Blogs

Larry Hodges' Blog and Tip of the Week will normally go up on Mondays by 2:00 PM USA Eastern time. Larry is a member of the U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame, a USATT Certified National Coach, a professional coach at the Maryland Table Tennis Center (USA), and author of ten books and over 2100 articles on table tennis, plus over 1900 blogs and over 600 tips. Here is his bio. (Larry was awarded the USATT Lifetime Achievement Award in July, 2018.)

Make sure to order your copy of Larry's best-selling book, Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers!
Finally, a tactics book on this most tactical of sports!!!

Also out - Table Tennis Tips, More Table Tennis Tips, Still More Table Tennis Tips, and Yet Still More Table Tennis Tips, which cover, in logical progression, his Tips of the Week from 2011-2023, with 150 Tips in each!

Or, for a combination of Tales of our sport and Technique articles, try Table Tennis Tales & Techniques. If you are in the mood for inspirational fiction, The Spirit of Pong is also out - a fantasy story about an American who goes to China to learn the secrets of table tennis, trains with the spirits of past champions, and faces betrayal and great peril as he battles for glory but faces utter defeat. Read the First Two Chapters for free!

May 18, 2026

Tip of the Week
Develop an Overpowering Strength.

Frictionless Antispin and Long Pips
Due to problems with my right knee, I’m having difficulty playing my normal forehand attack game. (It might also have something to do with being 66, born in the last full year of the Eisenhower Administration.) So, I’ve been dabbling with long pips ox (no sponge) and frictionless antispin. The long pips actually fit my game very well, since I mostly just block on the backhand. I’ve resisted switching to it for decades since I’m a coach, and I’m a better practice partner with inverted on both sides. Before, as a full-time coach, I’d often hit with our top players as I coached them. Now I only do group sessions where I’m either walking around, feeding multiball, or acting as a practice partner for our beginning and intermediate players, only occasionally hitting with our top players. I can easily switch back to inverted when I hit with these players, ranging from beginner to perhaps 1800.

I’m actually somewhat experienced with long pips as I’ve used them many times as a practice partner for decades. I have two huge racket cases full of rackets to pull out as needed when players need to practice against a specific surface, and they include long pips no sponge (for blocking), long pips with 1mm sponge (for chopping), and one with medium-long pips (both blocking and hitting). The only problem is that the thinness of the surface messes up my grip, and the lowered weight messes up my timing. However, I’ve been experimenting with the grip and getting used to the weight.

The frictionless antispin was a surprise. (And I thought I knew everything about table tennis!) With long pips, I mostly chop-block, with maximizes the amount of spin I return, and gives great control. Once you understand how long pips works, it’s all intuitive. But frictionless antispin is seemingly non-intuitive. As I learned both in practice and in online articles and discussions, a chop-block lowers the amount of spin you return. Think about it – someone loops at you with heavy topspin. If I chop down on the ball at contact, you’d think I’d return more spin, but that actually deadens the spin, and so you return it with less backspin. But if I just stick the racket out and let the ball hit it straight on, it returns almost all of the spin, and is most effective. (But I feel like I lose some control that way.) It’s mind-bogglingly weird.

At this point I’m leaning toward either 1) long pips ox, or 2) maybe, just maybe, if my knee seems more or less okay and I don’t feel 100 years old, inverted again. We’ll see. I’ll be in Over 65 at the Nationals in July. I’ll also be in the hardbat events.

Ping-Pong Paddles Can’t Talk!

The inside illustrations look great! They are almost all done, but some need minor corrections. The book should be out by June 15. As noted previously, it’s a humorous Seussian rhyming children’s picture book that introduces table tennis to kids. It features a nervous boy and his talking paddle in their first tournament, where he meets and plays a girl who is really good, and they have an adventurous match. Along the way, kids learn about the sport, with themes on facing your fears, working toward a goal, honesty, and friendship.

I plan to send copies to table tennis bloggers. If interested, email me! I’m also toying with advertising in USATT’s Table Tennis Insider.

One strange thing – I’d like to advertise somewhere on the ITTF webpage. I’ve emailed them a number of times this past month with their Contact Us page and various other emails listed on their webpages, but no response. Jeez, I want to give them money and they don’t seem to want it!!! If any ITTF people read this, please email me and perhaps we can figure out how I can send them large sums of cash.

Meanwhile, while you (or at least the kids in our sport) anxiously await this book, don’t forget about my other table tennis books!

World Team Championships
They were held Apr. 28 – May 10 in London. Here are some links.

Here are articles by Steve Hopkins/Butterfly, most recent first.

Behind The Scenes of the World Championships 2026
Here’s the video (15:53) from Andreas Levenko.

How Coaches Learned From the Elite at London 2026
Here’s the article from Table Tennis England.

Major League Table Tennis

New from Butterfly

How to Forehand Counterloop
Here’s the video (2:57) with Milo de Boer from acceleraq.

New from Ti Long

New from the Table Tennis Teaching Channel

Average to Pro Serve in 7 Days!
Here’s the video (7:27) from Table Tennis Daily.

PingSunday/EmRatThich
29 videos this past week, and dozens more before that from the Worlds.

New from PingSkills
Ask the Coach.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly
(Note – articles on Worlds are in World Team Championships segment.)

Formulation of Fitness Norms for Skill-Specific Components in Table Tennis Performance
Here’s the technical article, care of Kevin Finn at Peak Performance Table Tennis, from the International Journal of Original Recent Advanced Research, an “International Peer Reviewed Journal.”

Two Humorous Table Tennis Sites

I Challenged Google
Here’s the video (14:48) from Adam Bobrow!

New Sales & Publications – Drabbles!
I’m now a professional drabblist. What’s a drabble, you ask? It’s one of those small niche markets – it’s a story that’s exactly 100 words long. Here are two that I sold and were published this past week. Both have historical references. See if you can get both. Hint for the second one – it’s a reference to a song. But don’t spend too much time on it, the years go by swiftly.

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May 11, 2026

Tip of the Week
What To Do With Problem Serves.

No Blog This Week
I’m in two workshops over the next few days, including one all day today. See you next Monday!

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May 4, 2026

Tip of the Week
Wait a Split Second Longer When Looping a Push, Then Change Directions.
(Unless your opponent is a Jedi, in which case he’ll just adjust and react to anything you do. It’s May the Fourth, so I had to get my Star Wars joke in there . . . and may the forehand be with you. And here’s Darth Vader playing table tennis with a Martian.)

Even Yet More Table Tennis Tips
It’s not out in both Print and Kindle versions. I blogged about it last week. (Meanwhile, I’m having semi-regular Zoom/Google Meet meetings with the illustrator as we go about finalizing the illustrations for the upcoming children’s picture book, “Ping-Pong Paddles Can’t Talk!” It should be out June 15.

LarryHodgesBooks.com and TableTennisBooks.com
I have both the LarryHodgesBooks.com and TableTennisBooks.com domains. This past week I linked both of them to my book listing here at TableTennisCoaching.com – see menu on left. I have tentative plans to eventually turn TableTennisBooks.com into a central listing with links to all table tennis books.

Play It Like the Pros by David Salomez
Play Like The Pros! just came out, 108 pages. It’s subtitled, “50 player profiles to inspire you and improve your table tennis game,” which pretty much tells you what it’s about. I wrote the Foreword (400 words), which starts out like this:

So, you want to play like the pros? Then you should go out there and spend many hours/days/weeks/months/years analyzing their techniques, tactics, and equipment. GO TO IT!!! Oh, wait—Someone already did this for you! You have in your hands or screen, from David Salomez, the very analysis you need—50 players, including 35 current and 15 legends. You just saved a lot of time.

Besides writing about table tennis, David is a translator. He’s translated four of my books into French:

Weekend Coaching
I worked a lot with beginning/intermediate players this past weekend in three 90-minute group sessions. The emphasis was on looping, both backhand and forehand, against backspin and topspin. The thing that I noticed is that every player seemed to have a different thing they had trouble with – there was no one thing. One had trouble lowering his racket and so his loops were, at first, just drives. (He might as well have used a hardbat for that!) Another didn’t drop her shoulder. Another always lifted the ball way too much – she could loop against heavy backspin, but anything else shot off the end. I worked with each of them on these issues and hopefully they’re getting better! In games, I worked with several players on attacking the middle, which most have trouble doing effectively.

MDTTC Elite Team League
After mostly staying off my feet for two months due to my knee injury, I had two practice sessions this past week. Then I played in the Elite Team League at MDTTC yesterday (Sunday). I played like I’d aged 15 years these past two months, and I mean that literally – I felt like I was tottering about on stilts. I could barely loop a push and the table seemed ten feet wide. My muscles were stiff as rocks. I returned serves as if I were blindfolded. In four singles matches, against players ranging from 2000 to 2200, I didn’t win a game. However, my teammate was Richik Ghosh, age 11, recently rated as high as 2243, and one of the very best in the country for his age. (Teams for the event were drawn by lot.) He won most of his singles matches. In the doubles, I didn’t really play well either, but I played good doubles tactics (I wrote the book!), and opponents had trouble with my serves – especially with Richik following up on them - and we won three out of four and somehow came in second overall.

Major League Table Tennis

New from the International Classic Table Tennis Federation
Note – “Classic” means hardbat, sandpaper, and wood.

New from Butterfly

How to STOP a Strong Backhand Banana (Make Them Flip Weak!)
Here’s the video (7:11) from Andrea Levenko. The backhand banana flip revolutionized table tennis, and yet many still don’t understand how to deal with it – but Andrea gives three very good tips here for doing so.

How to Forehand Flick
Here’s the video (3:37) with Milo de Boer from Acceleraq.

New from Olav Kosolosky

New from Biomechanics Applied to Table Tennis

Pros Use These 3 Spin Techniques YOU SHOULD TOO!
Here’s the video (7:46) from Seth Pech.

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich
Lots of new videos this past week!

The Hidden Serve Controversy and the Problem of Illegal Services in Professional Table Tennis
Here’s the article from PingSunday. This is a problem I’ve been pointing out for years.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from USATT

New from the ITTF

The Hero Appears! “Ping Pong” and the Asobi Spirit
Here’s the article about anime cartoon Ping Pong the Animation.

Let's Play Table Tennis: Rally
Here’s the video (59 sec) between a frog and a dinosaur . . . with a little sports psychology thrown in!

Bumblebee Pong
Here’s the video (28 sec)!

PingPongMaestros
See their daily humorous skill-shot videos!

Things I Do in My Spare Time
Here’s where you can buy the table tennis shirt!

Non-Table Tennis
I also sold a story last week, “Perfect Person” (3100 words) to the Independent Fantasy and Sci-Fi Magazine. When Sam dies he goes to Heaven – but it’s vacant and run-down because, after thousands of years, he’s the first person to ever qualify. He sets about fixing things up . . . but it’s rather lonely when it’s just you and an ancient, computerized Saint Peter.

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April 27, 2026

Tip of the Week
April 27: When Receiving, Emphasize Placement & Consistency

Even Yet Still More Table Tennis Tips – NOW AVAILABLE!!!

Even Yet Still More Table Tennis Tips, the fifth and likely final book in my Tips series, is now on sale at Amazon for just $14.95! It’s another 150 Tips of the Week, put together in logical fashion. There are, appropriately, eleven chapters:

  1. Serve (10)
  2. Receive (8)
  3. Strokes (22)
  4. Footwork and Positioning (14)
  5. Tactics (30)
  6. Training and Strategic Development (28)
  7. Sports Psychology (13)
  8. Coaching (8)
  9. Tournaments (10)
  10. Doubles (5)
  11. Equipment (2)

Here are all 27 of my books (or click on tab on left), including all five books in the Tips series:

Two other popular books are:

Weekend Coaching
A major focus this weekend in my groups was transition from looping against backspin, to looping or hitting against topspin, i.e., against a block. You want to know the quickest way to mess up players from the advanced beginner to intermediate level? Feed them lots and lots of multiball backspin where they loop over and Over and OVER until they do it perfectly . . . then send them out to play matches. They’ll put every ball that’s not backspin off the end. No, this didn’t happen – I made sure of it, always finishing any session with topspin rallies. The key (on the forehand side) is to drop the shoulder some when looping against backspin, but not against topspin (or at most only a little if you are off the table).

You want to know a quick way to bore younger kids to death? Nothing but multiball, multiball, multiball – unless you do the simple ploy of putting a target on the table and challenging them to hit it. (A simple water bottle will do, or perhaps a box or bowl that they can, after a series of shots, knock off the table.) Then their eyes light up, they’re focused, and they’re dying to do lots of multiball, Multiball, MULTIBALL!!! (I often use the opposite “ploy,” saying, “Don’t you dare hit my water bottle!”)

AI-powered Robot Beats Elite Table Tennis Players
Here’s the article from The Guardian. Here’s another video, Robot Sony AI (3:36), and see Steve Hopkins article below. However, there’s a key thing not mentioned – players train for years to react to human strokes, and the robot’s strokes are quite different. Because of this, top players, even pro’s, don’t react nearly as quickly or as well as they would against a human. But the robot is trained to play humans. So, it’s not really a fair contest. I think if top players training regularly with these robots, they’d adjust, and in their current state, top human players would win easily every time instead of most of the time. HOWEVER . . . that’s just for now. Now that they’ve figured out how to program a robot to read and adjust to spin, and to rally at top speeds, it’s inevitable they'll develop a robot that's simply unbeatable. (

Another issue - they use cameras all over the playing area to judge the spin. Humans don’t have that advantage. If the robot has to judge spin from just two eyes on the robot itself, it might have more problems. Also, while top players judge spin mostly from the opponent’s stroke and contact, and the flight of the ball, the robot mostly does so by zeroing in on the ball’s logo and reading the spin directly. While a human can read spin some from the label, at higher spins that’s not really possible. What if they played with a ball without a logo?

May 2026 Issue of Table Tennis History
Here it is, from Steve Grant! Why not read over the intro and the TOC and see which articles interest you? They even have an article on Marty Supreme, and lots of other interesting stuff.

Major League Table Tennis

Advice from 2003 Men’s Singles World Champion Werner Schlager
Here’s the video (60 sec) from the last European to win the Worlds.

New from Butterfly

Forehand Topspin Against Backspin
Here’s the video (4:51) with Milo de Boer, from Acceleraq.

Rate Your Serve … How Strong is Your Service Game?
Here’s the article from Tom Lodziak.

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

New from the Table Tennis Teaching Channel

Liu Guoliang: The Man Who Built China’s Table Tennis Empire
Here’s the video (4:51) from Beyond the Podium.

Harvard’s Kelly Yenn Successfully Defends Singles Title and Adds Doubles
Here’s the article from NCTTA.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from ITTF

Viktor Barna, the Greatest Table Tennis Player the World Has Ever Known
Here’s the video (50 sec) of the five-time Men’s Singles World Champion (1930, 1932-35), from the ITTF. Of course, “greatness” can be defined in many ways.

Ping Pong Pang Feat
Here’s the table tennis music and dance video (19 sec) from Tenis de Mesa from Sevilla!

Six Incredible Shots in 36 Seconds
Here’s the video from Habib Insan!

This is Why People Don’t Want to Play With You
Here’s the video (12 sec) from Pingpongmaestros!

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April 20, 2026

Tip of the Week
Push with Purpose and Placement.

Since Jan. 17, 2011, I’ve done 750 Tips of the Week, with one going up every Monday. But I’m all tipped out! I may start up again later, but starting today I’m rerunning the early ones – some of them are my best ones. It also means I now have another 150 tips for the fifth (and likely last) book in the Tips series, “Even Yet Still More Table Tennis Tips” – see segment below.

My Two Upcoming Table Tennis Books


[CLICK on images for larger version.]

=>April 26: “Even Yet Still More Table Tennis Tips.” This is the fifth and likely final book in my “Tips” series, 148 pages, with another 150 Tips of the Week put together in logical fashion. Here are the previous four:

=>JUNE 15: “Ping-Pong Paddles Can’t Talk!” This is a humorous Seussian rhyming children’s picture book that introduces table tennis to kids. It features a nervous boy and his talking paddle in their first tournament, where he meets and plays a girl who is really good, and they have an adventurous match. Along the way, kids learn about the sport, with themes on facing your fears, working toward a goal, honesty, and friendship. 80 pages. 

Weekend Coaching
Another week, another distribution of rating points. Kids, especially their first two years or so, often gain hundreds of rating points per year, so that might mean 5-10 points per week. As a coach, I feel like Santa Claus with a sack of rating points over my shoulder, tossing them out to the players each week as they train. :) In my Saturday sessions, the focus was mostly on three things:

  • Down the line shots. On the forehand side this means rotating back a bit more and taking the ball slightly later in relation to the body, roughly in front of the right leg (for righties). When positioned correctly, it’s natural; when not positioned correctly, it’s an awkward shot as the player twists about trying to get the ball to go down the line. On the backhand side it’s important to face the direction you are hitting when doing a backhand, although on simple blocks you can change directions without doing so. However, on both forehand and backhand, you can wait until the last second before rotating shoulders back (for forehand) or facing the direction of the shot (for backhand) so you don’t telegraph the direction to the opponent, and in fact by doing so you can misdirect opponents and catch them going the wrong way.
  • Faster forehand-backhand footwork. The most basic foot drills are simple side-to-side ones. Perhaps the most important is the simple forehand-backhand drill, where you play forehand from forehand side, backhand from backhand side, side to side. All the kids do this a lot, so the emphasis this time was on speed. We did it faster and faster as I kept telling them they can’t possibly do it this fast. (Of course, that just gave them more incentive.)
  • Pushing. I mostly worked with two beginners on this. Like most, they picked up backhand pushing quickly. The forehand push is always trickier to learn until they understand it’s no different than the backhand, once they understand they need to have their playing elbow forward for the shots. They do this naturally on the backhand, but for forehand pushing players tend to keep the elbow back, which makes the shot awkward. Instead, put the elbow forward, and then you can move the arm from the elbow left or right equally for backhand or forehand pushes.

Across the Net: A Story of Ping Pong and Friendship
(I put this up late last week, so am rerunning it here.)
Here’s the video (12 min) - CGTN America did a feature on my co-coach Cheng Yinghua at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. Cheng was a member of the Chinese National Team, and then 4-time US Men’s Singles Champion, 2-time US Open Men’s Singles Champion, and a member of the 2000 US Olympic Team. (I’m interviewed multiple times in the video. Over half of the pictures of Cheng they used were also from my files. CGTN America is China Global Television Network America.)

Major League Table Tennis

New from NCTTA

Great News: Texas Table Tennis Upcoming Head Coach Koji Itagaki
Here’s the news item.

Butterfly Training Tips

Short Short Strategies That Quietly Win You Points
Here’s the video (12:12) from Andreas Levenko. Lots of great takeaways in this video, but here are two. First, when he forehand flips, notice how he brings his wrist back? This not only allows wrist in the flip, but makes it look like he’s going down the line – and then, at the last second, he can go either way. Second, early on he says something you should always remember: “Train the same way as if we are playing a match.”

Video Coaching from PingSkills
Here’s the info page. Film up to 30 seconds of your stroke, and receive their expert feedback for FREE.

New from the Table Tennis Teaching Channel

PechPong Competes in Stockholm 2026
Here’s the video (20:52) as Seth Pech gives his usual analysis.

Are You Regularly Losing Matches Where You Have the Lead?
Here’s video (1:29) from Heming Hu on how to prevent this.

We Keep Losing Deciding Games. How Can We Start Winning?
Here’s the article from Tom Lodziak.

Disguising Your Sidespin Serves
Here’s the video (3:57) from Acceleraq where Dutch National Team Member, Milo de Boer shows two different sidespin serves.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from USATT

New from ITTF

Tennis Players Playing Ping Pong… and They’re Actually Good
Here’s the video (917) – “In this video, you’ll see some of the best tennis players like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner playing table tennis.”

If Table Tennis Equipment Started Talking
Here’s the video (32 sec) – it’s apparently in Hindi so I have no idea what they are saying, but the talking equipment is hilarious! According to Google Translate, the caption at the bottom says, “If table tennis equipment started talking to each other, this is what would happen!”

POV: You Are the Ping Pong Ball Between Tom and Jerry at ITTF World Cup 2026
Here’s the video (6:52). Some of it is silly and the AI does some silly stuff, but it has some funny moments.

Spookiz - Extreme Pingpong Challenge! 
Here’s the cartoon (34:09, but the table tennis is in the first 3.5 minutes).

How Many Attempts?
Here’s video (11 sec) of three incredible trick shots from Pingpongmaestros – and how many attempts it took to do it!

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April 13, 2026

Tip of the Week
Eleven Points for Developing a Modern Advanced Style.

A Review and an Interview
My fantasy table tennis novel “The Spirit of Pong” was just reviewed for a Topeka Book Club, and I was interviewed about my writing by Jeff Cates – with lots of table tennis. (Here are all my books - buy some!) Here is the review and interview:

Across the Net: A Story of Ping Pong and Friendship
(NOTE – I added this late, on Monday night. I will include it in next week’s blog as well.)
Here’s the video (12 min) - CGTN America did a feature on my co-coach Cheng Yinghua at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. Cheng was a member of the Chinese National Team, and then 4-time US Men’s Singles Champion, 2-time US Open Men’s Singles Champion, and a member of the 2000 US Olympic Team. (I’m interviewed multiple times in the video. Over half of the pictures of Cheng they used were also from my files. CGTN America is China Global Television Network America.)

Weekend Coaching and Hating to Lose
Due to a writing seminar I attended on Sunday, I only coached two group sessions this past weekend, both on Saturday. In the Intermediate group, much of the focus of my multiball group was the same as last week – transition from looping backspin to looping or hitting topspin, on both forehand and backhand. In the more advanced group, much of the focus (as always) was on footwork. Most players get this, but some still don’t always quite get the idea that 1) you don’t wait to see if you have to move; you assume you have to move, and prepare with a light bounce on your feet as your opponent is hitting the ball, and 2) you move to the ball with your feet even if you could do so by just reaching for the ball.

When they got to games, I could often tell which players were affected by not wanting to lose – all of them! But there were three ways players responded to this. Some got passive, especially when it was close, and were scared to attack. Others stayed aggressive, but shots they’d make in practice they’d miss because they were worried about losing, and so couldn’t play free. Others had learned to mostly clear their minds and played mostly free, even under pressure. That’s what you need to strive for.

John Olsen had written me that, “Players that excel, I have found that it's not so much that they love to win, but they hate to lose.” And there’s a lot of truth to this. In theory, you’d think wanting to win would be more important than hating to lose. Sometimes that’s true. But often it’s hating to lose that motivates players, as well as wanting to win.

Top players (all sports) hate losing far more than the average person. They are competitive by nature. However, it is this very hatred of losing that, counter-intuitively, keeps their hatred of losing from affecting their play. They know that if they worry about losing while playing, it will affect their play and they are be more likely to lose. And so, from years of mental training and learning to focus in matches, they’ve learned to clear their mind when it’s time to play, all so they won’t lose. Result? Players who really, Really, REALLY hate to lose are often at their best in big matches and during big points. On the other hand, players who don’t like losing but not as much as top players are more likely to let his fear of losing affect him, and thereby lose because of it.

Top players often have a history of being bad losers as juniors – it’s a motivating factor. Those that overcome it become top players. The key is to use it for the first, but put it aside in matches so you can play free. Many players get passive under pressure because they are afraid to lose, and so never learn to play well under pressure. You have to overcome your fears and play your normal game under pressure. Ideally, you train not to avoid losing, but so you can improve and win! (And “win” means different things to different players – it could mean winning against your friends at a club or in the basement, in a league, a rating event, a club or state title, or national or international events.)

Major League Table Tennis

New from NCTTA – National Collegiate Championships

Butterfly Training Tips

New from Pingispågarna

Learn the Hook Serve
Here’s the video (3:26) with Dutch National Table Tennis Team Member Milo De Boer, from Acceleraq.

New from the Table Tennis Teaching Channel

New from PingSkills
Ask the Coach.

55th Anniversary of a Ping Pong Diplomacy That Changed the World (1971–2026)
Here’s the USATT article by Joshua Dyke.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from the ITTF

Panda Pong
Here’s the video (15 sec)!

I Played a 2x Olympic Champion
Here’s the video (8:25) from Adam Bobrow! He takes on Chen Meng, World #1 for 76 weeks in-a-row and 2x consecutive Olympic Singles Champion.

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April 6, 2026

Tip of the Week
Try to Stay Within Arm’s Length of the Table.

Spring Break Camp, Weekend Coaching, Multi-ball Backspin, and Placement
I coached Tue-Fri last week in our MDTTC Spring Break Camp, plus two group sessions on Sunday. I spent over half the sessions feeding multiball, and the rest either as a walk-around coach or practice partner. If there was a theme to the multiball, it was looping against backspin, both forehand and backhand. Most kids learn this pretty easily. The harder part is when I do drills that combine looping backspin and then looping or hitting against a topspin ball that roughly mimics a quick block of their loop. The key is the playing shoulder. You drop it against backspin. After doing that a lot, it’s somewhat natural to drop it at least a little against topspin – and the instant you do that, you’re going off the end. So, I did drills where I’d have them do the one-two of looping against backspin and then a quick topspin.

One other key thing was I didn’t want them to fall into the bad habit of just looping and hitting everything crosscourt. Once they could do this one-two drill pretty well, against backspin and then topspin, I had a new rule. Every shot had to go to one of the “three spots” (wide forehand, wide backhand, and “middle,” the opponent’s transition spot between forehand and backhand), but they couldn’t hit to the same spot twice in a row. So, they had three options for the first shot, and then the second shot had to go to one of the other two spots. This roughly mimics what you should mostly do in a match. There are times you do want to go twice in a row to the same spot in a match, but most players do that out of habit rather than tactical reasons.

When should you go to the same spot twice? You can often do this to the opponent’s middle over and over effectively. (I once coached a 1200-rated kid against a 1700 player. He was down 0-2, and every rally was a bang-bang fast topspin rally. I told him to attack every ball at the opponent’s elbow, and he relentlessly did just that, especially with his backhand – and he didn’t just win the next three games and the match, he completely dominated all three games.) Or, if you go to a wide corner – most often the forehand –  you can often catch the opponent off guard by going there again as he moves away and back into position. However, far too many players just go to the same spot twice because that’s what they do in practice

Upcoming Travel
I’ve got a busy travel schedule this Summer, including lots of table tennis and science fiction. Here’s the rundown. The BIG one is I’ll be spending 25 days sightseeing in eight northern European countries in August!

Class of 2026 Inductees & Lifetime Achievement Award
Here’s the announcement from the US Table Tennis Hall of Fame, with info on each recipient. The new Hall of Famers are Mark Hazinski, Juan Liu, and Noga Nir-Kistler, with Lily Yip getting the Lifetime Achievement Award. “The Class of 2026 will be formally honored at the U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame induction ceremony as part of the Patty and Si Wasserman Junior and Open Championships in October 2026 in New Jersey. Additional details will be announced soon.”

Major League Table Tennis

Butterfly Training Tips

Designing Points Around YOUR Strengths
Here’s the video (11:19) from Seth Pech on “How I Practice.”

The Service Training Method I Wish I Knew Earlier
Here’s the video (11:42) from Andreas Levenko.

New from the Table Tennis Teaching Channel

Fast Long Serves with Milo DeBoer
Here’s the video (3:01) from Acceleraq.

New from PingSunday
19 new videos this past week!

We Challenged World's Best Anti Spin Player!
Here’s the video (9:58) featuring Sabine Winter (world #9 from Germany), from Table Tennis Daily.

Membership Rating Features Enhanced on JustGo
Here’s the USATT news item.

The Philosophical Adventure of Ping-Pong
Here’s the article from El Mundo America.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from NCTTA

New from ITTF

Panda vs. Cat
Here’s the video (21 sec)!

World's Most Dangerous Racket
Here’s the video (15:17) from Pongfinity! That first “game” where they smack each other in the head with ping-pong balls – yikes!

Non-Table Tennis – New Short Story Sales
I sold two more short stories this past week. “Blueberry Pie” was my 200th original short story sale. (I’ve sold 257, but the other 57 were resales.) The two new sales were:

  • “The Eye in the Sky of the Blueberry Pie” (1000 words) to Third Flatiron’s Food for Thought anthology. When a planetary-sized blueberry pie comes plummeting down on Earth, scientists and religious folk debate who sent it while normal people prepare to get smooshed.
  • “Thirty-Five Genie Heads on a Wall” (8400 words) to Critical Blast’s Fantastic Journeys anthology. While being bullied at the beach, teenager Robbie is sucked into a Coke bottle. So begins his life as a genie, including classes at Genie University. His owner is a brutish king on a planet far from Earth – and the squirming, tormented heads of the king’s previous 35 genies are on display on a wall. (This was a resale.)

***
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March 30, 2026

Tip of the Week
Develop Your Game Around Overpowering Strengths.

Antarctica Classic Table Tennis Championships, April 1-5, 2026 at Esperanza Base
Antarctica! Today I fly to the Antarctica Classic TT Champs., starting Wed, Apr. 1. I’m
playing in the Over 60 Hardbat and Icebat events. Icebat is tricky. Players have to wear
rubber gloves or the racket melts too quickly. The surface is slick like antispin rubber.
It's also rather expensive as a typical racket melts about twice every game, so I'll need
lots of them, plus a portable freezer. (The Antarctica TTA offers discounts on these.)

Fortunately, I'm seeded #2 in both events. Surprise entry Jan-Ove Waldner is the number
one seed. He’s taken a recent interest in these events. I've studied his game and think I’m
only a slight underdog if I attack his wide forehand. Other Americans competing include
Lily Zhang and Kanak Jha, and my doubles partner, Danny Seemiller. I hope I can win the
singles, and for Danny & me to sweep hardbat & icebat doubles! Maybe we'll play penguins.

Weekend Coaching
Last week I had my second bout of flu this year, and wasn’t even sure I could coach this weekend. But it cleared up Friday, and so I coached on Saturday. My emphasis that day was SPEED! I fed a lot of multiball, going faster than usual, pushing the kids to their limit. The key was teaching them efficient movement and balance. A player who moves efficiently can get around faster than someone who’s quicker but not so efficient. Plus, as good coaches hammer into their players, balance is a must or you can’t quickly recover from one shot and move to the next. I had to remind some students that if their free hand hangs down like a dead snake, they won’t be too balanced when they move.

Dan Seemiller Classic
Besides the 15 regular events (including a Giant RR, three doubles events, and $4,000 in prize money) at the 3-star Butterfly Dan Seemiller Classic 3, and besides a trivia contest at the tournament, it also includes a Dan Seemiller clinic on Friday night, 6-8:30 PM. It all takes place in West Liberty, Kentucky, Apri. 24-26. I’m told it’s a great venue! You can enter by going to Kentucky in Omnipong.

Major League Table Tennis

Butterfly Training Tips

Learn How to do a Simple No Spin Serve
Here’s the video (2:55) from Matt Hetherington.

3 Hidden Mistakes SABOTAGING Your Table Tennis
Here’s the video (3:02) from Andrea Levenko.

This Simple Change Improved My Table Tennis Instantly
Here’s the video (2:59) from Pingispågarna.

New from Acceleraq

Should Adults Train the Same Way as Children When Starting Table Tennis?
Here’s the article by Bob Chen.

Tentative Play is the Worst … Here’s How to Fix
Here’s the article from Tom Lodziak.

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich
Note – there are a number of other “Members Only” videos.

New from the Table Tennis Teaching Channel

Interview with Sid Naresh
Here’s the video (5:46). It includes Introduction, How Sid got started in table tennis, Sid's journey to compete in LA, Advice for young athlete, People Sid wants to thank, and Where to find Sid.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from the NCTTA

Southeast Regional Table Tennis Championships Return to Florida
Here’s the USATT article by Joshua Dyke

New from ITTF
Note the Tom and Jerry item near the end, which includes a nice graphic of the two playing.

Comparative Effects of High-Intensity Interval Training Modalities on Physical Performance and Physiological Responses in Competitive Table Tennis Players
Here’s the research article from Research Square.

Tom and Jerry Table Tennis

80 Years Old, Still Returning Everything Life Serves at Him
Here’s where you can buy this birthday card!

Why I Lose at Ping Pong
Here’s where you can buy the shirt at Amazon!

Marty Supreme - Was He Actually Paid To Lose?
Here’s the cartoon video (21:05).

New from Table Tennis Daily

Ranking the Best Table Tennis Fails
Here’s the video (32 sec)!

Explosive Pong
Here’s the video (2 sec)!

How Long Can a Trickblock Take?
Here’s the video (15 sec) from Pingpongmaestros!

Cat Pong
Here’s the video (12 sec)! It’s AI, but done decently well, unlike others I’ve seen.

Adam vs. The Women of Thailand
Here’s the video (16:10) from Adam Bobrow!

Non-Table Tennis – Science Fiction & Fantasy Publications
I have two new stories out, and sold two others. I’ve sold 255 short stories – 199 original and 56 resales. I hope to sell my 200th original story soon! (I also have four novels. Here are all 25 of my books, over half on table tennis.)

  • “Forgive the Fortune Teller” came out in Black Cat Weekly. A fortune teller tells people their future, but by doing this, it changes their future actions and thereby dramatically changes their future. And then the teenaged future savior of the world, who will go down as the greatest person in human history, comes in and she tells him his fortune, changing everything. (To read it you’ll have to buy the issue.)
  • “Twin Lives” came out in Abyss & Apex on Wednesday, April 1 (no April Fools!). You can read this one online. Twin brothers choose different paths in life. One becomes a famous astronaut who leads an expedition to a nearby star. He’s adored by millions. The other is a failed athlete who lives an ordinary life. Because of time dilation, the latter is extremely old and about to die while his famous brother is still in his prime. Who had the better life?
  • I sold “The Oysters of Pinctada” to the War in the Stars anthology. (They bought it a month ago but I was sworn to secrecy until they made the official announcement two days ago.) It’ll come out in August. The people of Pinctada--who are genetically part oyster--use the deadliest secret code imaginable to save their king from space pirates who've kidnapped him! (This is the third time I’ve sold this story.)
  • I sold “The Trojan Alien” to 100-Foot Crow magazine. It’s a very short story about what happens when aliens show up and put a huge horse statue in orbit. Does that sound suspicious?

***
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March 23, 2026

Tip of the Week
Reverse Serves.

Weekend Coaching and Other Toothy Issues
Just a short blog today – I have a three-hour dental appointment this morning to fix the tooth that broke a few weeks ago during my South America tour.

On Saturday I spent an hour working with two kids, both seven years old. One was mostly a beginner, the other a little more advanced. Both had decent forehand strokes, even the beginner. But both had problems with consistency – the first because he was a beginner, the second because he liked to smack every ball too hard. So, how to fix this problem?

Two things. First, I had them take turns hitting with me (live, not multiball) where as soon as they missed twice, they sat down and the next player played. This gave them incentive to keep the ball going. The beginner, who didn’t have a long attention span, became much more focused, while the other player finally slowed down to keep the ball in play. Second, as we rallied, I said, “Bump-bump, bump-bump, bump-bump, bump-bump,” timing the “bumps” to when the ball hit the table and racket. This greatly helps their timing. It’s one of those little things that really helps when working with beginners. Both managed to get 50 in a row. As I regularly explain, when you can hit the ball consistently with a good stroke at a slow pace, hitting at a faster pace becomes much easier. Hitting at a fast pace where you miss a lot is a good way to practice missing a lot.

On a side note, I have a science fiction story called “The Unbeatable Teleporting Alien Table Tennis Foe . . . and Elephants” that’s a finalist at the Odyssey New Myths “Driven” contest. They are looking for stories about people who are “driven” to do something – and my hero is driven to be the Galactic Table Tennis Champion! But in the final he plays a teleporting alien. No matter where and how fast he hits the ball, the alien instantly teleports there and smacks a forehand. How can he beat this incredible player? He gets killed the first two games in this best of five – and then he discovers something that makes things even worse! (I can’t give that big plot twist away.) I’ll post when/if the story gets published. So, what does the “elephants” in the title mean? That’s another twist near the end – and again, I can’t give it away!

Ping-Pong Paddles Can’t Talk!
I’ve been actively working with the illustrator on my upcoming children’s picture book. The cover should be finalized in the next week or so. The book comes out in June. Here’s the text from the back cover. First comes the rhyming part (for the kids). Then comes a short paragraph (for the parents).

He practiced his ping-pong, he’s fully prepared!
But at his first tournament, poor Kevin is scared.
He has to play Li, a formidable foe.
She smiles and laughs—but plays like a pro!

He’ll be so embarrassed! To quit would be wise.
He stares at his paddle . . . and it opens its eyes!
It smiles and then opens its mouth wide to say—
Oh, come on! No paddle can talk . . . can they???

🏓 🏓 🏓 🏓 🏓

“Ping-Pong Paddles Can't Talk!” is about a nervous boy and his (talking?) paddle in their first tournament, where he plays a friendly girl who is really good. They have an adventurous match, and along the way he learns not only about the sport, but also about facing his fears, working toward a goal, honesty, and friendship.

Coaching Opportunity – PongPlanet Table Tennis Club (San Francisco Bay Area, California)
Here’s the info page.

Forehand and Backhand Tips from Fan Zhendong
Here’s the video (2:03) from China’s Fan Zhendong, Men’s Singles Gold Medalist at the 2021 & 2023 Worlds and 2024 Olympics.

4 Mental Tips for Better Table Tennis Performance
Here’s the large cartoon graphic!

Interview with Kanak Jha
Here’s the video (2:36) with US #1 Kanak Jha.

Coaching and News from All Over
Since I’m off to the dentist soon, here are links to table tennis sites that have new items. Have fun!

Table Tennis Shirts from PrintBlur
Here they are!

Proof It’s You and Not Your Racket
Here’s the video (12 sec) from Pingpongmaestros!

***
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March 16, 2026

Tip of the Week
The Five Attacking Placements.

Marty Supreme Goes Oh For Nine
Timothée Chalamet didn’t win for Best Actor for Marty Supreme, despite most considering him the slight favorite. Earlier in the year he’d been considered the strong favorite, winning at all of the following (from IMDB):

Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, Chicago Film Critics Assoc., Satellite Awards, Las Vegas Film Critics Society, London Critics Circle, Online Film Critics, Palm Springs International Film Festival, Vancouver Film Critics Circle, Austin Film Critics Assoc., North Texas Film Critics Assoc., Indiana Film Journalists Assoc., Denver Film Critics Assoc., Georgia Film Critics Assoc., Online Film & Television Assoc., Phoenix Critics Circle, Gold Derby Awards, AACTA International Awards, Hawaii Critics Society, Greater Western New York Film Critics Assoc., Discussing Film Critics Award, North Dakota Film Society, Portland Critics Assoc., Critics Assoc. of Central Florida, Minnesota Film Critics Alliance, Astra Film Awards, New Jersey Film Critics Circle.

I bet you didn’t know there were that many acting awards – and that was just the ones he won! He won about 2/3 of the available awards, with Michael B. Jordan  (“Sinners”) winning most of the rest, including the Actors Awards (formerly the Screen Actor Guild awards, SAG). Some thought Chalamet lost because of a recent sarcastic and disparaging comment about ballet and opera, where he said, “I don’t want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this anymore.’” However, that took place after the Oscar voting was already closed. But others thought he lost because of arrogance during his campaign to win the award. Here’s CNN’s How Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar campaign may have cost him Best Actor (2:54) which explains this.

However, getting NINE nominations is incredible for a table tennis movie – Best Movie, Director, Actor, Casting, Cinematography, Original Screenplay, Production Design, Costume Design, and Editing. In the numerous organizations giving awards, it had 43 wins and 287 nominations – here’s the IMDB listing. That edges out Balls of Fury (2007), which somehow had zero nominations. (You’d think they could have gotten something for special effects or editing!) Here are some other table tennis films at IMDB – but they leave out a few.

I saw all ten of the movies nominated for Best Picture, and didn’t really have a favorite other than, of course, Marty Supreme. Here’s my Jan. 5 blog where I wrote about the movie, and in particular all the inaccuracies. I think if they’d given him the real personality of Marty Reisman – a narcissist but not in the malignant way of our president, a great showman, full of quips, and friendly to those who are friendly to him – he might have won.

Major League Table Tennis

MDTTC Open
Here are the results of the MDTTC Open held this weekend at my club, the Maryland Table Tennis Center.

Incredible Rally!
Here’s the video (72 sec)! This’ll wake you up for the day.

New from Butterfly

New from Table Tennis Teaching Channel

Table Tennis Racket Angle Adjustments for Topspin
Here’s the video (3:17) from Matt Hetherington/JOOLA.

Stop Losing Easy Points in Table Tennis
Here’s the video (3:12) from Pingispågarna.

Backhand Basic Techniques
Here’s the video (3:15) with Milo DeBoer, from Acceleraq.

Seth Pech vs Jesper Hedlund Sweden Div 1 2026
Here’s the video (10:41) with Seth’s usual play-by-play analysis.

New from PingSunday
Lots of new videos this past week – though now about half of them are “members only.”

I Was a Teenage Table Tennis Champion — It Was Intense
Here’s the article featuring EY Zhao, author of the table tennis novel Underspin. (Here’s my review of it.) “The film Marty Supreme has shone a spotlight on the world of competitive table tennis. The author EY Zhao writes about how playing the sport shaped her youth.”

Can You Name One Woman Who Changed the Sport?
Here’s the video (30 sec) about four women who changed the sport of table tennis, from Aga Pingpong.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from ITTF

Bench Pong
Here’s the video (11 sec)!

TT Serves Level 100
Here’s the video (4 serves in 7 sec) from Ping Pong Maestros!

Shots Table Tennis Cartoons
Here’s another week of table tennis cartoons!

Jimmy Faces Off Against Joshua Topolsky's Beer Pong Robot
Here’s the video (1:48) from the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon! “It's man versus machine as Jimmy attempts to defeat tech expert Joshua Topolsky's robot arm in a game of beer pong.”

***
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