David McBeath’s Texas Smash earned a dramatic win in the latest round of Major League Table Tennis in the USA.

The defending champions won two of their three weekend matches in Pleasanton, in the San Francisco are of California.

In their first match, Smash beat Carolina Gold Rush 14-7. They were 4-2 down after the first two singles matches, then McBeath & Hiromitsu Kasahara beat Enzo Angles & Sid Naresh 11-9, 11-8, 11-6 to put them 5-4 front.

Leading 8-7 going into the golden game, they won that 21-16, with McBeath contributing six out of eight points in his two four-point match-ups with Naresh. With six points resting on the golden game, it gave Smash their 14-7 win.

The second match saw a 12-9 defeat to Princeton Revolution. 5-1 down after two singles, McBeath & Kasahara lost 11-10, 11-7, 9-11 to Jinxin Wang & Kanamitsu Koyo.

With the deficit 12-3 before the golden game, Smash could not pull off overall victory, but they took the golden game 21-18, McBeath taking five points off Jinxin Wang.

The final match against Bay Area Blasters saw Smash again trailing 4-2 early on, but McBeath & Kasahara beat Wenzhang Tao & Eric Jouti 10-11, 11-10, 11-9.

Smash were 8-7 down before the golden game, and they trailed that 9-3 after McBeath’s first visit to the table, when he won one of four points against Tao.

Smash fought back to 14-14 then McBeath took three points against Tao to put them 17-15 up. It was still not done as Blasters clawed back to 20-20, meaning the match hinged on one golden point – and it was Smash’s Nandan Naresh who won it to give them an 13-8 victory.

Smash now sit top of the West Division with seven wins from 12 matches. Liam Pitchford’s Florida Crocs have played nine matches and they are in action next weekend, when they take on Seattle Spinners, Portland Paddlers and Chicago Wind.

The weekend is scheduled for Pomona in Los Angeles and is still scheduled to go ahead as Pomona is not in one of the areas of LA which are affected by devastating wildfires.