Paul Drinkhall defeated Germany’s Steffen Mengel to join Liam Pitchford in the main draw of the WTT Contender Nova Gorica in Slovenia.

It was a five-set win for Drinkhall, who twice saw his opponent (WR 133) level the match, before the Englishman won five points in a row from 6-6 in the decider to complete victory.

It puts him into the last 32, where his opponent will be Can Akkuzu of France (WR 101). The match is at 2.45pm UK time on Thursday.

Drinkhall will follow Liam Pitchford on to table 4 – fifth seed Pitchford faces Wang Yang of Slovakia (WR 37) at 2.10pm.

Watch both matches live on the WTT YouTube channel.

Before that, there are some doubles matches involving English players to look forward to – Tin-Tin Ho and her Austrian partner Karoline Mischek play their last 16 women’s doubles match against Tatiana Kukulkova & Ema Labosova of Slovakia at 9am UK time, also on table 4.

Pitchford & Drinkhall team up for a last 16 men’s doubles match against Nandor Ecseki & Adam Szudi of Hungary at 9.35am on table 1, while Pitchford & Ho are due to play their last 16 mixed doubles match against Romania’s Ovidiu Ionescu & Bernadette Szocs at 5pm on table 2.

Result

Men’s SIngles
Qualifying round 4
Paul Drinkhall bt Steffen Mengel (GER) 3-2 (11-6, 11-13, 12-10, 3-11, 11-6)