Old Ping-Pong Stuff
My house is loaded with old ping-pong stuff. Here’s a rundown.

• I have well over 100 collared table tennis shirts in my closet, mostly from Butterfly, the oldest dating back to (gulp!) the late 1970s!!! But I don’t wear the old ones anymore. I have about 40 I use regularly, all from the last five years, all with my name and MDTTC on the back.
• I still have the Newgy robot I used to lug around for group sessions at various locations in Maryland back in the early 1990s. Alas, it’s still set for 38 mm balls, and hasn’t been used since at least 2000, when the world switched to 40mm balls. I’m not sure what to do with it.
• I have table tennis rackets on my shelves from the 1980s, and sheets of sponge almost that old.
• I always keep a chopping blade (with long pips on one side) in my bag so students can practice against chopping. Until a year ago I had the same racket and sponge for this for over 25 years! (It’s at the club, and I forget the type of racket it is but it was a “top” chopping blade circa 1990 or so.) I finally got a new racket and sponge for...

Tip of the Week
Always Think of a Loop as a Set-up Shot.

Sevens
In my 57^th year I have this seven-year itch to tell seven of nine stories I have on sevens. Here are my seven deadly sins stories of seven, otherwise known as the magnificent seven.

1. Seven hours becomes one hour on Saturday. I normally have seven hours of coaching scheduled on Saturdays, my busiest day, from 10AM-5PM with no break (plus 5:30-7:30PM twice a month). But an extraordinary thing happened this past Saturday, or rather six of them. My 10AM student told me a few days in advance he was away and wouldn’t be able to come in. My 11AM student emailed that morning that he had strep throat and couldn’t come in. My 1PM student emailed that morning that he’d forgotten to tell me that he was out of town this weekend and couldn’t come in. From 2-4PM I have two students who come in together, but they were away at a tournament and so neither were coming in. My 4PM student had a family thing he had to go to and so had rescheduled the...

Teaching the Topspinny Backhand
When a player first learns to play, they learn basic forehands and backhands, which include putting at least a very light topspin on the ball. A proper stroke automatically puts some topspin on the ball as the racket is moving forward and slightly up at contact. Beginners often hit the ball almost straight on, and so generate little or no topspin. Here’s a good backhand drive video (2:55, from ITTF). This teaches the standard, light topspin backhand. Here's a good backhand topspin video (3:18, from EmRatThich) showing a more topspinny backhand. Note how the racket tip drops down, allowing more topspin from the stroke. In the ITTF video, lefty Timo Boll is shown for a few seconds hitting backhands 28 seconds in, and also topspins his backhand this way. 

One of my students, age 8, tends to hit the ball almost straight on, resulting in a rather erratic backhand that’s more a blocking motion than a stroke, with the ball coming out dead. I could...

Tip of the Week
Make Adjusting a Habit by Playing Different Players.

USATT Board Meeting
It was an extremely hectic weekend – I’m learning that coaching and attending board meetings don’t always mix well. On Saturday I coached from 10AM to 4PM, then drove over to the USATT informal meeting/get-together on Saturday night in Washington DC. On Sunday I left my house at 6:30AM, attended the meeting from 8AM to 2:30PM, drove to my club, and coached from 4PM to 8:30PM. After spending all day sitting in a chair, my back stiffened up while coaching and began to hurt. (I’m doing back stretches before it gets worse.) Here’s a rundown of the USATT meeting.

On Saturday night we all met at Gary Schlager’s large house, with its even larger basement, for informal games, meetings, and dinner. (Gary recently joined the USATT Board of Directors – his financial background is a huge plus.) There was ping-pong, pool, darts, and air...