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!

December 2, 2024

Tip of the Week
Where to Serve From.

North American Teams
Yesterday I finished coaching at my 48th consecutive Teams – that’s 144 days! My first was in 1976, when it was the US Open Teams in Detroit. Now it’s the North American Teams in Washington DC. (They skipped 2020 because of Covid or this would be my 49th in a row.) I used to play in it, of course, then became a player/coach, but now I just coach. This year there were 239 teams and 921 players. My club, MDTTC, had 14 junior teams and 7 coaches. I ended up coaching in about 90 matches – sometimes two at a time. On Friday I coached from 9AM to 8PM; Sat 8AM to midnight; and Sunday (on very little sleep) 8AM to 8PM. (That’s 39 hours in three days.) I coached 17 Team matches in all.

Here's an interview (90 sec) at the Teams with Stanley Hsu, the US # 16-year-old, from MDTTC. 

As usual, it was a combination of tactics, sports psychology, and other happenings. Here are some highlights:

  • The hardest thing about coaching in tournaments is finding the balance between playing tactically to win now (which might mean, for example, just pushing at lower levels), and playing strategically, where they try to learn to win with more advanced playing techniques, which usually means attacking. If your junior player wins now by just pushing while the opposing junior loses by looping, but a year later the opposing player is better because he focused on learning to win with a more advanced style, who really won? However, it’s also important that players learn to think tactically, and if they just blindly play “advanced shots,” they don’t develop their tactical skills as well. But there is a balance, if we can find it.
  • There was a stretch on Saturday where every time I called a timeout I’d tell the player what to serve, and like magic, the opposing player would promptly miss every one of those serves. It was as if they were cooperating. There is an instinct for this type of thing that comes from years of playing and coaching, but sometimes it’s almost like magic. I felt like a Jedi. (Key thing to remember – I stress to the player that you never serve with the expectation that the opponent will miss the serve – always assume it’ll come back, and if they do happen to miss the serve outright, you can then be pleasantly surprised.)
  • There were at least three times where I was literally on my feet, about to call a timeout, and then decided not to. Again, almost like magic, each time I didn’t call a timeout, my player would go on a run! The best one was, when, at 9-all, I wanted my player to do two specific serves. He was on the far side, so I couldn’t call out to him without the opponent hearing, and I didn’t have a signal system set up for him. Without my prompting, he did exactly those two serves, and the opponent missed one and popped the other up! Some of the best timeouts are the ones you don’t call.
  • I had a déjà vu experience. At 9-all in the fifth, my player was serving. We’d already taken a timeout. The opponent rolled his first serve off the end, 10-9 match point for us. This was an identical situation to a few years ago, when US junior star Ryan Lin was in the same situation in a big tournament in Ecuador, at the exact same scores. Both times I did the same thing – with my player on the far side, I waved my arms to get his attention, then pantomimed a backhand serve. Neither player had a particularly good backhand serve, but it was a new look, and both of them did it only with sidespin that looked a bit like backspin. Both times the player did the backhand serve, and both times the opponent rolled the ball off the end, and both times my player wins on that, 11-9 in the fifth. And both times I was incredibly nervous – what if the opponent rips the serve in for a winner? But in both cases, while I thought there was a good chance the opponent would put the serve off the end, the actual plan was to use the serve to set up a strong attack.
  • One of our younger players could serve backspin but had never really served “heavy no-spin,” where you use a big motion and fake heavy backspin, but hit the ball near the handle and so give little backspin. After losing the first game to an opponent who pushed his serves back low and deep, I literally showed him how to do the serve between games, and he went back out, and using an almost comically exaggerated motion, started using the serve, and got so many popped up returns he won!
  • As usual, we constantly stress placement to the three spots (wide corners and opponent’s middle); varying the serve’s spin, location, and depth; smart receives; playing aggressive; quickly finding what works against each opponent while getting our own strengths into play; and staying relaxed and calm no matter the score. Focus has to be not on winning, but on playing well, as that’s what leads to the most winning.
  • Sports psychology is important at all levels, but even more so for kids. The simplest solution, which worked for many of them, was to simply take a step back from the table between if they got nervous, and stare at something in the distance for five seconds to clear their mind. Then they’d restrict themselves to thinking only about simple tactics, and the nervousness would be gone. Well, mostly!
  • I watched two kids, both about 8 years old and rated about 500, out of the blue play a 2700 point. I wish that sudden exchange of counter-smashes, about four each, were on video. I think my jaw is still dropping.
  • I found a simple way to cheer up the kids or to relax them. I asked one of them, “Want to see me hit forehands?” She was hesitant, but I convinced her to hold out both her hands. Then I lightly hit both her hands, then hit my own left hand with my right, and my right hand with my left. Then I said, “See, I just hit four hands.” I did this joke with about ten of our kids. At least one of them was seen doing this joke with a kid from another club.
  • There was some cases of bad sportsmanship. Two really stuck out. In one, I was coaching a girl, about ten, and the ball rolled to the adjacent table. The other table was between rallies, so it didn’t disturb their play. As she approached to pick up the ball, one of the players on that table – a grown man – reached down and smacked the ball with his racket as hard as he could, sending it four tables away and causing lets on two tables.
  • The other case of bad sportsmanship came in the fifth game of the ninth match. Our player took a 4-1 lead. The opponent hit the ball well off the end, hitting my player’s racket and ricocheting back into the table’s side, our point, 5-1. Our player and the opposing player, a junior girl, agreed her shot went off the end, as did the scorekeeper who flipped it to 5-1, and they were about to switch sides. The opposing coach insisted the ball had hit the table, even though it had been well off. A referee came over and asked the players, and both agreed the ball had gone off the table, our point. Kudos to the opposing girl for her honesty – if she’d claimed her shot hit, the referee would have declared the point a let. But despite this, the opposing coach, with their large contingent following his lead, kept arguing about it, and it got pretty ugly. The end result was, after ten minutes of arguing, my player, age ten, a complete innocent stuck in the middle of an unwanted and unneeded controversy caused by adults, was on the floor crying. They finally went back to play with the score correctly at 5-1, but the damage was done – our player couldn’t play, and lost seven points in a row after the break and lost, 11-9 in the fifth of the ninth match. As one of the umpires had told me earlier, the kids are not the problem, it’s the adults. (Alas, I don’t think we have video of the point. But what’s interesting is that the opposing coach, after seeing the ball ricochet off our player’s racket and into the table and badly wanting the point, probably convinced himself that it had hit the table first. The adults in their contingent, also badly wanting the point, just mindlessly followed his lead. Meanwhile, the kids on both teams and others around were all watching all this and learning, one way or the other. We had a good talk with our kids about this situation, and the one who got stuck in the middle of it seems to be over it – helped by the fact that his team ended up getting medals.)

Coaching and News from All Over
Besides being exhausted from coaching 39 hours and 90 matches in three days, I have a bunch of errands and other things to take care of today, so rather than link to all the new articles and videos, below are ones that have new items out.

The World’s Fastest Table Tennis Serve
Here’s the video (25 sec).

Five Misses in Three Seconds
Here’s the video (8 sec)!

No Table Tennis No Life
Here’s where you can buy the shirt!

Adam Bobrow vs. Timo Boll
Here’s the video (14:34) from Adam Bobrow!

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November 25, 2024

Tip of the Week
How to Do a Relentless Three-Point Attack.

Teams, Coaching, and Foot
I’m rushing to get this blog out since I’m coaching at the MDTTC Teams Camp over the next three days, getting our players ready for the North American Teams, Fri-Sun, Nov. 29 – Dec. 1. There are currently 910 players and 226 teams – here’s the listing. There are 14 MDTTC junior teams. We’ll have seven MDTTC coaches working with them, including me.

I first played in the Teams in my first year of playing, way back in 1976, when I was 16. I’ve played or coached at them every year since – this is my 49th year in a row except for 2020, when they were cancelled due to Covid.

While coaching a junior group this weekend a couple of them had trouble hitting forehands down the line. They would often twist their arm around like a pretzel to get the racket to aim down the line, thereby messing up their stroke. The correct way is to either take the ball a little later while rotating the body and shoulders about more (often with back foot farther back) to line up the shot down the line, or to step in closer with the left foot (for a righty), which also rotates the body clockwise and puts you in position for that down the line shot.

I also worked with a group of advanced beginners on smashing. One of the best ways to do this is to put a box or some other object on the table, and feed multiball as they take turns trying to smash the ball into the target. Each time they hit it the target should move back some, until they finally hit it off the table, to great cheering. (We have a bunch of spaghetti collanders we use for this and to hold balls for service practice.) I had them do it three players at a time, each getting three forehands (from wide backhand, middle, wide forehand) as they rotated clockwise in a circle, taking turns, with a fourth player picking up balls and rotating in every two minutes or so.

Meanwhile, I’m still having problems with my right foot. I spent much of the weekend coaching, about half of it as a practice partner, and towards the end I was hobbling about. I saw a podiatrist last week and now have a new insole, but it’s uncomfortable. I haven’t tried it out playing yet.

Bill Lui RIP
Long-time Bay Area coach Bill Lui died on Nov. 13. He was one of the coaches that turned the Bay Area into a table tennis powerhouse, starting in the early 1990s or possibly earlier. For twenty years I regularly sat across table tennis courts from him, coaching our respective players. He was the 1996 USATT Developmental Coach of the Year.

Want to be a Coach or Team leader for World University Games Team in 2025?
Here’s the news item from the NCTTA.

US #1 Kanak Jha Has Youtube Page
Here it is.

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action!

14 Must-Read Table Tennis Books
Here’s the article by Tom Lodziak.

Block Like a Pro – Top 5 tips from Craig Bryant
Here’s the video (7:18).

Butterfly Training Tips

New from Dr. Table Tennis

New from Beyond the Podium

New from PingSkills

New from Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis

How to Play with LONG PIMPLES | Part 2
Here’s the video (3:06) from Pingispågarna. (Here’s Part 1.)

Backhand Shaving Technique (with Long Pips) with Yang Xiaoxin
Here’s the video (3:37) from PongSpace.

New from Table Tennis Daily

USATT Announces Election Timeline for Third and Fourth Elite Athlete Board Reps And Opens Nomination Process for USATT Athlete’s Advisory Council
Here’s the news item.

New from Steve Hopkins

New from ITTF

Furniture Pong
Here’s the video (7 sec)!

Building The Perfect Ping Pong Table
Here’s the video (8:06) from Pongfinity!

Non-Table Tennis - Even Yet Still More Pings and Pongs
My 22nd book just came out, “Even Yet Still More Pings and Pongs.” Nope, it’s not table tennis, it’s the newest collection of my science fiction & fantasy short stories. When I sell a story to a magazine or anthology, after it’s been published, I put them together in collections – and this is the fifth in the series. (Here are all my books.) As with my “Tips” series, I keep adding a word to the start, so there was “Pings and Pongs”; “More Pings and Pong”; “Still More Pings and Pongs”; “Yet Still More Pings and Pongs”; and now, just published, “Even Yet Still More Pings and Pongs” (156 pages)! Here’s the back cover description:

Here are 25 stories from the insane mind of Larry Hodges ... God and his pet squirrel are not happy with humanity ... What really happened when Neil and Buzz stepped on the Moon? ... How a silver bowl from Roman times destroyed and saved the world ... If a sentient computer is programmed to feel emotions, perhaps you shouldn’t put it at the highest setting ... Can a super-smart goldfish take over the world ... Meet the world’s first T-Rex superhero - but does he have humanity’s best interests in mind? ... A 4-D being collects 3-D beings for his wall - but runs into problems when he collects a vampire ... Aliens are poaching humans for their teeth! A dark allegory on the elephant and rhino poaching trade ... War is so pointless and endless that it might as well be played on a clock ... In a world of non-stop action, where superheroes constantly battle supervillains, watching paint drip might be the only break ... A human goes to war with the spiders under his skin ... A bullied werewolf boy settles all accounts on Halloween ... A family that eats grandma’s eyeballs, where virtue is the ultimate perversion ... And many more!

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November 18, 2024

Tip of the Week
How to Loop Against Deep, Heavy Backspin.

MDTTC Open and My Books
Here are the results of the MDTTC Open, held at my club this past weekend. Winning the Open was Stanley Hsu (2521), who recently turned 16. (He defeated MDTTC coach Bruno, rated 2558, in the final, 9,9,9.) In the semifinals were Mu Du (16, 2376) and Ryan Lin (just turned 15, 2399). James Zhang (17, 2275 but recently over 2300), was up 7-5 in the fifth against Stanley in the quarterfinals. All four started out in my beginning classes. (Mu Du technically started in our summer camps, but spent the first month or so in my beginning group.) They spent years since in private and group sessions with our other great coaches (and I’ve also worked with them since), but I helped get them started back when they could barely see over the table!!! They (and their coaches) have worked incredibly hard to get where they are. It’s hard to believe that they’ll all be heading off to college soon.

I set up a table at the tournament (paying MDTTC $100) and sold my books there, both table tennis and science fiction. I had 20 on sale. 11 were table tennis and 11 SF, which adds up to 22, since two of them were hybrids, i.e. my two table tennis novels, “The Spirit of Pong” and “First Galactic Table Tennis Championships” (technically a novelette, since it’s only 41 pages long). I ended up selling 41 books – one for every page of the “Galactic” novelette. The choices were wide-ranging. Here’s the breakdown of sales for the weekend:

In my free time between selling and chatting, I did the final proofing of my next book, “Even Yet Still More Pings and Pongs,” the latest collection of my short stories, which will likely be on sale by next Monday – I’ll link to it in that blog. (I managed to work table tennis into a few of the stories.) I sell the science fiction & fantasy stories to various magazine and anthology markets; they pay me varying amounts from roughly $50 to $1500 for the stories and publish them; typically 3-6 months later the rights revert back to me, and then I compile them in the next collection. (I explain in the forward to each book that I adopted the “Pings & Pongs” as the name for my short stories because of my table tennis background.) You may have noticed the parallel naming paradigm I’ve been using for my Tips and Pings & Pongs series. The two series includes:

USATT Election and My Choices
=>NOTE – skip ahead if you have no interest in USATT politics. My interest there is also waning.
I strongly considered running in the current USATT election. If I did, I’d have run on specific issues on developing our sport via grass roots and as a partner with Major League Table Tennis, and on cleaning up our sport (i.e., USATT following their own governing rules). However, I concluded that I’d spend the next few years in the minority, arguing with the majority about these issues and unable to get anything serious done, especially in terms of something as simple as following our own rules, as I’ve blogged about repeatedly. My arguments that we should follow our own bylaws, or that we should address the problem that we’ve lost over 2/3 of our USATT certified coaches, have fallen on deaf ears. (Quick note – I voted for Alex Figueroa and Dell Sweeris – see my reasons below.)

For example, the current chair of the board, Richard Char, is on his third consecutive term, and the bylaws say you can only serve two consecutive terms and so he is not legal. But few on the board are willing to point out the obvious – and they are not happy that I keep bring such uncomfortable issues up. They used a maneuver where they made Char’s re-election in Dec. 6, 2021 effective Jan. 1, 2021, eleven months before, thereby claiming his first term was not a full term and so didn’t count, when of course he had already served a full term at the time of the election on Dec. 6. The bylaws are very specific that a term continues until the next election, not when the board arbitrarily makes it “effective” as they did in this display of political abuse. But there's no longer any accountability. I’ve blogged about it a number of times, including Feb. 12, 2024 and Feb. 19, 2024. I would not be popular on the current board, just right – and being right when you are in the minority can be highly frustrating. As readers of this blog know, this is only one of numerous issues like this.

Just for the record, we’ve now had an illegal chair for 93 weeks (651 days), since Feb. 6, 2023. Unless they do more shenanigans – less likely now since they’ve been called out on it – his term ends in a few weeks, on Dec. 31, 2024. And once again, no accountability for this blatant abuse. 

Another reason I decided not to run was the “USATT Board Member Code of Conduct” and the “USATT Board Member Social Media Policy.” (Both are on the USATT Policies and Documents page.) The Code of Conduct the statement, “As a member of USATT Board I will not…”

  • Be critical, in or outside of a board meeting, of other board members. This does not restrict me from respectfully disagreeing with another board member
  • Interfere with the duties of the CEO or undermine the authority of the CEO

Anything I write critical of USATT, as I often do here in my blog, would be taken as violations of the above. They might not actually be violations, but in recent years USATT has interpreted things however they want to, and they’d be looking for anything they could say is a violation, whether it was or not. All the CEO or chair has to do is bring in one of their hand-picked lawyers who, as a lawyer, will argue their case to the board, and then the board can rationalize they are just going along with the lawyer. They’ve done this over and over, and is literally how board members have explained to me why they’ve gone along with some of these shenanigans. “I just followed the lawyer’s advice” is almost a mantra for some.

For example, see my Oct. 14, 2024 blog, where in the USATT Election segment (where I also wrote about why I decided not to run), I point out how when board member Thomas Hu, an MBA, saw possible discrepancies in the budget. Rather than let him see the detailed financials, they brought in a lawyer to argue that he had a “possible” conflict of interest and so shouldn’t see them, even though the bylaws clearly say board members need access to these financials. Putting aside that there is no conflict in owning a club and seeing the USATT financials – Thomas even said they could keep anything about sponsors out of what they sent him –the even bigger issue is they didn’t even try to pretend it was a conflict of interest, the lawyer argued it was a “possible” conflict, and that’s all the board needed to rationalize going along with it. If Thomas has seen the financials and taken advantage of it in some way, then they could have gone after him in all sorts of ways. But that wasn’t the goal – the goal was to keep him from seeing the financials, and they succeeded.  Result – Thomas, one of the very few board members over the last four years to ever vote against the CEO or chair, including arguing against the illegal third term for the chair (and even running against him, knowing he had no chance), decided it was pointless staying on the board, and so isn’t running for re-election.

A third reason I didn’t run is that I find the election somewhat less significant than the bigger one the US recently had – and no, I’m not happy with the result. We’ll see how that works out and I’ll refrain from writing more on it in this table tennis blog.

One thing that comes up whenever I discuss the shenanigans of the current USATT administration with board members or other USATT people is that they quickly try to change the subject to reciting the apparent accomplishments of the administration. Three problems. First, it’s almost a recitation, as if they are just repeating what they’ve been told over and over. Second, it’s generally an exaggeration that mostly falls apart when scrutinized. And third, I get frustrated because I can either point out they have changed the subject to avoid the issues I’ve brought up – and thereby not refute the exaggerations – or I can refute the exaggerations, and thereby let them change the topic away from the shenanigans. Welcome to political talk 101!!! (Much of this is reminiscent of the “Nixon defense,” where he was defended not by refuting the corruption charges, but by trying to change the topic to the good things he’d done. It’s the typical autocrat defense – “but he got the trains to run on time,” where they often didn’t actually get the trains to run on time, but it successfully changes the topic from corruption to whether or not the trains ran on time, and with control of the media, they could convince the masses that the trains did, in fact, run on time. And even if they did, that doesn’t excuse the abuses.)

Regarding the election, there are four running for two spots, Alex Figueroa, Dell Sweeris, Tuan Le, and Danny Leung. I originally didn’t plan to get involved, but what the heck. I voted for Alex and Dell. Below is my analysis, with * by my two votes.

I’ve linked their names to their campaign statements. I wasn’t impressed by any of the campaign statements, alas. They were all generic. If I were advising them, I’d strongly advise them to come up with some specific issues they’d fight for, so as to stand out. As it is, none of them really stand out – most give credentials (good), and then make a few general statements about fighting for us or advancing the sport, etc., without giving specific reasons why you should do so. Specifics are important in a campaign statement.

  • *Alex Figueroa. He’s the only one of the candidates that has been critical of USTT for some of the issues I’ve pointed out, and the most likely to continue to do so. In his campaign statement he rightly argued for better Communication and more Transparency, two of the few specifics in the four campaign statements, though I’d have liked him to have been a bit more hard-hitting on why these are needed. (Ironically, many of the USATT abuses are done right out in the open, where all you have to do is read the minutes. There’s currently no serious oversight of most USATT matters or repercussions for abuse.) Some USATT people are very strongly opposed to Alex being on the board, and I’ll likely hear from one or more of them for voting for him. If you like things exactly as they are, don’t vote for Alex. If you want some changes and feel USATT should follow its own governing rules, vote for him. (I haven’t actually met him, though I’ve had some discussions with him online.)
  • *Dell Sweeris. Very nice guy, previously on the board in the 1980s, and a member of the US Table Tennis Hall of Fame – surprisingly, this was left off his campaign statement. He’s done more for the sport than any of the others, as a player, coach, and administrator, and only a handful in the sport have credentials as strong as his. He has a strong financial background, with an MBA. My only concern is that he seems to see the best in people, and so may go along with some of the shenanigans we’ve gone through these past few years. Board members are often stuck in a bubble, and if you focus on seeing the best in people when you are in a governing role, it’s easy to just go along to get along, especially since the ones abusing the rules are often the friendliest, though in a glib way. We’ll see.
  • Tuan Le. I’ve only met him briefly, and I’m told is another nice guy and apparently good regionally. But he’s strongly supportive of the current administration and appears to go along with their shenanigans. Shortly after he was elected he told me to contact him if I had any concerns. I sent him an email outlining my concerns, but he never responded. When I emailed the board about the illegal chair, he also did not respond.
  • Danny Leung. I don’t think I’ve met him, and know nothing about him other than that he’s a coach at Table Tennis America and what’s in his campaign statement. Since he’s generally lesser known than the others (at least nationally), it was important for him to come out with a strong set of specific issues in his statement, rather than general statements. Since he’s a fellow coach, I’d have liked to have found a reason to vote for him. Maybe next time.

On a related note, I’m disgusted about the Club Rep “election.” Four years ago they had an election for Club Rep, and Will Shortz, another nice guy who’s good regionally but goes along with the various shenanigans I’ve outline, was elected. (In four years and over 200 votes, he’s voted with the chair and CEO 100% of the time, and never raised an objection to the abuses I’ve pointed out. See my note on this and more in my Oct. 14, 2024 blog, USATT Election segment, second bullet list, third item.) This time around the USATT Nominating and Governance Committee decided to simply appoint the position (presumably Will, though that hasn’t been announced that I know of), and so there will be no election for the position. Sorry, you aren't really a club rep unless you are elected by the ones you are supposed to represent. The USATT membership, which funds the bulk of USATT activities, now only gets to vote for two of the 12 board positions, which is a travesty that someday needs to be changed.

Butterfly Training Tips

Hate Long Serves?
Here’s the article by Tom Lodziak. “These simple tips will help you return these nasty serves.”

One Forehand One Backhand Drill with Robert Gardos
Here’s the video (2:56) from PongSpace.

We React To THE MÖREGÅRDH SNAKE
Here’s the video (3:13) from Pingispågarna.

540 Hours to Make a Table Tennis Player?
Here’s the video 8 (14:04) from Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis.

JOOLA’s Talkin' Smash: Do Players Focus on the Wrong Areas for Improvement
Here’s the video (46:47) with Matt Hetherington interviewing Thiago Monteiro.

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action!

The Broken Promises of a Table Tennis Olympian
Here’s the New York Times article on Michael Hyatt. Wow. Just wow. 

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

USATT Announces Results of First and Second Elite Athlete Board Positions Election And Opens Nomination Process for Third and Fourth Elite Athlete Reps Election
Here’s the USATT news item.

New from ITTF

LA Times Crossword
On Thur, Nov. 14, the 16 across question was, “Reason for copyright suits filed by Atari?” The answer: “APINGPONG,” i.e., “Aping Pong.” It was a play on the “Ping Pong” with “A” added at the start. This fit in with the puzzle’s theme, which came from 57 across, where the question was, “’Haven’t seen that before,’” and an apt title for this puzzle.” The answer was, “ITSAFIRST,” i.e. “It’s A first.” The puzzle had four answers where a regular phrase was changed by adding an “A” at the start. Here’s the puzzle – alas, you have to go through a 13-sec ad and then select the proper date.

Incredible Forehand Block
Here’s the video (14 sec)!

Incredible Point
Here’s the video (20 sec)!

Mad Table Tennis
Here’s the video (2:38)!

Climate Change is a Hoax
Here’s the cartoon! Amazingly, there are people who still believe it’s a hoax.

Non-Table Tennis - Galahad Returns
My fantasy story, “Galahad Returns,” is in this week’s issue of Black Cat Weekly!

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November 11, 2024

Tip of the Week
How to Flip Short, Heavy Backspin.

RIP Mossa Barandao
Alas, this icon of DC and Maryland table tennis passed away in his sleep two days ago in a hospital in Malaysia. In late September, while attending a wedding in Shantou, China, he went for a morning run, and collapsed, apparently from heat stroke, which led to massive internal organ failures. He went into a coma in the hospital. Since China didn’t recognize his American health insurance, $52,760 was raised from 224 donors on GoFundMe (which also explains his situation, with updates).

Mossa came out of his coma on October 4, 2024. On October 12, he turned 51, and the doctors and nurses in the Chinese hospital, along with his wife, threw him a surprise birthday party. His family and friends shared video messages to wish him a happy birthday. On October 21, he was airlifted from China to Malaysia for further treatment. Alas, the internal trauma was too much.

Back when I used to run MDTTC tournaments, it was a major headache running them alone. Mossa volunteered to help run them, and for several years we ran them together. He was one of the nicest and hardest-working people I’ve ever known, and extremely smart – he pretty much took over the computer operations. He was also an energized player (and long-distance runner), rushing around the court looping and fishing with his inverted penhold game at a near 2000 level. (Here’s an action photo of him.) He played primarily at the Washington DC TTC but we still saw him regularly at MDTTC in our tournaments. Here’s more from the GoFundMe page:

“Mossa is a pillar in the D.C. community and prides himself in his work through the THEMBA Foundation. He also started Homeland Togo Project, which is an organization that supplies resources and educational opportunities in Togo, W. Africa. Outside of his work, he is full of light and adventure, and spends most of his time long-distance running and is an expert table tennis player. He is an athlete through and through who was in top-notch health. Thus, to see Mossa in this state is devastating, though he was doing what he loved. We have faith that these contributions and prayers will result in full restoration and healing for our dearest Mossa, and that he will eventually return home and run again.”

Weekend Coaching and Toronto
On Sunday I worked with a number of beginning kids, where the focus was on them hitting together. At that level, we often do more multiball or have them take turns hitting with a coach, since together they can’t rally that well. When they do rally, because the balls are spraying everywhere, they can’t really develop their strokes and timing or get into a groove. But they have to learn to hit together. The key is to expect to move, rather than wait and see if you have to, and then you just move to the ball. Some picked up on it quickly, others had more trouble.

On the backhand side, one thing that really helped was explaining to them that it’s just reverse dodgeball. As the ball comes to you, you move to get your body in front of the ball – and then you stroke your backhand. By thinking of it that way, they more easily learn to move to each ball.

However, I wasn’t there on Saturday. Why? Because I was out sightseeing in Toronto! Robert J. Sawyer, the dean of Canadian science fiction writers (winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards), had arranged a big party on Saturday at his house nearby for his Patreon contributors, and I was so invited. I like to go to major cities and spend a few days sightseeing – I’ve done this at most major cities in the US and many around the world. This was my excuse to do so in Toronto. I’ve been there before for tournaments I think twice, but pretty much just went back and forth from the hotel to the playing site without really seeing anything.

I flew out on Tuesday morning, and started sightseeing on that afternoon with a one-hour cruise around Toronto Harbor. I ended up seeing: Royal Ontario Museum; Art Gallery of Ontario; Ripley’s Aquarium; CN Tower; Toronto Zoo; Casa Loma Castle; Bata Shoe Museum; and Bakka-Phoenix SF Bookstore. I also spent many hours walking the streets of Toronto, mostly in Chinatown, where my hotel was located. I also visited the Canadian Community TTA on Thursday night, a HUGE full-time facility with 53 tables (!), and the place was filled up by 6PM when I arrived. I was told it’s like that every night! There were at least a dozen coaches working with students. I hit with several players at the start, then played matches – alas, after 2.5 days of walking about, I didn’t play too well. I was invited to join in a training session at the Grace TTA on Friday night, but was both too tired at that point plus had two writing projects I had to work on.

I spent Friday night and Saturday morning on those writing projects before heading off to the Robert J. Sawyer party. (He has the most incredible collection of SF figurines and action figures imaginable - just his stegasaurus collection was mindboggling!) There were a few dozen people at the party, I think all Canadian, with a lot of discussions going on. A major issue was the unanimous disbelief about the US presidential election. (This was a highly educated group, mostly scientists and writers.) I’m disgusted by it as well – one of my writing projects is a satire for an anthology about that very issue that postulates that everything Trump has said is 100% true. I may also do one from the point of view of the poor dogs and cats that Trump says the Haitians are eating!

Holiday Shopping
It’s time for some Holiday shopping, both for others and for yourself! Why not get one of my books? (Both table tennis and science fiction.) Or one of Dan Seemiller’s?

Here are my table tennis books:

Here are books by 5-time US Men’s Singles Champion Dan Seemiller!

More into history? Here are the 23 volumes of History of US Table Tennis by Tim Boggan!

There are many more. Perhaps browse my collection of 337 table tennis books (!) and if you find an interesting one, see if it’s on sale at Amazon or elsewhere!

Want to Run a Classic Event?
Here’s the worksheet to bid to host an International Event. This is for hardbat, sandpaper, and wood events, under the auspices of the International Classic Table Tennis Federation (ICTTF).

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action!

Incredible Point Between Lin Yun-ju and Alexis Lebrun
Here it is (23 sec)!

Butterfly Training Tips

How to Practice and Improve Footwork
Here’s the video (23 sec) from Pingispågarna. While they demonstrate with a kid, this works for all ages. The key is that it gets you in the habit of being ready to reflexively move in all directions.

Counterlooping on the Side of the Ball with Robert Gardos
Here’s the video (2:57) from PongSpace.

Forehand Drive Fixes and Improvements
Here’s the video (3:05) from Ti Long.

New from Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis

World's BEST Backhand vs TTD Team!
Here’s the video (6:47) from Table Tennis Daily, featuring Kalinikos Kreanga.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from Table Tennis Media

Thiago Monteiro (BRA) and Youruo Wu (CA) Capture Men’s & Women’s Titles at 2024 Edgeball Chicago International Open
Here’s the USATT news article by Lauren Wang.

New from ITTF

It’s Only Ping Pong Said the Loser
Here’s where you can buy the shirt!

Archie Comic Book Covers
Here are a couple ping-pong covers!

The Top Three Table Tennis Services in the World
Here’s the video (11 sec)!

Ultimate Mini Target Shot
Here’s the video (9:14) from Pongfinity, where they face eight challenges!

Non-Table Tennis - Small Dragon’s Gold
I sold another story last week, “Small Dragon’s Gold.” (It's my 221st short story sale.) A small, idealistic, gallant, polite, but wimpy dragon has his gold stolen by a cocky swashbuckling woman. In a society where dragons are second-class citizens and where he’s completely outmatched in any physical confrontation, how can he get his gold back? And how many times can he say, “My name is Puffy Smogoya. You stole my gold. Please give it back.” before I get sued by the producers of “The Princess Bride”?

***
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November 4, 2024

Tip of the Week
The One-Two Punch of Tactics.

Weekend Coaching, Grip Changes, and a Wrenched Neck
I worked with two kids this weekend who had seemingly parallel but opposite problems. One had a nice topspin backhand which he could take right off the bounce. But his forehand was basically all flat, very little topspin. So we spent some time on that. It’s almost tempting to turn him into a forehand hitter (perhaps with pips) with a looping backhand, like Sweden’s Mattias Falck, who made the final of Men’s Singles at the 2019 World Championships and won Men’s Doubles at the 2021 World’s. But it’s a myth that pips-out players don’t topspin the ball – they actually stroke up and forward at contact to generate enough topspin to control the ball, just not as much as an inverted looper. Anyway, let’s see how this player develops.

Another was the opposite – a looping forehand but one of the flattest backhands I’ve ever seen. He basically stabbed at the ball. The problem was that in simple drills, he could make some nice backhand kills with this shot – but there’s no margin for error, and it’s unlikely he could make these shots consistently in game situations. So we worked on adding a little topspin to that shot.

Several more kids had a first – got their backspin serves to stop on the table and even come back into the net! Sometime soon I’ll issue their next challenge – serve sidespin that curves around a target on the table.

Meanwhile, I’m finally doing something I wish I’d done from the start, when I first started playing in 1976. Back then the general advice was to never change your grip in a rally – they said there wasn’t time, and so you had to find a grip where you could play both backhand and forehand comfortably. I never did – and so I ended up using a forehand grip, which maximized my forehand attack but limited my backhand attack. This is one reason why I developed a super-consistent backhand, but my backhand attack has never put the fear of God in anyone.

But times change. Jan-Ove Waldner dominated the game for many years, and he changed grips from forehand to backhand. It only takes a little finger pressure to rotate the top of the racket slightly forward into a better backhand grip. And so most coaches now teach changing the grip from forehand to backhand.

As a coach, I taught this, but since I no longer trained as a player, I never really learned to change grips. It’s a tricky habit to pick up on after many decades of play. But for the last six weeks or so I’ve been focused on that. It’s just a matter of training to make it instinctive to change grips when transitioning from forehand to backhand, and vice versa. I’ve also worked on this by shadow practicing at home, where I move side to side, hitting forehands and backhand, changing the grip each time. It seems to be paying off. In practice, my backhand attacks are better than they ever were, and it’s not even close. The catch – in game situations, I still instinctually focus on backhand consistency, plus my backhand attack can still be erratic if I’m not in perfect position. I also don’t always change grips reflexively as I need to. We’ll see how it develops!

However, my training (specifically for the US Open in December) took a small downturn on Friday. While going for an off-the-bounce forehand loop during a practice session I wrenched my neck. For the rest of the session I had to refrain from looping, which put pressure on the injury. The good news – I spent the last twenty minutes working on my backhand, which keeps getting better and Better and BETTER!!! (At least in practice.) I have to be careful at my age – I’m 64 but still try to train like I’m 14, leading to the neck injury, as well as ongoing foot, shoulder, and arm problems that are currently mostly under control.

On a related note, I’ll be in Toronto, Canada, Tue-Sat, Nov. 5-10. Robert J. Sawyer, the dean of Canadian science fiction writing, is having a big get-together party for SF writers and his followers at his house on Saturday, and I thought this would be the perfect time to do some sightseeing. So, I’m spending Tue-Fri sightseeing around Toronto, then attending the party, and flying back early Sunday morning, just in time to coach Sunday afternoon at my club. I’ve got info on the local Toronto Clubs and am bringing my TT stuff, but I don’t know yet if I’ll play any, due to the neck problem and ongoing foot problems. (I have an appointment to see a podiatrist on Nov. 22, the earliest opening they had.)

2024 US Table Tennis Hall of Fame Inductions – the Video
Here it is (93 min), starting with HOF President Sean O’Neill’s opening remarks. Here’s the Info Page. The Inductions and Dinner were held on Oct. 10 at the Houston at the Houston International Table Tennis Center. Inducted were Glenn Cowan, Dennis Taylor, and Stellan Bengtsson, with Patty Martinez Wasserman getting the Mark Matthews Lifetime Achievement Award. Here are some direct links.

Butterfly Training Tips

How to Improve CREATIVITY & GAMEUNDERSTANDING
Here’s the video (4:06) from Pingispågarna.

The Key to Counterlooping
Here’s the video (2:39) from Robert Gardos and PongSpace. “While looping is a fundamental part of learning the basics of table tennis, counter looping is a much more advanced skill. Robert Gardos breaks down the steps of how to execute the counterloop.”

Backhand Topspin fixes and improvements
Here’s the video (6:12) from Ti Long.

What’s Going Wrong With Chinese Table Tennis?
Here’s the article by Tom Lodziak. “It has been a rocky few months for Chinese table tennis. I’ve been following the professional game for the past twenty years and I don’t recall a time when Chinese players have been beaten so regularly.”

New from Table Tennis Daily

Jackson Chance Foundation's 10th Annual Ping Pong Ball
Here’s the video (5:53).

Estefanía Ramirios Is Still Linked To Table Tennis, But From The Work Field
Here’s the article.

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action!

New from the National Collegiate TTA

New from USATT

New from ITTF

Ping Pong Legend
Here’s where you can buy the shirt at Target!

Adam vs. India's Golden Girl
Here’s the video (14:17) from Adam Bobrow! “Manika Batra has set a new standard for table tennis in India. She's a superstar, the greatest female player in India's history... and a good friend.”

Trump Table Tennis Cartoons by Me
Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a fan of Trump. Here are five Trump cartoons I created. The first four involve table tennis; the last one does not except that it involves China, which dominates table tennis. If you are a Trump fan, perhaps just move along. (Here are all of my cartoons, including several more Trump cartoons. I also wrote Trump Tales: A Taunting.)

Mostly Non-Table Tennis – Two Stories Published, Three Sales, Five New Stories, and More Table Tennis Tips
“Southern Truths” is out just in time for the election! (I also wrote about this last week.) It’s a rather politicized anthology of stories about the South, but the focus is on their rather different politics, from presidential politics to guns. I have a story in it, “It's Election Day in Texas and I'm a Democrat Rarin' to Vote.” While obviously political, it mostly pokes fun at Republicans as a black Democrat tries to vote and faces non-stop obstacles in an over-the-top way. It’s received four ratings so far, all five-star, and two reviews – and one of the reviews is titled, “Larry Hodges is Funny.” (I have no idea who the reviewer is.) It says of my story, “While the book is good, the Larry Hodges story about a Black man voting in Texas was, literally laugh out loud funny. I won't put any spoilers here, but it was great.”

Also just out is “Ruth and Ann's Guide to Time Travel, Volume II.” (For some reason the cover image isn’t showing up in the print version – I’m sure they’ll fix that soon.) It includes my story, “Life and Death and Bongo Drums.” Life and Death show up at a man’s bedside, explaining that he’ll someday invent a time machine, go back in time and try to kill Hitler, and be tortured to death before he’s born, causing repercussions that bump up and down the eternal timeline. How will they fix this problem, and why are bongo drums the key to everything?

On top of this, I sold three new science fiction or fantasy stories this week!

  • “The Dragon, the Knight, and the Red-Eyed Flying Unicorn” sold to Dragon Soul’s Dragon Legends anthology.
  • “Prissy and the Rude Fly” sold to Flash Fiction Magazine.
  • “The Oysters of Pinctada” sold to Hemelein Press’s “For Glory and Honor” anthology.

Equally good, after weeks of playing around with them, I also finalized five new stories. I tend to write a story, put it aside and write another, and keep doing this until I have a few, then go back and forth with them as I keep rewriting until I think they are just right, then spend a long day or two doing final proofing. The five are titled: Thirty-Five Genie Heads on a Wall; The Santa Subjugation; The Old Man and the Story; The Red Patrol; and Big Sticks.

But this is a table tennis blog – so perhaps of greater interest to you is I’ve written Tips of the Week now through the end of January!

***
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October 28, 2024

Tip of the Week
Why Rapidly Improving Players Often Don't Have Good Serves - and Getting the Best of Both Worlds.

USATT Coaching Certification
As of this morning, there are 101 USATT certified coaches. This is actually up from previous numbers, which have been mostly in the 80s the last few years. But it’s a far cry from the 318 we had when I left as USATT Coaching Chair five years ago in 2019, my second tenure as coaching chair. (I stayed on as a member of the coaching committee until 2023 when I was term-limited out.) How did we lose over 2/3 of our certified coaches? Three primary reasons in my opinion.

First, they prematurely dropped the ITTF coaching certification program. ITTF stopped actively using it, but it was available to use, with several US coaches teaching the program. But I was assured three years ago that USATT would have its own certification program at all levels by the end of the year (2021). I argued we should wait until we have our program in place before dropping the ITTF program, but was overruled, as well as being overruled on the new annual $50 licensing fee for coaches. And so now we only have certification at the Club Coach level on our web page, the lowest level. Here is the USATT Coaching Certification program. But note that even though we have it at the club level, the price is $299. It's WAY overpriced. Result? Very few people pay it and go through the process. And note there’s no mention of the ITTF program or any way of getting certified beyond the Club level. (There are four levels – Club, State, Regional, and Nationals.)

Second, SafeSport is a necessary but huge hassle. There’s no getting around it – if you want to be a USATT coach (or in any other official capacity, including umpires and referees, tournament directors, etc.) you have to take and pass the annual SafeSport test as well as the background check. They say the test takes about an hour, but it takes far longer than that (a lot of video and reading) and is a big hassle for many.

Third, in 2021, USATT started charging certified coaches a $50/year licensing fee, partly to cover the costs of SafeSport. This was the final issue that pushed many coaches too far and led to so many dropping their certification and USATT memberships (since many don’t play in tournaments anymore). It’s not just the annual $50 fee – they also are required to be USATT members, another $75/year, so they went from $75/year to $125/year, just so they could be listed as a USATT certified coach, which (at the moment) adds little value for most coaches. It was just too much. I’ve argued this vehemently, and I think the results have shown this to be true.

The argument made when they added the $50 annual fee was that we’d only lose the “hobby” coaches (coaches who like the title but don’t actively coach that much), that the serious ones would stay. Actually, we ended up getting primarily these very “hobby” coaches, and coaches who get certified just so they can coach at the US Nationals, Open, and Team Trials, where USATT coaching certification is required. The many highly active coaches in clubs around the country who don’t coach at the US Open or Nationals – we mostly lose those coaches. Those who do get certified generally do it not because coaching certification is a big plus for their coaching careers, but because they are forced to if they want to coach at the big events. These are where we get those 101 certified coaches.

To give one example, the very nice Westchester club in NY has been ranked as the #1 USATT club every month for nearly four years now (posted month after month on Facebook), because they run the most big tournaments - which is only one of many aspects of being a successful club – it’s a silly system. But they don’t have a single USATT certified coach, and haven’t had one in years, since their coaches don’t generally coach at the Nationals, Open, or Team Trials, and so certification is of little value to them. For perspective, the huge 888 club in California has four certified coaches, since those coaches are the ones who generally coach at the big events – but their web page shows they have 17 coaches. My club, MDTTC, also has four certified coaches, since we have four that generally coach at the big events – but we have about ten coaches. Many of these other coaches might have continued as certified coaches and USATT members at $75/year, but since they find little value in it, few find it worth paying $125/year (or an addition $50/year if they are USATT members) just to be officially certified as a coach, when they are already actively coaching.

Most important, we need to find ways to add value to being a USATT certified coach. The primary “value” right now of coaching certification is that USATT won’t let you coach at major events otherwise. That’s not adding value – that’s coercing them into getting certified and paying $125/year. Most of the benefits to being certified as a coach on the USATT Coaches pages aren’t really useful to most coaches. We need ways to make coaching certification add real value so coaches want to be certified, instead of doing so because they have to.

So, how can we fix the problem? Here a few suggestions.

  1. Since the SafeSport testing is such a hassle, have SafeSport testing at the start of the US Nationals and US Open, perhaps the night before. Invite coaches, officials, and others in as a group and take the test at the same time, with USATT people around to help when needed. Make it easier to become a coach by making it easier to take the SafeSport tests.
  2. Drop the $50 annual fee. Sure, it’s supposed to cover the SafeSport testing (though I keep hearing that it costs less than that), but the simple math doesn’t work. It’s far better having 300 coaches paying $75 USATT membership each year than having 100 pay $125. (Yes, it’s more complicated than this, but that’s the basic picture. The $75 USATT membership fee should cover these other costs. We’re talking small numbers here for USATT, and if we get back to our previous numbers, USATT comes out well ahead financially.) Plus, we need those coaches more than they need us – they bring in new students who become serious USATT members, while the dropping certified coaching numbers have shown they don’t need us and most of them get certified only because they are forced to so they can coach at the big events.
  3. Lower the club certification fee. That $299 fee is ridiculously high. (It may be worth that when the sport is more developed in this country, but not yet.) We need many more club coaches, and such a high price tag discourages this. Make it $100 or even $50 and you’ll get far more takers. Remember, “The mission of USATT is to support, grow and inspire the table tennis community, and to provide resources that enable athletes to achieve sustained competitive excellence and pursue international Olympic and Paralympic success.” Read that first part again – and way overcharging for this in no way supports, grows, or inspires the table tennis community.
  4. Fully endorse the ITTF certification plan as we did before, and encourage USATT coaches who are qualified to run as many certification clinics as possible. At the same time, we can develop our own coaching certification program for higher levels. Or, better still, use a hybrid, where we take the ITTF program but make needed changes and add our own touches. (There are known problems with the ITTF program – but the key thing is they are known. I know since I not only took them, I taught the five-day course. Those who taught the course learned to teach around those problems.)
  5. In these automated days, when a coach is USATT certified, he should automatically get a USATT coaching page, which would list his credentials and give him a link to promote his coaching business. This is a way to add value to being certified.
  6. Have major Coaching Seminars at the Nationals and Open, for USATT certified coaches only, run by high-level USATT coaches. We used to do this – I used to run them. This is another way to add value to being certified.
  7. Do major promotions to get USATT members to sign up for coaching from USATT certified coaches. News items on the USATT webpage and newsletter could do this. This is another way to add value to being certified.
  8. Bring pride back to being a USATT certified coach. Long ago we used to have USATT coaching patches for certified coaches. Bring those back, or pins, or other such items. They should also be featured in regular news items and in other ways. These are simple ways to add value to being certified. A few get featured in the annual Coach of the Year program, but that’s a very small number.

Drive More Revenue for Your Table Tennis Club
Here’s the info page for the Zoom Webinar run by Major League Table Tennis, to be held TOMORROW (Tuesday, Oct. 29) at noon eastern time.

How can MLTT, America's first pro table tennis league help YOUR club? Learn all the perks of a Major League Table Tennis partnership -- and how our organization can support your business goals -- at our free Club Partner Program Webinar! Hosts Mimi Bosika and Summer Behling will be joined by Taher Jaleel and Viful Mhapsekar of High Performance Table Tennis Academy for a behind-the-scenes look at how our programs thrive at the club level.

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action!

Butterfly Training Tips

Forehand and Backhand Push!
Here’s the video (3:07) from Pingispågarna

Forehand Cross Step with Robert Gardos
Here’s the video (3:04) from Pong Space. “The forehand cross step is an advanced technique when playing against offensive players with good placement. Robert Gardos goes through the key components of what makes a good forehand cross step and how to recover.”

New from PingSkills

New Videos

New from Steve Hopkins

New from USATT

How a Midlands Tech student started a 'ping pong revolution' in Columbia
Here’s the article from the Post and Courier in South Carolina. “Every Monday, there's no place Tripp Roche would rather be than in St. Andrews Park, where he's been leading a "ping pong revolution" across South Carolina.”

New from ITTF

Chang Yu An Flying Racket
Here’s the video (12 sec) – that’s some good distance! Can you top this distance from the World #81 from Taiwan?

The Talent Has Arrived
Here’s where you can buy the shirt at Amazon!

Ma Long Funny Moments
Here’s the video (42 sec)! Even the GOAT has fun with TT!

Non-Table Tennis - Southern Truths
My rather political story just came out, “It's Election Day in Texas and I'm a Democrat Rarin' to Vote,” in the “Southern Truths” anthology, available at Amazon or direct from B-Cubed Press, in print, ebook, and audiobook formats. It’s an intentionally over-the-top humorous look at the trials and tribulations of a Democrat in Texas attempting to vote for president – think of it as an extended Saturday Night Live skit. It’s ten pages long in the print version. (The story right after mine is “The Trouble with Dribbles” by David Gerrold, of “The Trouble with Tribbles” fame!) Here’s the Facebook posting about it from co-editor Karen G. Anderson, where she singled out my story, writing, "Larry Hodges' story 'It's Election Day in Texas and I'm a Democrat Rarin' to Vote' is not to be missed.”

***
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October 21, 2024

Tip of the Week
Adjust in One Game.

Weekend Coaching and Training
This weekend was lazy feet day, as I was all over a number of players who weren’t moving their feet. With the beginning/intermediate players, the emphasis is on the reflexively stepping toward the ball instead of leaning. I demonstrated that once you lean in the direction of the ball, your weight goes on that foot and you can’t really move anymore. With the more advanced players, it’s more about having active feet where they move every shot, even if it’s just inches.

During a serving session, I challenged the players to serve backspin so the ball came to a stop on the table, or even bounced backwards. I first demonstrated that to do this, you need to really brush the bottom of the ball -  many players try doing this by hitting the midway between the bottom and back of the ball, which leads to a light backspin at most. Two kids did it for the first time, while others are now determined to do so.

Using my best fake Russian accent, I tried to convince the kids my name was Yuri Vil, a world champion coach from Russia. They quickly figured out that “Coach Yuri Vil” is “Coach You’re Evil.”

I’ve also continued my own training. Since Aug. 1, I’ve dropped from 210 to 193 pounds – but I’ve been stuck at the latter for over a week. I did hit 192 yesterday, but that was from dehydration. I was back to 193 this morning, alas. (Goal is 180.) Regarding training, I’m hitting my backhand harder, but there’s a problem – when I practice it for more than a few minutes, it puts pressure on my shoulder, which begins to hurt from past injuries. I also start every session playing at a 2200 level (not bad for age 64), and then, as I get tired, it gradually works downward until I’m barely 2000 at most at the end. This also happens in my practice or league matches – after a few matches, or late in a match, my muscles tire and the strokes break down, and so I miss key shots at the end of those games – not from the pressure of a close game, but from real muscle fatigue. Hopefully, I’ll be over that by the US Open in December. But it’s already cost me a number of matches, both practice ones and in some hardbat matches I’ve played in tournaments the past few years, where I’d sometimes be winning until the end, and then be unable to keep up the same level, and so lose strings of points as I totter around in exhaustion.

US Team Selection
USATT recently published their new USA Table Tennis Unveils 2025 National Team Selection Procedures. Very soon I started getting unhappy messages from parents and coaches. The new procedures means that players who can afford to go to more events, and who can miss more school, will have an advantage in making the US Team. I strongly disagree with this approach. Even some of our junior players at my club were grumbling about this – the ones setting this up do not seem to understand the money and time constraints for the players involved.

After many complaints, USATT had a Zoom session last week to explain the new system. I didn’t attend the 90-minute session, and I don’t think I’m at liberty to give out the link to the recording. But I read over the comments – probably well over 100 from dozens of parents and coaches – and there really wasn’t one positive one, just lots of disagreement and factual observations about the problems of the system and the great financial and time pressures it puts on parents and players. I finally read over the Selection Procedures, and they are right – I don’t like them either. And yet, with so many USATT issues going on that I disagree with, I’m hesitant to get involved in still another. (I was planning on writing about USATT Coaching Certification this morning, but will postpone that to next week.)

The parents have set up a petition opposing the new system. (I had nothing to do with it – let’s stop that rumor in the bud.) The petition went up on Oct. 16, five days ago, and I’m told already has been signed “by close to 100 families.” I think that’s a mandate.

Here are two links:

I signed the petition, with the following note:

I think the petition speaks for itself. I’m sure the ones who put this new system together were well-meaning, but I don’t think this system selects the best players for the National Teams. It will often select the players of the parents with the most money and the juniors who can travel to more US and international events. The over-emphasis on junior world rankings skews the results since they are not that accurate since they over-reward participation, and many aspiring juniors can't afford to travel the world. They get their primary training at home, which is more important at this stage, with occasional overseas and domestic trips. I also think there should be more emphasis on removing the junior events at the US Open from being part of the system, since often unseeded foreign juniors show up and a top US junior may lose first round, badly hurting their chances. The goal of the Trials should be to identify the best players while maintaining fairness to all national team hopefuls, and I don’t think this new system does that. In general, it seems like every time we have a system that works we change it. 

There’s also been online discussion of this in the Team USA forum (only for players, parents, coaches, and USATT people). One argument being made by USATT people is they want to focus on those trying to be “pro” players, not just “rec” players. I posted the following:

The problem here is that during their junior years, most kids don’t know yet if they are going to be “pro” or “rec” players. During those up-and-coming years, training is most important, as that – along with competition – is what maximizes their development so that they have the *option* later on of choosing between professional and recreational.

They do need competitions to develop, and perhaps team members should be required to play a certain number of tournaments per year. But requiring them to regularly miss school and spend large sums of money flying about the US and the world so they can chase ranking points to make the US Team – that’s counter-productive to finding and developing the best players for the team. It means that, after they go to all the USATT events to chase those ranking points, they miss so much school they can’t go to other events, including international ones.

Most train and go to school all week, and train or compete on weekends in more local tournaments, while focusing on a few larger tournaments or trials where they miss school. This way they don’t miss as much school since they are mostly weekend events, giving them the leeway to go to other events, both domestic and international. The only real “winners” from this new system are juniors whose parents have deep pockets, those who can miss a lot of school (usually home-schooled), and USATT, which collects the entry fees for these additional events.

I later wrote:

When you have a system that's overwhelmingly rejected by those who will be forced to use the system, there's something wrong with the system.

US Junior Team Trials – My Proposal
The is just a flexible outline, with a number of details that can be worked out once main concept is adopted. NOTE - This went up Monday afternoon, several hours after the rest of the blog.

  • Have two Trials, one at the Nationals in July, the other roughly six months later. The second Trials would move to a different location each year. Having more Trial events mean players would focus on just making the US Team, as opposed to going beyond that and focus on maximum long-term improvement. It also puts a great financial and time burden on junior players and parents, the latter because they have a limited number of days they can take off from school. If all those days are taken for Trials events so they can chase after ranking points, then those events and just making the US Team becomes the focus instead of overall and long-term improvement, or international events.
  • World ranking should have no bearing on making the team at the junior level. This too strongly favors those who have the finances to travel internationally over possibly better and harder-working players who train and compete primarily in the US. If the international competition helps the players who can afford to do so on their own, then the results will show in the Trials events. As players get older, the focus can gradually shift to international competitions.
  • The junior events at the US Open should not be a part of the Trials as unranked foreign players could knock out top US players while other US players get lucky draws, skewing the results. Also, the US Open normally takes place during final exams for most schools. (Plus it means another five days of school missed.) A Trials event can only be held at the US Open if it is separate for US players only, and the dates moved to accommodate school schedules.
  • Constant Competition is important to improvement. US Team members should be required to play a certain number and level of tournaments per year, including at least one International (which could be the US Open or a WTT event). Players may ask special dispensation to play fewer tournaments if they are working on a specific technique and prefer to take time off from tournaments, for injuries, or related issues, which the HPC or US National Coach should grant when appropriate.
  • Have eight players on National Team or Team Squad. Top seven in Trials automatically make team. If HPC chooses, they may select the final spot if an injured or sick player was not able to make the Trials. Otherise, the #8 finisher gets the final spot.

2,300th Published Article
Last week I noted that I’d just had my 2,000th published table tennis article. (This does NOT include exactly 2,021 blog entries – 1,974 here and 47 in my science fiction page. Including those, I’ve had 4,321 published articles!) This morning’s Tip of the Week, “Adjust in One Game” (both here and at Butterfly – gosh I look mean in that photo!) is my 2,300 published article (in 197 different publications), and my 2,002nd published table tennis article. Here is a listing of all my published articles (many linked to the articles) as of Oct. 1. (I update it at the start of each month.)

Holiday Shopping
It’s time for some Holiday shopping, both for others and for yourself! Why not get one of my books? Or one of Dan Seemiller’s?

Here are my table tennis books:

Here are books by 5-time US Men’s Singles Champion Dan Seemiller!

More into history? Here are the 23 volumes of History of US Table Tennis by Tim Boggan!

There are many more. Perhaps browse my collection of 337 table tennis books (!) and if you find an interesting one, see if it’s on sale at Amazon or elsewhere!

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action!

Butterfly Training Tips

Three Tips to React Quicker When Playing Table Tennis
Here’s the article by Tom Lodziak.

New from PingSkills

540 Hours to Make a Table Tennis Player?
Here’s the video (14:05) from Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis.

New from PongSpace

PechPong VS Norwegian National Team Player Martin Frøseth
Here’s the video (15:07), with Seth Peth’s usual point-by-point analysis.

New from Table Tennis Daily

New Videos

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

Puerto Rico Wins 10 Medals At The Pan American U-19 And U-15 Table Tennis Championships
Here’s the article by Edgardo Vazquez

USATT Announces Bidding Process for 2025 Regional Championships
Here’s the news item.

Puzzle Master Will Shortz Pieces Together His Recovery from a Stroke
Here’s the CNN article. He owns the Westchester TTC and is on the USATT Board of Directors.

New from ITTF

You Just Got Served
Here’s where you can buy the shirt from Amazon!

Mary Had a Little Pong...
Here’s the video (25 sec)!

Ma Long’s Fake Serve
Here’s the video (10 sec)!

***
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October 14, 2024

Tips of the Week

USATT Election and Team Trials
Page down for segments on them. I decided to start with the more positive stuff.

US Table Tennis Hall of Fame Inductions
I flew to Houston for the US Table Tennis Hall of Fame Inductions and Dinner, held Thursday, Oct. 10 at the Houston International Table Tennis Center. Inducted were Glenn Cowan, Dennis Taylor, and Stellan Bengtsson, with Patty Martinez Wasserman getting the Mark Matthews Lifetime Achievement Award. Here's the promotional flyer. Here is the HOF news item on the event, by Sean O'Neill. It includes links to the induction speeches (including photos and video) by Derek May (for Glenn), by me (for Dennis), by Christian Lillieroos (for Stellan), and by Scott Gordan (for Patty). Click on the induction speech links for lots of great stuff!

Huntsman World Senior Games
As part of my comeback, I flew out to St. George, Utah, for the Huntsman World Senior Games, Oct. 7-10, where I was entered in four events. (I had to skip Hardbat Doubles, where I was defending champion, and Elite Singles as I had to fly to Houston for the Hall of Fame Inductions – see above.) I was hoping for a lot of gold, but ended up with three bronzes and a fourth place ribbon. The bronzes were in Over 60 Men's Singles, Over 50 Men's Doubles (I played down a division with Joe Ryan), and Over 50 Hardbat Men's Singles (they had 50-69 and Over 70 divisions). I came in fourth in Over 60 Mixed Doubles with Alecia Moll.

The hardbat was especially disappointing. I was the defending champion. In the semifinals, in a best of three to 21, my opponent seemed to get a lot of nets and edges in that third game, but I still managed to lead 20-19 and 21-20 match point. Both times I missed easy smashes, and I ended up losing 23-21 in the third. So I felt like I was both unlucky and choked it away, alas. Yikes.

The tournament was well-run by Directors Jean Bulatao and Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Omnipong Managers Craig and Rob Krum, Assistants Eric Aki and Marguerite Cheung, Referee Hiro Moriyasu, Deputy Referee Steve Lee, Chief Umpire Helen Prusakov, and Umpires Jerry Li and Mei Wang. (Here's the info page.)

USATT Election
Here is the USATT news item on the election, which went up on Friday, Oct. 4. The deadline to apply to run was only one week later, Friday Oct. 11. They gave us only one week's notice. Jeez. Do they understand that prospective candidates need time to mull it over, explore the issues, and discuss with others?

I considered running. (I've had two previous tenures on the USATT board.) I finally decided it simply wasn't worth it. If I'd won, I would spend the next four years watching and listening to leaders doing silly and often dishonest things while most nod their heads in agreement, and there'd be nothing I could do about it. I'd be outvoted on every major issue. It would be a hostile environment since I tend to be outspoken and say things they don't want to hear – as I am doing here. There are 12 board members; perhaps four of them have the courage to speak up when told to do things that were just wrong. Some are honestly just nice, well-meaning people who just want to get along, and so they vote in support of whoever's in charge.

At some point during the election I expect to post lots of examples – nearly all of which I've already blogged about – but to give one example I've blogged about a few times, early last year the current chair, backed by the CEO, ran for an illegal third term. The whole board knew he wasn't eligible, and yet he was illegally re-elected, 7-2-1. Why? Because most just want to go along with the crowd and follow whoever's in charge. That's why most of the board has voted literally hundreds of time in a row – 100% of their votes during the last four years – with the leadership. (When I say leadership, that really means the CEO, with the Chair of the Board supporting her 100% of the time. And watch out now for board members to look for places to cast token votes in opposition, just so they can say they did!) While many of these votes are procedural, I'd have voted in opposition many dozens of times.

Here are three of my blogs on the election about the illegal chair:

Over and over it's the same trick – the CEO or Chair bring in their hand-picked lawyer to tell the board what they should do and to rationalize that they are following the USATT bylaws – the rules which govern our sport - when they are not, and board members then have that as "cover" to go along with the leadership. How do I know? Because nearly every time I challenge a board member on these votes they bring up that they were just going along with the what the lawyer told them!!! Others simply don't want to discuss it.

To give another example, late last year one board member, Thomas Hu, who has an MBA, saw possible discrepancies in the budget and wanted to see the detailed financials. So the USATT leadership called in the lawyers, who told the board that Thomas had a "potential conflict of interest" because he had a partial ownership of a club and was CEO of the American Youth Table Tennis Organization. (Here's my July 1, 2024 blog on it – page down to "USATT Board Member Denied Access to USATT Financials."). And so, despite the bylaws clearly saying board members need access to these financials (as explained in my blog), he was denied access to the very financials he and other board members are responsible for, all via a made-up "potential conflict of interest." One result of this is that Thomas isn't running for re-election, since he's spent much of the last four years in constant opposition, and is tired of it. I don't blame him.

Or the USATT Assembly, which is held every year at the US Open or Nationals. The bylaws require it be held in conjunction with a USATT Board meeting, so board members can consider what the membership brings up in the Assembly - which is the whole point of the Assembly. But as I've regularly pointed out, USATT has refused to hold the require board meeting the past three years in a row, claim it would be inconvenient. I've complained about it all three times, in 2021, 2022, and 2023, to no avail. Here's my Feb. 19, 2024 blog on it. As I wrote, "USATT Bylaws are not things USATT should follow only when they are convenient; they are the rules for governing our sport." Plus, the rationale that it was inconvenient for the top players fell apart when the player reps I spoke to denied that it was inconvenient, and suggested it be held via Zoom at the end of the tournament.

There are many other examples and other serious issues which I expect to blog about. These are just a few of the issues – I have 14 pages of notes to be organized at some point. For now, I'm leaving out names.

  • There's the huge drop in USATT certified coaches, from 318 to less than 100. I'll blog about this later, but there are three primary reasons for this, with a relatively easy fix for each.
  • We've gone from regularly holding many of the biggest tournaments in the world here in the US (World Championships, Women's World Cup, World Veterans Championships, all brought in by the previous administration) to no longer doing so.
  • USATT set up a Club Ranking system based solely on the number, size, and prize money of tournaments run (though the criteria isn't listed on the USATT Club page), without taking anything else into consideration, such as number of USATT and club members, certified coaches, junior programs, senior programs, para programs, leagues, and so on – and so a club owned by a USATT board member, Will Shortz, has been the #1 ranked club every month since the system was created shortly after he took office nearly four years ago as the elected Club Representative. The new club ranking system is seemingly tailored for his club, which has zero USATT certified coaches but lots of big tournaments. I'm told he didn't set it up himself, but others did it for him after he took office, presumably to get his loyalty – and in his nearly four years in office, he's voted with the leadership in 100% of votes. I pointed out the club ranking issue to him – he's a very friendly guy and very good regionally - but he didn't want to discuss it or take action to remedy the problem, and so his club continues its "undefeated" streak, posted every month on Facebook, USATT Newsletters, and who knows where else. Maybe he'll fix the problem now? There are some really nice clubs out there that, with more rational criteria, would do quite well, perhaps even #1 – 888, ICC, Table Tennis America, Triangle, Houston International, Lily Yip's, and so on, with apologies to those left out. (Disclosure - my own club, MDTTC, would also do pretty well in a rational club ranking system.)
  • In the last USATT election, the membership voted for the Club Representative. This time, the Nominating and Governing Committee (NGC) has decided they will choose the Club Representative. It's legal by the bylaws, but it means the NGC, selected by the USATT Board, will choose this person, and the NGC is not likely to choose someone who disagrees with the very USATT board that selected the NGC. The current Club Rep, if he applies, will almost for certain be appointed.
  • The NGC will also appoint four "Independent Directors" to the board – and again, it is unlikely they will appoint people who disagree with the USATT board that selected the NGC. It used to be that the bulk of the Board of Directors was chosen by the USATT membership. Now they only vote for two "At Large" representatives out of the twelve. I disagree with this. (There are also four player reps and a "National Organization" rep.)

Like past administrations, the current USATT administration will someday be gone. They will be forgotten except when people talk about the past and USATT corruption and say, "What were they thinking?"

USA Table Tennis Unveils 2025 National Team Selection Procedures
Here's the USATT News Item. I've heard a number of complaints about this – coaches and parents keep messaging me about it – mostly about the costs of going to so many events, and about the point system that seems to greatly favor international ranking (much of which is based on participation) over team trials, meaning the new rules would favor those who have the money to travel to all of these national and international events. I briefly browsed over the documents, but really don't want to get into another USATT issue right now, so I don't really have an opinion on it right now. USATT is holding an invitation-only Zoom meeting on Tuesday night at 9PM Eastern Time to explain the new system. (I'm guessing anyone asking with an involvement to the issue would be allowed to participate.) I probably won't attend – if I disagree with the latest and newest system, I'll end up spending way too much time on the issue. I'm hoping someone else will write an article on it, good or bad, and I can just link to it.

2,000th Published Table Tennis Article
I recently realized that my Tip of the Week on Oct. 7 – last Monday – was my 2,000 published table tennis article! It went up both here and on Butterfly News (as all my Tips of the Week do), but only counts as one article. It was also my 2,298th  published article (in 197 different publications), with this morning's Tip of the Week (also at Butterfly) #2,299. So, my next article, which should be next week's Tip of the Week on Monday, will be #2,300. Here is a listing of all my published articles (many linked to the articles) as of Oct. 1. (I update it at the start of each month.)

MDTTC Open
Here are the results of the MDTTC Open held this past week at the Maryland Table Tennis Center, where I coach. Interestingly, junior players won nine of the ten events (two of which were junior events), the only exception being Parham Ghatan, who won Under 1900. Stanley Hsu (who turned 16 three weeks ago) won the Open, coming back from down 0-2 against Khaleel Asgarali. Ryan Lin (14) won under 2400; Richik Ghosh (9!) won Under 2200; Landy Liu (14) won Under 2000; Ryan Li (9) won Under 1600 and Under 15; Aarush Sharma (12) won Under 1300; Batra Aarav won Under 1000; and Yonatan Morse-Achtenberg (11) won Under 12.

Coaching and News from All Over
Since I’ve been away two weeks, rather than try to list every interesting article, here are links to some of the main news and coaching pages that have been active in that time, and you can pick and choose. I’ll get back to linking to individual articles next week.

New from USATT

Daryl Morey Just Invested in a New Sports League — and It’s Probably Not What You Think
Here's the article from Inquirer.com about the Sixers president is investing in Major League Table Tennis.

World’s Ten Most Popular Sports Revealed With Host of Shock Entries
Here's the article from The Sun, with Table Tennis at #6.

How Our Ping Pong Startup hit a $50 Million Valuation in Five Years by Tapping Into Automation
Here's the article from Fortune Magazine feature Ping Pod. Requires a subscription.

Just an Incredible Lobbing, Fishing Point
Here's the video (53 sec)!

"I Love Ping Pong Too!"
Here's the cartoon! (Here's the non-Facebook version.)

Mini-Paddle Pong
Here's the video (2:04), which starts with seesaw pong!

Adam and Eva ... BATTLE!
Here's the video (12:32) from Adam Bobrow!

Spinniest Serve Battle
Here's the video (10:36) from Pongfinity! It actually starts off with a one-point tournament!

Non-Table Tennis – Mathball and Thank You Miss Kittykat!
I've had two recent humorous science fiction stories published. Both are in text and audio, so you can either read them or just listen.

  • Mathball (4500 words) was published Oct. 3 by Escape Pod. The entire madcap SF story takes place during just three pitches of a player’s at bat during a major league baseball game, in a future where mathematicians have completely taken over baseball. A player’s only job is to do exactly what the mathematicians tell them to do. The players play high-stakes poker, ping-pong, and twister on the field to pass the time while the mathematicians do their calculations. The main characters include a baseball slugger, three mathematicians (Dr. Blonde, Dr. Brown, and Dr. Orange), a very active ladybug, and you, a fan sitting in the center field stands.
  • Thank You Miss Kittykat! (900 words) was published Oct. 7 by Amazing Stories. Humans made the mistake of genetically creating dogs and cats with high intelligence and opposable thumbs. There's a war, with humans and dogs allied together against the cats – but the cats won. Now we're the pets! The story is in both text and audio.

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September 30, 2024

No Blog Next Week
I’ll be out of town Oct. 6-11 (Sunday through Friday). I’ll be competing in the Huntsman World Senior Games on Mon & Tue (Oct. 7-8) in Saint George, Utah. Then I fly directly to Houston for the US Table Tennis Hall of Fame Inductions and Banquet on Thursday (Oct. 10), where I’ll be doing the presentation for Dennis Taylor. I’ll write about this in my next blog in two weeks. I think you can still sign up – lots of US TT celebrities will be there!

Tip of the Week
How to Play the No-Spin Ball.

No Coaching, No Playing, Just Capclave . . . with Table Tennis
I was away all weekend at the Capclave Science Fiction Convention in Rockville, MD. So I didn’t do any real coaching this past week. This was a good thing, for as noted in my blog last week, I injured my right foot, and even coaching involves standing a lot, as well as hitting with students. I also had to take the week off from training for the Huntsman World Senior Games, which is unfortunate. I start up again tomorrow (Tuesday) – I figure it’s 50-50 whether I finish the session. If I don’t, I might not be able to play at the Senior Games. We’ll see.

At Capclave, I was in three panels, plus a book signing. The signing and three panels - which included table tennis! - were:

  • Mass Signing. About 20 authors were together at tables selling and signing copies of our novels. One interesting thing – word has gotten out in the SF community about my table tennis and a number of people came by to talk about it. (It’s probably because this past year I’ve sold a lot of stories and had a number published, with table tennis in my bio each time. See how I’m promoting our sport?) I sold a number of copies of “The Spirit of Pong” and “Campaign 2100: Game of Scorpions” (which features table tennis quite a bit – here’s my blog on that). The latter is easily my best-selling science fiction novel. (Here are all my books, both SF and TT.)
  • Important Rituals. We discussed how to create science fiction or fantasy cultures (human, alien, or fantasy creature) with rituals. One interesting argument came about regarding the definition of ritual. Is the “Riker Maneuver” (where Commander Riker from Star Trek steps over a chair to sit in it) a ritual or a habit? When Arya Stark of Game of Thrones recites the list of people she is going to kill each night, is that a ritual? Some argued a ritual needed a group and should normally be religious. I didn’t agree – I had a more lenient definition. At one point I pointed out how rituals are common in sports, as a mental preparation, and used several examples from table tennis. I wrote about this a bit in Become a Player of Routine – see the “Mentally” part.
  • History: The Ultimate Source Document. We discussed how to use historical events to write alternate histories, or to explain certain events. I have many examples from my own writings – I’ve sold stories with First Contact (i.e., with aliens) at MLK’s 1963 March on Washington; when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon; and at John Tyler’s Inauguration as the tenth US President in 1841. Regarding Armstrong, my story also explained why he neglected to say “a” in “That’s one small step for [a] man; one giant leap for mankind.” I also pointed out that my novel “The Spirit of Pong” featured many ghosts (!) of real historical players and coaches.
  • Writing With Your Opposite. We discussed the two major fiction writing methods, outlining versus pantsing (where you just sit down and write, without much advance planning). I’m a partial outliner – I do rough outlines, then make things up as I go along.

Butterfly Training Tips

Banana Flick Tutorial with Robert Gardos
Here’s the video (2:49) from PongSpace. An excellent explanation and demonstration.

How to Progress from Beginner to World Level WTT for Young Players
Here’s the video (17:37) from Ti Long.

New from Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis

New from PingSkills

Use These Tactics OR They Will Be Used Against You!
Here’s the video (21:33) by Seth Pech.

How to Play with Long Pimples | 3 basics Tips & Techniques
Here’s the video (5:27) from Pingispågarna.

The Pips Problem (and other such nonsense)
Here’s the article by Logan Rietz on how to play with or against pips.

Tomahawk Side-Topspin vs Side-Backspin
Here’s the video (11 seconds), set to music!

How the Manufacturing Pros Put Sponge on Your Racket
Here’s the video (15 sec in fast-motion)!

New from Taco Backhand

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action!

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

My Experience At The 2024 Olympics (+ Q&A)
Here’s the article and video (13:21) by Anders Lind

New from ITTF

Table Tennis Caricatures
Here’s where you can get them!

We Challenged Spanish Champ Alvaro Robles!
Here’s the video (12:56) from Table Tennis Daily!

I’m the Ping Pong Guy
Here’s where you can buy the shirt at Amazon!

***
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September 23, 2024

Tip of the Week
The Only Thing That Matters.

Weekend Coaching, Tips, Training, and My Right Foot
I had a busy week, both coaching and playing. I coached the Intermediate junior group on both Saturday and Sunday, and the Elite Group on Sunday. With the Intermediate group, besides the usual stroking and footwork drills, we did a lot of service practice. One kid, age about eight, had a breakthrough – he can now serve a heavy enough backspin serve that it stops on the table and rolls backwards. He’s pretty excited about it. Then I really opened his eyes by explaining and demonstrating a “heavy no-spin” serve – so now he’s practicing that. (The key to heavy no-spin is making it look like it’s actually heavy backspin, so the opponent opens his racket and pops the ball up. You do this by using the same fast motion as heavy backspin, but contact the ball near the handle.)

One kid was struggling with his forehand – he extended his arm almost straight from the shoulder. I had him bring it in, even exaggerate a much shorter stroke, and he quickly develop a much more consistent and reliable forehand – hit one hundred of them while doing side-to-side footwork.

With the Elite group, I spent a lot of time emphasizing to remember the “feel” of a good shot, and then repeat. This is especially important after making a poor shot. Instead of focusing on what happened with the poor shot, you should focus on repeating the good shots. The only time to think about the poor shots is if you can’t remember how to do it correctly and so have to analyze why you keep doing the poor shot. You might need a coach for that. A couple of players were standing too straight, so I quickly straightened that out – or should I say unstraightened it!

In a fit of energy last week, I went through my file of possible upcoming Tips of the Week and, during a looooong session at Panera’s, wrote nine new ones. Since I’d already written tips for every Monday through October, this gets me to the end of the year. They cover a wide range of topics, from “How to Flip Short, Heavy Backspin” and “How to Loop Deep, Heavy Backspin,” to “How to Do a Relentless Three-Point Attack” and “The One-Two Punch of Tactics.”

I continued my own training for my comeback this Fall for the Huntsman World Senior Games, the US Open, and possibly others. Alas, I faced three major problems this week. First, exhaustion – I was lightheaded several times while training and had to stop each time. That comes down to fitness – I train at a level that’s still beyond my current fitness level. Second, after going from 210 to 194 lbs. between Aug. 1 and Sept. 16 (last Monday), I seem to have hit a wall. I dieted all week, and yet my weight has seemingly stayed the same. I’m a bit confused by this, but it might be water retention or something, or maybe I was dehydrated last week. After the lightheadedness session, I went ahead and ate a couple of full meals that might have affected this. We’ll see.

And third, and worst of all . . . I hurt my right foot. (I had the same injury earlier this year.) I think I initially hurt it while practicing. But while hitting with the Intermediate players on Saturday it started bothering me. On Saturday afternoon I was about to play in the MDTTC Elite League (which I now run), but just before my first match, as I did some shadow-practice and the foot was worse, and I had to drop out. I hobbled about all day Sunday while coaching and hitting with players. I’ve cancelled my own training for at least the next 3-4 days. It’s not horribly bad – if I had a big match in a tournament I’d probably play with it, but I don’t want to aggravate it now and make it worse.

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action!

  • Talkin' Smash by JOOLA Ep14: Building the Major League Table Tennis Dream with Flint Lane and Matt Hetherington (39:19). “Major League Table Tennis has taken the US by storm, and it was a great opportunity as the second season kicks off to sit down and catch up with the MLTT Founder and Commissioner, Flint Lane. Flint is aiming to bring the dream of having a full time professional table tennis league in the USA alive. Season 1 saw an exciting new format for the sport, a number of high level foreign players, and numerous team matches across the country. Flint speaks about the conception to delivery of MLTT, and what his vision is - not just for MLTT, but for the growth of table tennis in America in general, as part of his efforts. New changes are afoot in Season 2 and the journey for Flint and his dedicated team continues!”
  • MLTT Is Going Coast-To-Coast
  • It’s MLTT Opening Day
  • Home Page
  • Major Pong Head (blog coverage)

Timothée Chalamet’s ‘Marty Supreme’ Casts Odessa A’zion, Penn Jillette, Kevin O’Leary and Abel Ferrara
Here’s the article from Variety Magazine on the upcoming Marty Reisman biopic. Here’s the IMDB listing.

Meet Dora Kurimay
Here’s the interview from Bold Journey Magazine. Dora’s a championship player, sports psychologist, and writer.

Butterfly Training Tips

7 Tips For Playing Table Tennis In A Hot Or Humid Playing Hall
Here’s the article by Álvaro Munno, from Racket Insight.

Warm Up Exercise
Here’s the video (2:04) from Pingispågarna.

One Tool to Perfect Your Long Serve with Robert Gardos
Here’s the video (4:34) from PongSpace.

2024 Pan American U11 & U13 Championships At Dominican Republic!
Here’s the article by Maggie Tian

Wang Chuqin DESTROYS His Opposition
Here’s the video (2:06) from Taco Backhand.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

California, Oklahoma, Ohio and Illinois Events Wrap Up 2024 State Championship Series
Here’s the USATT article.

ITTF News

We Challenged Germany’s Best Juniors!
Here’s the video (19:11) from Table Tennis Daily.

The Man, The Myth, The Ping Pong Legend
Here’s where you can buy the shirt at Amazon!

Steve Rogers (Captain America) vs. Forge
Here’s the comic strip. If you go down a few pages there’s several pages of these two in a vicious ping-pong match, which ends when Forge (on left) slams the ball so hard it vaporizes. I’d never heard of Forge until now.

Angry Ping Pong Player
Here’s the clip art cartoon!

Hardest Ping Pong Table
Here’s the video (9:18) from Pongfinity! They take on eight challenges.

Non-Table Tennis – Capclave Science Fiction Convention
This weekend I’ll be at the Capclave Science Fiction Convention in Gaithersburg, MD. I’m a panelist – here’s my schedule and bio. I’ll also be doing two book signing – the mass signing on Saturday night (with all the panelists), and another at a time that hasn’t been finalized yet, but probably on Saturday.

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