Iron Man Will Shortz

Will Shortz, the owner of the Westchester TTC (that's him and manager/coach Robert Roberts in picture) in New York as well as the famed New York Times Puzzle Editor, wrote me about completing his goal. "As you may have heard or read, I set it as my goal for last year to play TT every single day of the year ... and to film myself doing so as proof. On Tuesday, Dec. 31, I completed my goal. Never missed a day. There was a party at my club, with 40-50 people in attendance, in celebration. Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost, the writers/directors of the 'Paranormal Activity' movies, are making a video for me using bits of my clips."

He also wrote that he played at 38 clubs worldwide during the year, 27 in the U.S. in eight different states, plus Japan and China. He also visited Alaska: "In June Robert Roberts and I flew to Alaska and over the course of a week played at every TT club in the state (all six!). Our trip was written up in the Juneau Empire. Also, Gadling.com, a travel website, posted Vines of our trip every day. As for 2014, I intend to keep playing every day. But a) I'm not going to film myself anymore, and b) if I ever don't feel like playing on a particular day, I won't. I will no longer feel obligated."

My Year in Review

I had a pretty busy year. Here's a review of my 2013.

I coached at nine MDTTC camps, six hours a day, totaling 44 days: March 25-29, June 17-21, 24-28, July 8-12, 15-19 (missed the last day), July 29-Aug. 2, Aug. 12-16, 19-23, Dec. 26-31 (missed the last day).

I ran approximately 120 junior training sessions, most of them 90 minutes long. I also did about 800 hours of private coaching. I was also a practice partner at about 80 training sessions - it would have been more except for various injuries. I also ran three table tennis birthday parties.

I had three more books come out, two on table tennis, one a humorous fantasy novel.

• Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers (Feb. 6, 2013)
• Professional Table Tennis Coaches Handbook (Apr. 8, 2013)
• Sorcerers in Space (Nov. 14, 2013)

I also had 235 blog entries, exactly 50 Tips of the Week at TableTennisCoaching.com and PaddlePalace.com, 121 Tips of the Day at USATT.org, 10 articles in USATT Magazine, 1 article at Butterflyonline.com, 10 sold or published science fiction or fantasy stories, and 11 feature articles at OriolesHangout.com. I also created 12 MDTTC Newsletters and 1 Hall of Fame Program Booklet.

From Feb. 5-15, USATT Historian Tim Boggan stayed at my house as I did the page layouts and photo work (with him looking over my shoulder) for his History of U.S. Table Tennis, Volume 13. It was a mammoth job, totaling 448 pages with 918 photos. (We start Volume 14 on Jan. 13.) Here's the page where you can learn more about these books and buy them. (I created and maintain the page for him.)

Happy New Year!

No blog tomorrow, see you on Thursday, Jan. 2.

MDTTC Christmas Camp

The highlight of the camp yesterday was, without a doubt, the candy game, which we did the last half hour of the camp, 5:30-6:00 PM. It's an annual tradition in our Christmas Camp - and sometimes other camps, though I can't afford to buy candy for all 12 of our summer camps. (Yes, I'm paying for the candy out of my pocket, not the club.) Here's how the candy game works. I bought several bags of Hershey's chocolate kisses and of Jolly Ranchers (a hard candy the kids like). I pour them all onto the table, and jam them all against the end of the table so they'll fall off easily. Then I feed multiball as the kids take turns trying to knock the candy off, three shots per turn. Anything they knock off they get to keep. (I allow switches, so if they knock off one type of candy, they can trade it for another on the table.) It's great fun, and since the kids know at least two days in advance that we're going to do it, the younger ones especially have incentive to practice their forehands. Essentially all the kids in the camp join in, but I strongly encourage the older, more advanced ones to share with the younger beginners if they win too many, and they go along with that. At the end, there was (as usual) a lot of candy still on the table, and so I let the kids split that up, keeping a handful of Hershey Kisses for myself.

Tip of the Week

Do Something Different. (This is an expansion of what was originally a blog entry.)

MDTTC Christmas Camp

We're down to the last 1.5 days of our Christmas Camp. We have a full day today, and a half session tomorrow, and then we're off to celebrate the New Year.

So far I've given lectures on the grip, playing stance, forehand drive, backhand drive, forehand loop (against backspin, block, and topspin), backhand loop (against backspin, block, and topspin), backhand smash, footwork, and serving. I still have lectures coming up on pushing and receive. However, once we get through the lectures, my group is all kids from 6-8 years old, as I once again agreed to take on the younger beginning kids. (How did I go from being a Hall of Fame coach and writer to being a kindergartner teacher? Just kidding - but sometimes during a session it seems that way.)

MDTTC Christmas Camp

The camp started yesterday. Our summer camps are all five days long, with a morning (10AM-1PM) and afternoon (3-6PM) sessions. However, our Christmas camps are a bit different. They are six days long, with the first day a half day (3-6PM on Dec. 26), and the last day also a half day (10AM-1PM on Dec. 31), with the four days in between all regular days (10AM-1PM, 3-6PM). So yesterday we only had an afternoon session. However, since we introduce new techniques and give lectures in the morning sessions, and we want to start the camps off that way, we always treat day one at our Christmas camps as a morning sessions, with the morning session on the last day treated like an afternoon session.

I gave lectures to the camp yesterday on the grip, stance, and forehand. (I do all the lectures.) As I've done for the past three years, I then took charge of the beginners. We did lots of multiball training, sometimes in one spot, other times moving. We also did a lot of service practice. There's a wide range of skills among beginners, and they ranged here from some who couldn't even serve at all, to those who were ready to learn to serve with spin. The ages ranged from about 7 to 12, with most under 10.

There were about 35 players in the camp on the first day. Coaches are myself, Cheng Yinghua, Jack Huang, Wang Qing Liang ("Leon"), Chen Bo Wen ("Bowen"), and Chen Jie ("James"). Raghu Nadmichettu may join us later. Players range from beginners to a number of high level juniors, including Crystal Wang, Derek Nie, and Nathan Hsu.

USATT Magazine

Hidden Serves at the Nationals

There were a lot of problems with hidden serves at the USA Nationals. For example, in the Men's Singles Semifinals, David Zhuang was faulted several times for this, and I commend the umpire for this. He often pulls his free arm out of the way immediately, as you are supposed to, but then brings it back just before contact to hide the ball. And yet, even there he got away with a few hidden ones. For example, see the service winner at 8-9 in the second, where he ties it up and goes on to win that game, though he'd go on to lose the match to Cory Eider. (Link should take you to 2:43:42 in the video.) Can't quite tell from the video? Here's a freeze frame image.

But it was also happening in junior events, in particular by one player in the mini-cadets (under 13). There were several matches where the player's opponent, coaches, parents, and spectators bitterly protested, but the umpires didn't enforce the rule, leading to often comical mishits on the receive. In one match, the player hiding the serve won at 5,3,4. Later the two played again, and this time a different umpire enforced the rule, faulting the illegal server several times in the first game - and this time the other player won.

I'm going to take today and tomorrow off - after all, today's Christmas Eve! More importantly, I'm still on west coast time (from the Nationals in Vegas), and when I tried to get up early this morning to do the blog, I was rewarded with a morning headache. So I'll return on a daily Mon-Fri basis on Thursday, Dec. 26 (day one of our Christmas Camp), where I'll blog about the hidden serve problems we had at the Nationals, including a mind-boggling argument over the definition of "satisfied," since the serving rules state, "It is the responsibility of the player to serve so that the umpire or the assistant umpire can be satisfied that s/he complies with the requirements of the law." (When two referees tried to redefine what it meant, I Princess Brideian told them, "I don't think that word means what you think it means." I finally wrote out the definition for them from the online Merriam-Webster dictionary.) To tide you over until then, here's Samson Dubina's new website, which has a number of coaching articles, so why not go explore that? (Samson, a full-time coach in Ohio, won Over 30 at the USA Nationals and is a former Men's Singles Finalist at the Nationals.) Now I'm going to take a few Bayer Aspirins and go back to bed.

Tip of the Week

Returning Hidden and Other Tricky Spin Serves.

2013 USA Nationals

Before we go further, here is the USA Nationals Home Page, with links to results, pictures, and videos.

Until they reached the semis of Men's and Women's Singles I didn't get to see many matches other than the ones I was coaching (almost non-stop), or when I was scouting out other players. (Shhhhh!) I did get to see the Men's and Women's Semifinals, and the Women's Final, but had to leave to catch a flight before the Men's Final.

Here are a few random thoughts about these matches.

Timothy Wang, who seemed off this tournament and yet still managed to win, seemed too soft this tournament. He's always had a good blend of looping and blocking from both wings, but he struggled at times as his shots seemed soft and tentative. But often the measure of a champion is how well he plays when he doesn't have his "A" game, and Timothy won many of his matches with his "B" game. (I didn't see the Men's Final against Cory, but I'm told that Timothy played better there, and that he dominated with his short sidespin serves.) Timothy and Han Xiao had won Men's Doubles the last two years, but this time lost in the first round to Lu Guo Hui and Justin Huang.

Last Blog Until After the Nationals (Monday, Dec. 23) 

I leave for the USA Nationals this Sunday, Dec. 15, and don't return until the following Sunday, Dec. 22. So the next blog will be on Monday, Dec. 23. One thing that might help to keep track of when I don't have a blog is to friend me on Facebook, assuming you have a Facebook account. Every morning as soon as the blog goes up I put a note out on Facebook, which always starts off, "This morning in my table tennis blog I wrote about…" I'm easy to find on Facebook; I'm right here.

Happy Friday the 13^th!

Jason Voorhees, table tennis player, says hi!

The Hobbit and Early-Morning Writing

I saw the midnight showing of The Hobbit Part 2, and didn't get to bed until after 4AM. (I still can't believe that Gollum is Gandalf's father!!!) And I still got up at 8AM to write this blog and do other table tennisy stuff. So if my mind wanders off I have a doggy and I start repeating myself or saying weird things or repeating myself Gollum Gollum loopsy please bear with me I said bear okay?

USA Nationals

I'm off to the USA Nationals in Las Vegas this Sunday for a week. I'm not playing, only coaching, but I'll be incredibly busy. How busy can a coach be since he's only working when one of his players is playing? Extremely! Because there's a lot more to it than just showing up for each match. (Plus I'm coaching two top juniors who are entered in numerous events.)

Developing Training Centers

The best thing that's happened to table tennis in recent years is the rise of full-time training centers. I predicted this for years, but most thought there simply weren't enough table tennis players to support more than a few of these. In December 2006, when there were no more than eight to ten full-time TT centers in the U.S. (including my club, the Maryland Table Tennis Center), I even gave a presentation to the USATT Board, urging them to get involved by using their resources to recruit and training coaches to set up these full-time centers and junior programs. I wanted them to set a goal of 100 full-time training centers in five years. The response was a room full of eyes staring back at me as if I were crazy, with two board members bluntly telling me that there simply aren't enough players in this country to support more than a few full-time centers. Others nodded in agreement. They also didn't like the idea of setting a specific number as a goal, since they thought they'd be considered failures if they didn't reach the goal. (This last was crazy, as if you have ten centers and make a goal of having 100, and get, say, 80, you are an incredible success, going from ten to 80 - and then you continue to strive for the 100.) I made a similar challenge at the 2009 USATT Strategic Meeting; same result.