Table Tennis Tactics: A Thinker's Guide

It's done! Okay, not really. I finished the final proofing around 3AM this morning. I'm sure I'll continue to fiddle with it; within minutes after getting up this morning I added some material to the chapter on doubles tactics. I have finalized the title, at least until and unless I change my mind.

Final version (for now) is 97,768 words. How long is that?

• 12-point Times Roman, double spaced: 318 pages
• 12-point Courier, double spaced: 420 pages
• Twice as long as my Table Tennis: Steps to Success book (48,192 words)
• 978 KB on my computer in Word format (just under a megabyte)
• 544,527 characters. (That's a lot of typing!)

I've pretty much decided to self-publish (ebooks, print on demand, and regular hard copies), rather than go through the hassle of dealing with a publisher. One publisher had expressed interest, but it would mean redoing much of the book to their specifications, and I'd rather have more control over the content. Plus it would take a lot longer to come out. Table tennis is a rather specific audience, and I can advertise the book in the various table tennis magazines, web pages, and forums. I've already started playing around with a possible cover. I'm debating how many graphics I should use. It doesn't really need pictures, but I'm thinking of putting in at least one picture at the start of each chapter to illustrate that chapter's subject. I'm hoping to have the book out this summer, but we'll see.

Drop the arm and loop

Players are often too slow in responding to pushes that should be looped. (This assumes you know how to loop; if you don't, learn. Get a coach or watch top players, perhaps in the video section here.) When you see that an opponent is about to push, you should be preparing to drop down to loop, either forehand or backhand. (One-winged speedsters have a simplified world view; they are going to loop with their forehand, so they don't have to decide forehand or backhand, just which way to move. But that's a difficult way to play.) Players often miss their loops because they are slow to respond, and so end up rushed, which is the most common reason players miss loops.

This is something you can practice anywhere, without a table or racket. Go into a ready stance and imagine your opponent about to push. Visualize the push sometimes going to your forehand side, sometimes the backhand side. The instant you see where the opponent is going, lower your arm and playing shoulder (your whole body goes down some to loop backspin), and shadow practice looping it. Then repeat. Keep doing this until you feel like you are reacting almost instantly, or until the people in the office where you work have you committed.

"Is there a ping-pong coach around?"

I just watched a short CNN news video about a boy whose heart stopped after he was hit in the chest with a baseball during a game. The coaches started CPR, and then a nurse came out of the stands and took over, saving his life. This reminded me of a Nationals where a player had a heart attack in the middle of a match. Within thirty seconds he was surrounded by about ten doctors from among the 700 or so players. He survived.

U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame

Have you ever visited the online U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame? There are 134 members - 87 players and 47 officials/contributors. It's a fascinating look back at the players and other people that dominated and influenced table tennis in the U.S. since the formation of USA Table Tennis (then U.S. Table Tennis Association) in 1933. Tim Boggan has written profiles of each of them, which are linked here - spend a day reading over them. Someday they should be made into a book.

I've met 79 of them. (I'm not sure how you could "meet" six of the "contributors" inducted - Detroiter, General Sportcraft, Harvard Table Tennis, Nippon Takkyu, P. Becker and Co., and Tamasu Co. Since I've used or played against equipment made by each of these companies, does that mean I've "met" 85?) Go over the list; how many have you met or seen? (And if you studiously read my blog, you can count me as "met"!)

There's also this U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame page, but its listings seem a few years out of date, only going to 2008. It lists the U.S. Hall of Fame Committee, history, retrospectives, annual banquet info, etc.

In addition to the 134 Hall of Famers, there are the 14 recipients of the Mark Matthews Lifetime Achievement Award. (They are all also members of the Hall of Fame.)  I've met all but Leah Thall Neuberger. The recipients are: Bobby Gusikoff, Sol Schiff, Jimmy McClure, Dick Miles, Marty Reisman, J. Rufford Harrison, Leah Thall Neuberger, Thelma "Tybie" Thall Sommer, Joseph R. "Tim" Boggan, George Braithwaite, Danny Seemiller, Houshang Bozorgzadeh, Fred Danner, and Mal Anderson.

Want a consistent forehand and backhand?

Then start off every session by hitting 50 (or even 100) in a row at a steady pace with good technique. Don't start counting until the shot feels comfortable. Don't go out there hitting at different speeds - to develop a repeatable shot you need to repeat it the same way over and Over and OVER, until it is so ingrained you find yourself absentmindedly practicing your forehand as you take your wedding vows, and after your prospective wife kills you, you'll reflexively smack the coroner with another forehand howitzer.

Once the shots are so ingrained, then you should focus on random drills that involve using these repeatable strokes when you don't know whether the next shot will be a forehand or backhand. For example, your partner hits the ball randomly to your forehand or backhand, and you respond by returning each shot with your forehand or backhand to the same spot he's hitting from. (Partner should be hitting all forehands or all backhands.) Take it slow - it's better to do this at a pace where you respond correctly each time then at a pace where your strokes begin to deteriorate and you practice bad form. As you improve, increase the pace. (Maybe an expanded version of this should be a Tip of the Week?)

U.S. Nationwide Table Tennis League

Tip of the Week:

Forehand Deception with Shoulder Rotation.

Potomac Open and Chinese Juniors

I had to miss the tournament as I was busy coaching at MDTTC. However, the results were profoundly interesting as they were the first tournaments for the three new MDTTC kids from China. The three, all from the Shandong Luneng Table Tennis School in Shandong, moved here a few weeks ago and plan to learn English and stay through college. They will be training at the Maryland Table Tennis Center as well as acting as practice partners. Here are their rough results.

Wang Qing Liang, 17, is the oldest and strongest. He plays a modern chopper/looper style, very similar to 2003 World Men's Singles Finalist Joo Se Hyuk of South Korea. This means that he mostly chops on the backhand with long pips, and both chops and attacks all-out on the forehand side, where he's ready to counterloop anything. In the semifinals he defeated current U.S. Men's Singles Champion Peter Li 4-2. In the final he faced MDTTC coach Jeffrey Xeng Xun, where after a long battle he lost 4-2. He's about 2550-2600 level, and when the tournament is processed he'll be one of the top two or three resident juniors in the U.S. (along with Michael Landers and Yang Liang), as well as the highest rated chopper. We haven't had a chopper this good since the days of Derek May, Arun Kumar, and Insook Bhushan, but none of those three could attack like this kid.

Two times to shorten your stroke

Many players develop strokes that are too short, which costs them both power and control. (They lose control because to generate power they have to jerk into the shot instead of a smoother progression.) But there are two times when players should often shorten their strokes.

The first is when returning serves. The key here is control, so you don't need a lot of power. A shorter stroke also allows you to wait a little longer before swinging, giving you more time to read the spin. It also is easier to use a short stroke over the table against short serves. You can shorten your stroke a bit when looping a deep serve as well, as long as you don't get too soft. The basic rule is loop only as fast as needed to keep the opponent from making a strong counter-attack. (Of course, if you read the serve well - and know you have read the serve well - then you can put a little more on the loop. At higher levels many players often overpower the service spin with their own huge topspin, and so they do not shorten their stroke.)

The second time is against a loop. If you are blocking, you don't need to put too much force into it since the topspin will jump off your racket already. If you smash a loop, then you should also shorten your stroke. This allows you to wait as long as possible before starting your forward swing, and it makes timing easier against a ball that's jumping off the table with topspin. Unlike a normal smash, where you can get away with hitting the ball a bit late, against a loop if you are late smashing, the ball jumps away from you. The shorter stroke makes it easier to take it on the rise or top of the bounce.

You also might shorten your stroke in a very fast rally or against a smash, but here you are doing it because you are forced to, as opposed to by choice.

How To Prepare for Match and Win! - Mental Readiness

My writing

This blog has a lot about my own writing. It wasn't planned - it just happened. So be it!

How table tennis will change, according to "Campaign 2100"

I've long wondered how table tennis will change in the future. Here are some possibilities that are straight from my book "Campaign 2100: Rise of the Moderates," a 117,000-word SF novel I wrote that is currently making the rounds of agents and publishers. (It covers the 2100 election for president of Earth, where the whole world has adopted the American two-party electoral system. I describe it as "West Wing in the 22nd century," with the underlying theme moderation in politics; some will read it as a Moderate Manifesto.)

One of the main characters, Bruce, is a professional college table tennis player, and one of the dramas is when, at 19-all in the fifth in the semifinals of the college championships against his nemesis, he loses interest and defaults the match to join the presidential election campaign. (Yes, the game has gone back to 21-point games in my future. Hey, it's my future!) Throughout the novel Bruce often has a ping-pong ball in hand, which he nervously fiddles with, tosses about, or throws at people.

Here is an excerpt that describes Bruce's futuristic paddle, which he calls Lore.

Lore was the latest model of ping-pong paddle, a Maestro Prime covered with Spinsey pinhole sponge, both from Trump Sports. When the ball hit it, the Spinsey sponge compressed, forcing air out through the tiny, angled holes that permeated the surface. If he held it one way, the air shot upward from the parallel holes, creating a topspin. If he flipped the paddle, so the backhand side became the forehand side and vice versa, then the air would shoot downward, creating a backspin.

Here's a listing of the changes to the sport I put in the novel:

MDTTC Featured

The Maryland Table Tennis Center was featured in a story in the Montgomery Gazette this morning. I'm quoted several times. Make sure to click on the pictures! We've been featured in various media hundreds of times over the years.

How does one go about getting press coverage of your table tennis events? It's not difficult, but it does take some time. First, have something to feature. It can be an actual event (tournament, clinic, big league match, etc.), a person (player or coach), or just table tennis in general. (All reporters need an "angle.") Get a listing of all the local media by Googling your city and state along with "newspapers," "TV stations," and "radio stations." Go to their web pages and compile a list of contact emails. Then write a press release about your event, person, or table tennis in general, and send it off.

If you have a really big event, contact the national press - CNN, MSNBC, FOX, USA Today, Associated Press, etc.

If you don't get any nibbles, do it again a week later. You may have to hit them a few times before you get their attention.

How do you write a press release? Just write about what you hope to feature. Make sure to include all the info - the who, what, when, where, why, and how. Then check it for spelling and grammar - there are few quicker ways to turn off literary types (and anyone from a newspaper, TV, or radio considers themselves "literary types") than with misspellings and awkward grammar. Write clearly and focus on the facts and anything that you think might interest people. Let them do the color - after they've come and interviewed you!

Sean O'Neill named U.S. Paralympic Table Tennis Coach

$100,000 U.S. Nationwide Table Tennis League

Yesterday I was in on a phone conference with the organizers, advisers, and sponsors of the upcoming USNTTL. (I'm not sure I'm at liberty to say who was on the call. Attila Malek, 1979 U.S. Men's Champion and long-time coach, is the driving force behind it.) I'm now on their advisory committee.

I had some suggestions for promoting the league, which I've used regularly in the past - meetup.com, craigslist.com, mailings to clubs (including a request that clubs call a meeting to discuss the league with members), and an online printable roster sheet that league directors can use to sign up players. Mailings to coaches was also discussed, as coaches are often the ones running local leagues. I also suggested they contact some "big names" to help them promote the league. (For example, see the segment below on Susan Sarandon. A few words from her to the proper news medium would be hugely helpful.)

I only agreed to be on their advisory committee because they really seem to be dead serious about setting up this nationwide league, which has been paramount importance to developing table tennis in this country for so many years - and the fact that it's never been done is a primary (if not the primary) reason the sport has so long stagnated in this country. Successful countries used leagues to bring in large memberships and revenue, and (if you are more interested in elite table tennis) used that money to develop their national teams. It's win-win. I've constantly been dumbfounded at the refusal to undertake any serious league development by USATT, but now we have someone actually taking action. I hope you will support this league. I hope USATT will support it.

Tip of the Week

Returning the Tomahawk Serve. (This is an expanded version of my blog about this on May 10.)

Different Generations

At the club last night one of our up-and-coming kids, about ten years old, came up to me and said, "Larry, can I borrow your cell phone? I want to check my rating." For about five seconds I was stumped, wondering who he was going to call to get his rating before I realized that to this generation, "cell phone" is just shorthand for "small hand-held computer connected to the Internet." When I explained my cell phone only made phone calls (and, it is rumored, takes pictures), he was flabbergasted, and left shaking his head, probably muttering about old fuddy-duddies.

This got me to thinking about how the world has changed, in particularly the world of table tennis. Here's a brief rundown of changes since I started in 1976.

1976: Sriver or Mark V?
2012: About ten thousand choices of sponge

1976: Top-of-the-line sponge: $7
2012: Top-of-the-line sponge: $80

1976: Sponge that trampolines the ball out.
2012: Sponge that grabs the ball and explodes it out like a slingshot on steroids.

1976: Sponge came in red, black, green, blue, yellow, orange, purple,...
2012: Red or black

1976: Japan, Hungary, and Sweden battle with the Chinese
2012: Nobody battles with the Chinese (except perhaps the Singapore women)

1976: Teach the forehand loop to kids after they are around 1500, and the backhand loop when they are around 1800, if ever.
2012: Teach the forehand and backhand loop to kids after they've played about a month.

1976: Loop sets up smash
2012: Loop sets up loop

1976: Why would you need to learn a backhand loop?
2012: Why aren't you working on your backhand loop?