, and Lin Gaoyuan has the most at stake. This tournament is China’s first appearance in 2021 other than the Olympics, and Lin Gaoyuan has the chance to make up for some badly needed ranking points that he has missed out on so far this year.
The seedings on the World Championships tournament homepage appear to be incorrect, and we will instead base out seeding projections on the most recent world ranking list, which has not yet accounted for the results at WTT Tunis. Based on these rankings, the top ten seeds in the men’s singles event are:
| Seed | Name | World Ranking Points |
| 1 | Fan Zhendong | 12494 |
| 2 | Tomokazu Harimoto | 8709 |
| 3 | Hugo Calderano | 8464 |
| 4 | Lin Yun-Ju | 8375 |
| 5 | Lin Gaoyuan | 8034 |
| 6 | Mattias Falck | 7357 |
| 7 | Timo Boll | 7086 |
| 8 | Jang Woojin | 6731 |
| 9 | Liang Jingkun | 6723 |
At each WTT Contender event, the champion will receive 400 world ranking points, the finalist will receive 280 points, the semi-finalists will receive 140 points, and so on. Based on the table above, we see that Lin Gaoyuan has much to gain from this tournament from a seeding perspective. Meanwhile, Liang Jingkun will almost certainly pass Jang Woojin to secure a 5-8 seed for himself at the World Championships. Wang Chuqin is also pretty much locked into a 9-16 seed, and Zhou Qihao is essentially locked into a low seed.
Lin Gaoyuan needs 342 points to pass Lin Yun-Ju to secure a top-four seed and 675 points to pass Tomokazu Harimoto for the second seed, which would send him onto the other side of the draw from heavy favorite Fan Zhendong. Hence, to get a fourth seed (which keeps him away from Fan until the at least the semi-finals) Lin needs to either win one of the two events or reach the finals in both of them. To get the second seed, Lin must win one event and reach the finals in another.
Even reaching the fourth seed is not an easy task, as Lin is slated to play Wang Chuqin, who was presumably selected over Lin to represent China at the Tokyo Olympics, in the semi-finals at the first WTT Laško event this week. Reaching the finals in the second event may be even more challenging. In addition to watching out for the foreign competition, Lin may meet severely underrated teammates Liu Dingshuo and Zhou Qihao as early as the first round due to their low rankings.
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