Preparing for Nationals
It’s that time of year again. So . . . how does one go about preparing for a big tournament? Well, first of all, you read my article, Top Ten Ways to Play Your Best in a Tournament. Well, duh!!! But from a coach’s point of view, here is how our coaching changes.

First, in the age of nearly unregulated plastic balls, where the balls play very differently, you have to switch over to whatever ball is being used. For the upcoming Nationals, that’s the Nittaku Premium ball. I keep a supply of each of the major types, and just yesterday I tossed a bag of these balls into my playing bag.

Second, there’s more emphasis on game play, less on basic rote drills. The time to perfect shots is mostly past; now’s the time to practice what you have in game situations. That means more free play, more points starting with serve or receive, and lots of random drills. It means more emphasis on receive, sometimes playing out points, sometimes not. For top players, it sometimes means mimicking the shots of rival players they will likely play so they can prepare for them.

Third, there’s a lot of emphasis on serves. Now is not the time to develop new ones, but to hone and perfect the ones you have. The coach or player need to decide what serves they will be using in the tournament, and make sure those serves are ready and at their best. Deep serves especially need to be practiced as they are the toughest to pull out under pressure, and the easiest to miss.

Fourth, sports psychology is emphasized more and more. All the training is wasted if a player goes out there and isn’t mentally at his best. I sometimes work out in advance with players how to prepare this way. For example, I had one student for years who liked the Baltimore Ravens football team and the TV show NCIS – and so I’d come prepare to talk about those two topics to help relax him before matches. Then, about five minutes before the match would begin we’d talk tactics, reviewing the tactics we’d gone over earlier.

Fifth, coaches and players are making coaching plans for the tournament. Often this means studying playing schedules to see who is playing when, and which coaches are available. (My club, MDTTC, will have seven or eight coaches at the Nationals.) Coaches also have to make sure players are ready for coaching – how best to prepare for each match, who to warm up with, when to call timeouts, what serves to use at various times in a match, etc.

Maryland State Championships
I’ve added links to photos for most of the events – see yesterday’s blog.

We Need You - World Veteran Championships Las Vegas 2018
Here’s the USATT call for volunteers – this means YOU! The event will take place in July in Las Vegas, with something like 3000 players – and you’ll be right in the middle of the action!!! I’ve already been recruited to do daily coverage, though I plan to also play in it.

USATT Insider
Here’s the new issue that came out yesterday.

ITTF North America
Here’s their home page. USA Table Tennis works with them on a number of issues.

Match Analysis: Ma Long vs Fan Zhendong Men's Singles Final
Here’s the article, with links to video. Here’s the article about the Men’s Final at the recent Worlds – somehow I missed this when it first went up.

Target Drills
Here’s the video (18 sec) from Coach Me Table Tennis, where the player has to react to the command on which target he should aim his attack at.

Ask the Coach
Questions answered at PingSkills.

Ideal Pairs But Where Have the Right Handers Gone?
Here’s the ITTF article on Men’s Doubles at the Japan Open (currently underway in Tokyo). They are down to the final 16 teams – and 15 are lefty/righty combos! The other team? A pair of lefties!!! This reminds me of the time many years ago when many of the top right-handed USA players were lobbying to play doubles with lefty stars Quang Bui and Brian Masters at the 1985 USA Nationals. It got so heated that Quang and Brian said forget it, and they played together. Quang was an all-out attacker, while Brian played with the Seemiller grip and favored his backhand, so he could play almost like a lefty – and the two won Men’s Doubles! They won again in 1987.

New Videos from EmRatThich

• Epic Battle in Table Tennis: Long Pimples vs Normal Inverted Rubber (3:58)
• Table Tennis Short Pips Penholder (New Successor of Liu Guoliang) (5 min)

Ask A Pro Anything - Jeoung Youngsik
Here’s the video (5:31) with the world #15 (previously #7) from South Korea, from Adam Bobrow.

Nathan Hsu in China - Getting a SIM Card is Such a Pain
Here’s his newest Vlog (9:27).

Strolling Pong and Four-Table Pong
Here’s the video (40 sec) with Adam Bobrow at the Worlds – the future of our sport?

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Tip of the Week
Great Serves are the Best Way to Avoid Upsets and Compete with Strong Players.

$4500 Maryland State Championships
I ran them this past weekend at MDTTC, with great help from Mossa Barandao of PongMobile and Wen Hsu. Complete results are at Omnipong – the program is great for running tournaments and posting results. After the tournament finished on Sunday night, I sent in the results – and they were processed for rating shortly after lunch! (Do you remember the days when it sometimes took months, and how happy we were when they started going up consistently within ten days?)

Below is my write-up (skip ahead if you aren’t interested in the illustrious play of Marylanders – lots of other segments), which will need some adjusting as I referred to post-tournament ratings a couple of times that will likely change, though probably not too much in these two cases. Alas, there was some sort of glitch, and one event – Under 15 – has all sorts of mistakes. The results sent in were identical to the correct online ones above, but for reasons that aren’t clear yet, the results for that one event were completely jumbled up, so that it has a number of matches by players against players from other groups they never played, including 50-point losses that never actually happened. USATT is working to fix it, and hopefully they will be corrected today. 

[NOTE - ratings were corrected and are online. I've also added links to photos of the finalists in most of the events in the results below.]

We suspect the root of the problem was the following. When the Under 15 event was initially set up, it wasn’t set up for a 3-4 playoff. We realized this after the initial RR group results and some of the playoffs had already been played and entered on the computer. When we fixed this, we inadvertently reset the draw, losing all the results. Mossa quickly retyped in the results, and all seemed well, since we now had correct results on the screen and in the published results at Omnipong. But internally, something must have gone wrong.

$4500 Maryland State Championships
By Larry Hodges, tournament director

June 10-11 - The $4500 Maryland State Championships were held this weekend at the Maryland Table Tennis Center (MDTTC) in Gaithersburg, MD, with 88 players. The two biggest winners at the tournament were Men’s Singles Champion Chen Bowen (18) and Tiffany Ke (12). Main results are below; complete results are at Omnipong.

In the Men’s Final, #1 seed Chen, an all-out two-winged penhold looper who loops harder than Mike Tyson could ever punch, defeated #2 seed and last year’s champion, Jeffrey Zeng, known for his consistent rallying shots, at 10,8,-10,12,-8,1. In the semifinals, it was Chen over Khaleel Asgarali (5,9,5,10), who would go on to win Under 2400, and Zeng over Roy Ke in a titanic seven-game battle, -12,3,-8,8,-6,7,4. (Here’s a photo of the Final.) 

Chen and Zeng teamed up to win Open Doubles, over chopper/loopers Wang Qing Liang/Wu Jiacheng, at 7,-6,10,10. All four are full-time coaches at MDTTC. Brother/sister combo Roy and Tiffany Ke came in third in the final RR – and were up 2-1 on Chen/Zeng, and up 2-0 on Wang/Wu.

In the Women’s Final, top-seeded Tiffany Ke (2302 at age 12!), an all-out hitter with short pips on the forehand, defeated close-to-the-table two-winged looper Lisa Lin (13), 8,7,8. It was a repeat of last year’s final, where Ke had become the youngest Maryland State Women’s Singles Champion ever at age 11, winning deuce in the fifth over Lin (then 12) in the youngest Maryland Women’s Final in history.

A local rivalry has formed in the junior events, between Ryan Dabbs (13, 2275) and George Li (14, 2280 after this tournament). They played three times, and all three went five, two of them deuce or 11-9 in the fifth. In Under 18, they met in the preliminary RR Group, with George winning at -8,6,3,-8,9. They met again in the final, and again George won, this time 10,-8,-9,9,6. Ryan turned the tables in the Under 15 final, winning -8,6,3,-8,9. (Ryan would also make the final of Under 2400.) Other local juniors battling with them include the Chen brothers, Spencer (15, rated 2222 after this tournament) and Ronald (12), who were in the Under 2100 final (with Spencer defaulting), as well Tiffany Ke and Lisa Lin (see above), Jessica Lin (13), Joshua Gong (14), and Abbas Paryavi (14), and others. (Mysteriously missing was Klaus Wood, 15, rated 2313.) 

Special thanks goes to tournament sponsors HW Global Foundation (a Talent Development Program), PongMobile, Newgy Table Tennis Robots, Asian Pacific Table Tennis Balls, and USA Table Tennis. Great thanks also goes to Mossa Barandao of PongMobile for his tireless help in running the tournament; to Referees Paul Kovac and Joseph Lee; Umpire Stephen Yeh; and to scorekeepers Ali Paryavi, Lance Wei (Under 1000 Champion), Adrian Yang (Under 12 Semifinalist), and James Zhang (Under 12 Semifinalist).

MAIN RESULTS
(Click on links to see pictures of finalists.)
Men’s Singles – Final: Chen Bo Wen d. Jeffrey Zeng, 10,8,-10,12,-8,1; SF: Chen d. Khaleel Asgarali, 5,9,5,10; Zeng d. Roy Ke, -12,3,-8,8,-6,7,4; 3-4: Ke d. Asgarali, 9,-11,-6,9,9,6; QF: Asgarali d. Wang Qing Liang, 5,9,5,10; Ke d. Abbas Paryavi, 9,2,7; Chen & Zeng byes.
Women’s Singles – Final: Tiffany Ke d. Lisa Lin, 8,7,8; SF: Ke d. Claudia Ikeizumi, 5,9,8; Lin d. Caroline Kalihara, 7,11,9; 3-4: Ikeizumi d. Kalihara, def.
Open Doubles: 1^st Chen Bo Wen/Jeffrey Zeng, 3-0 (d. Paryavi/Paryavi, 1,2,3; d. Ke/Ke, -9,7,-8,7,7; d. Wang/Wu, 7,-6,10,10); 2^nd Wang Qing Liang/Jiacheng Wu, 2-1 (d. Paryavi/Paryavi, 3,4,5; d. Ke/Ke, -5,-9,5,6,8); 3^rd Roy Ke/Tiffany Ke, 1-2 (d. Paryavi/Paryavi, 7,6,7); 4^th Ali Paryavi/Abbas Paryavi, 0-3.
Under 18 - Final: George Li d. Ryan Dabbs, 10,-8,-9,9,6; SF: Li d. Tiffany Ke, 12,-8,9,3; Dabbs d. Spencer Chen, 6,9,3; 3-4: Ke d. Chen, 1,4,4.
Under 15 - Final: Ryan Dabbs d. George Li, -8,6,3,-8,9; SF: Dabbs d. Tiffany Ke, -9,8,5,-9,11; Li d. Jessica Lin, 8,6,9; 3-4: Ke d. Lin, 9,5,3.
Under 12 - Final: Hanfei Hu d. Jackson Beaver, -5,12,-6,9,9; SF: Hu d. James Zhang, 10,8,-8,9; Beaver d. Adrian Yang, -9,4,10,-12,8; 3-4: Yang d. Zhang, 4,5,6.
Under 10: 1^st Stanley Hsu, 2-0; 2^nd Mu Du, 1-1; 3^rd Andy Wu, 0-2.
Over 40: 1^st Matt Chando, 3-0; 2^nd Lixin Lang, 2-1; 3^rd Yunhua Gong, 1-2.
Over 50 - Final: Thomas Sampson d. Yunhua Gong, -6,8,11,-6,7; SF: Sampson d. Changping Duan, 5,9,10; Gong d. Lixin Lang, -8,8,8,3; 3-4: Duan d. Lang, def.
Over 60 - Final: Bob Slapnik d. Changping Duan, 6,-8,6,7; SF: Slapnick d. Chris Buckley, 5,9,10; Duan d. Somchai Paarporn, -8,8,6,4; 3-4: Paarporn d. Buckley, -6,11,9,3.
Over 70 - Final: Ed Watts d. Gordon Gregg, 2,7,2.
Under 2400 – Final: Khaleel Asgarali d. Ryan Dabbs, 9,-10,7,3; SF: Asgarali d. George Li, 10,6,5; Dabbs d. Tiffany Ke, 7,-6,9,9; QF: Asgrali d. Joshua Gong, 6,5,6; Li d. Naveen Vaddadi, -4,5,9,7; Dabbs d. Ronald Chen, 3,5,9; Ke d. Spencer Chen, 4,10,6.
Under 2100 – Final: Ronald Chen d. Spencer Chen, def.; SF: R.Chen d. Mohamed Kamara, 8,9,-4,8; S.Chen d. Joshua Gong, 5,8,7; 3-4: Gong d. Kamara, def.
Under 1800 – Final: Sean Hwang d. Jackson Beaver, 6,14,6; SF: Hwang d. Liren Guo, 5,-3,9,8; Beaver d. Hanfei Hu, -7,7,-9,3,9.
Under 1500 – Final: Ryan Lee d. Andy Wu, -10,7,3,-15,11; SF: Lee d. Hanfei Hu, 8,-11,8,7; Wu d. James Zhang, 8,-7,-2,5,6.
Under 1200 – Final: Anoop Srivastava d. Kurtus Hsu, -13,6,4,8; SF: Srivastava d. Lance Wei, 5,108; Hsu d. Todd Klinger, 6,6,-10,2.
Under 1000 – Final: Lance Wei d. Nikhil Naravan, -11,10,8,7; SF: Wei d. Jeremiah Jeffrey, -6,5,8,-7,8; Naravan d. Christopher Timasonravichki, 8,-7,5,7.
U4000 Doubles: 1^st Kevin Zhou/Arndt Plagge, 1-1/5-4; 2^nd Abbas Paryavi/Ali Paryavi, 1-1/5-5; 3^rd Donn Olsen/Kyongsook Kim, 1-1/4-5.
U3200 Doubles – Final: Mu Du/Ryan Lee d. Andy Wu/Stephanie Zhang, 5,3,5; SF: Du/Lee d. Nicole Deng/Michelle Kang, 11,10,6; Wu/Zhang d. Jackson Beaver/Hanfei Hu, 3,-4,9,14.
U2400 Doubles: 1^st James Zhang/Jason Liu, 2-0; 2^nd Hanfei Hu/Lance Wei, 1-1; 3^rd Todd Klinger/Nikhil Narayan, 0-2.

News from USATT and ITTF
Since my last blog there’s been a lot of news items at the USATT News page and the ITTF page. I’ll link to some, but why not browse over these pages and see what’s interesting?

USATT Minutes
Our long national nightmare is over – the minutes of USATT board meetings and teleconferences from December through May are now up at the USATT Minutes & Actions page! They were all approved, one by one, at the June 12 USATT teleconference. It’s done, it’s over now!

Pan Am Junior Championships
Here’s the USATT announcement. The team will be competing at the 2017 Pan American Junior Championships to be held June 20-25 in Argentina, and also at the 2017 ITTF World Junior Circuit Argentina Junior Open in Buenos Aires 18-19.

Some of you may remember that I blogged on Dec. 2, 2016, about why I believe our teams should be primarily made up by trials, not selections. Since that time, the rules have changed in that direction – but they take effect on July 1. So the Pan Am Junior Team was the last one under the old rules. USATT did face a serious problem in that we have a glut of top juniors right now – the best in U.S. history in terms of depth – and so not all could go. On the boys’ side, players selected were Kanak Jha, Sharon Alguetti, Jack Wang, and Victor Liu. Not selected included Krish Avvari, Kunal Chodri, Nicholas Tio, and Adar Alguetti, and others. Bruce Liu wrote on Facebook about his objections to these selections (both players and coaches). NOTE - for most of the day it was linked to what turned out to be a private Facebook page. I've changed the link to where it was posted in a public one.) 

How to Maintain Tactical Focus
Here’s the coaching article from Brian Pace of Triangle Table Tennis.

No Lone Rangers - Don't neglect this one main aspect of improvement...
Here’s the coaching article from Samson Dubina. “In the world of elite table tennis, there are no lone rangers. If you want to improve your game this year, you won’t be able to stay hidden in your house forming game strategies for months and come out 500 points ahead.”

Is Blocking Stroke Good For You?
Here’s the coaching article from Table Tennis Spot.

How to Make High Risk Shots into Low Risk
Here’s the coaching article from Coach Me Table Tennis.

Ask the Coach
Questions Answered at PingSkills.

Table Tennis Footwork
Here’s the new video (12:07) from EmRatThich. Here’s Part 1 (8:22), which I linked to in May.

How to Play Backhand Topspin
Here’s the video (9:58) from Yangyang. Links to previous coaching videos are on right.

Our Visit to the Thomas Keinath Table Tennis Academy in Germany
Here’s the video (6:05) from PongUniverse.

History of U.S. Table Tennis, Volume 19 (1991-1992)
Here's chapter twelve! Or order your own print copies at TimBogganTableTennis.com, as well as Volume 19!

Get to Know Kasumi Ishikawa Better
Here’s the video (30 sec) taken at the Worlds with the world #6 (formerly #3) from Japan.

Usain Bolt Plays Table Tennis in China
Here’s the video (2:35).

Adam Bobrow vs. Asuka Sakai – World’s Fastest Server
Here’s the video (1:52), but you might want to skip ahead to 1:34, where Japan’s Sakai throws his famous super-fast serve at Adam – ace!!! Some of you may remember the “Fastest Serve” video (44 sec) from two years ago that introduced us to the world’s fastest serve. He’s grown up now, out of the juniors, but is now ranked #112 in the world among men, and #14 in Under 21 Men.

Giant Ping-Pong Challenge
Here’s the video (13:13). Big paddles, big balls – is this the future of Table Tennis?

***
Send us your own coaching news!

No Blog Monday and Tuesday
No blog today or tomorrow (Mon and Tue) – I’m mentally and physically exhausted from running the Maryland State Championships this past weekend. (I was at the club 7:45AM-9PM on Saturday, 7:45AM-11PM Sunday, doing paperwork at the end. Everything is submitted for ratings processing. We had 88 players.) I also have to catch up on hordes of USATT, MDTTC, and writing work. Today’s priorities are to write and send out press releases on the tournament, put together a list of changes for next year, read through 43 pages of USATT printouts to prepare for a USATT teleconference at 7PM tonight (which will probably go to at least 9PM), and then get started on several long put-off writing projects. But here’s a new video of a Table Tennis Cat (19 sec)! 

Serve Practice and the Complacency of Non-Practice
By the time you’ve reach the intermediate or advanced level in table tennis you probably have at least decent serves. You can serve an advanced beginner off the table, and probably have “go to” serves that score you points against your peers, maybe even against stronger ones. And since you already have those serves, you don’t really need to practice them, do you? After all, you are using them in games every week, which keeps them honed and ready to use at their very best, right?

Wrong. There are three flaws with this logic.

First, no matter what level your serves are, they won’t have that little extra they’d have if you practice them regularly. Recently, in preparation for the Serving Seminar I’m running at the Nationals, I practiced my serves a few times, something I hadn’t done much recently. The result was immediate and obvious – my students, even advanced ones who were used to my serves, some of them practically growing up returning them, began having fits with them. It led to a lot of frustration – I had to explain to them that they weren’t getting worse, that my serves were actually better, back to where they had been years ago when I practiced them regularly. What specifically made them better? With a little practice, I’m keeping the serves lower (low-bouncing net-grazers), and getting both more spin and (more importantly) my contact is much quicker and more deceptive (as they used to be), and receivers are having fits telling my side-backspins from my side-topspins, and other variations.

Second, because I’m practicing them, I’m back to being able to pull off very deep serves where the ball actually goes very deep. It’s risky serving too deep, and so most players don’t go too deep. With a little practice, you can serve consistently at almost any depth, including big breaking serves, fast no-spins, and those sudden quick down-the-line ones, with the bounce on the far side within six inches or so of the end-line, jamming receivers.

Third, if you don’t practice your serves regularly, how can you improve them? With just a few minutes of practice last week my backhand serve went from okay to a deadly weapon. How? Because I practiced it, and can how whip the racket through the ball at full acceleration while grazing the ball and changing racket directions just before or after contact – and the receiver has to read all this.

I blogged about Service Practice on June 2, and gave these two links to serving articles:

• Ten Steps to a Great Service Game
• Practicing Serves the Productive Way

Improvement of Players Who “Goof Off” – Part 2
Yesterday I blogged about improvement of Players Who “Goof Off.” Here’s an interesting Facebook comment on it from Han Xiao (many-time USA team member, 3-Men’s Doubles Champion, Men’s Singles Finalist).

“It's likely that players who really focus on training rather than goofing off will develop a better understanding of ball contact, spin, body control and mechanics, etc. that will allow them to pull off more creative shots with relative ease as well. I also know from personal experience that the goofing off or laziness in certain situations becomes a bad habit, so it's actually actively detracting from your game instead of just reducing your training efficacy. For a few months in my career I kept doing things like settling for a backhand every time after covering the wide forehand, and even chop blocking the next ball quite often. Things like that really set you back a bit and a few months of bad habits will really hurt a player's development.”

Building Blocks of Table Tennis
Here’s the page from PingSkills, with links to nine videos, most about two minutes long. “To build a complete table tennis game you need to develop a range of skills. We break these down into 7 building blocks. By understanding these you'll be able to ensure you work on skills that will help you evolve your game. After watching this module you should have a good understanding of the building blocks and then can watch all our other tutorials to build your skills.”

Beat the Injured Player: Learn some new tactics
Here’s the new article from Samson Dubina.

How to Do a Reverse Sidespin Serve
Here’s the article and video (6:13) from Tom Lodziak.

Ask the Coach
Questions answered at PingSkills.

Fan Zhendong Reverse Pendulum Serve Practice 2017
Here’s the video (46 sec). (I won’t comment on how well hidden contact is.)

KoKi Niwa Forehand Technique
Here’s the video (7:08). It’s in Japanese, but you can learn by watching. Niwa of Japan, ranked #9 in the world, made the quarterfinals of Men’s Singles at the Worlds this past week, including a win over world #5 Dimitrij Ovtcharov.

Jean-Michel Saive Re-Elected to National Olympic Committee
Here’s the ITTF article.

USATT Insider
Here’s the issue that came out on Wednesday.

Spanish Junior Para Open in El Prat de Llobregat
Here are two ITTF articles that feature USA.

• United States and Norway, major challengers for honours
• First titles decided in Spain

Unforgettable Experience for Isa Islam
Here’s the ITTF article about this Turkish coach’s experiences at the Worlds.

Ask a Pro Anything: Lily Zhang
Here’s the video (20:50) featuring the U.S. Women’s Champion with Adam Bobrow.

Hirano Miu - The Supergirl
Here’s the highlights video (4:47) of the world #8 woman from Japan, who made the semifinals of the Worlds this past week, including a win over world #4 Feng Tianwei.

2017 World Championships: Glorious Scenes
Here’s the video (2:08).

Table Tennis Postcards
Here’s the page.

Ma Long vs Zhang Jike Funny Training Lob
Here’s the video (1:58).

Bowling Pong
Here’s the video (37 sec).

Table Tennis Monster
Here’s the video (2:55) – not sure how I missed this from a year ago. It’s got table tennis, a dinosaur, and features Alex Piech (human) and Jason Piech (dinosaur) of Arkansas, brothers who have been to our training camps in Maryland. Both of them will be at the USA Nationals next month. They’ve had other videos, such as this one, 2016 USA Table Tennis National Championships (33 sec) and others – see links on right.

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Improvement of Players Who “Goof Off”
What comes first, chicken or the egg? It’s sort of like a question that comes up regularly in table tennis. Obviously, players who work harder and train more seriously tend to get better than those who do not. But there’s a related question. Suppose you have two developing players who roughly work and train equally as hard, with one exception – while Player A is nearly 100% serious, Player B will sometimes goof off and use weird strokes. How does this latter habit effect a developing player?

I’ve noticed over many decades of coaching and observing that players who focus nearly 100% on doing the shots right, all the time, almost always improve much faster and become much better players than those who spend even a small amount of their developing time goofing off by throwing in “weird” shots. I’ve come to believe that when a developing player, after working hard for a time, throws in a few “goof off” shots where he intentionally does the shot wrong, he might be undoing much of his earlier practice and confusing his subconscious so the technique doesn’t turn into muscle memory.

For example, suppose I’m teaching forehands to two players. One is focused on getting it right, and so gets it right. The other is also mostly focused on getting it right, but interrupts practice somewhat regularly to throw in different variations of the stroke. My impression is that the first player improves much faster and gets much better because the subconscious, which is what is really learning the strokes, picks up what’s needed without interference, and so it efficiently becomes muscle memory. The latter player doesn’t improve as fast since the subconscious is confused as to what is supposed to become muscle memory, and so doesn’t learn as fast.

The problem here is there’s a second possibility. The latter player might not improve as fast because he’s confusing the subconscious as to what it should be doing, and so doesn’t develop muscle memory as well or as fast. But that itself might be a side effect – it’s possible that the first player, the one who doesn’t “goof off” in this way, is simply a more focused player, and that’s why he improves faster than the latter, who might simply be less focused and so picks up techniques more slowly and with more difficulty.

As I’ve explained to students many times, there are some things in table tennis where you should be creative, and other things where you should focus on just getting it right. You can be creative with your serve, receive, placement, and various tactics. But in getting the techniques right, you should generally put aside creativity and focus on getting it right until it’s muscle memory. Some, however, simply find this difficult, perhaps due to a lack of patience, and so they throw in weird "experimental" shots, which might be undoing much of their earlier practice. I wonder if there have been studies on this problem in other sports?

Once you have a shot down so you can do essentially do it in your sleep, then you should experiment on possible variations that might be trickier for the opponent to deal with – but only after the shot is pretty much mastered. For example, once you can loop pretty well, and the stroke is pretty much mastered, then you can experiment with shots such as hooking with sidespin, inside-out loops, dummy loops (loops with no spin), and other variations.

Note that this doesn't mean players shouldn't ever "goof off." Some superstar players like Waldner were notorious for sometimes goofing off in practice. But they did so only after they had mastered the basics - usually very early in their careers, as little kids. 

Match Analysis: Ding Ning vs Zhu Yuling Women's Singles Final
Here’s the article.

When Training Kicks In
Here’s the article by Coach Jon.

Ask the Coach
Questions answered at PingSkills.

PingSkills Show #283 – World Championships
Here’s the podcast (41 min), which includes On This Day, Joke of the Week, Tip of the Week, Drill of the Week, Tournament Wrap, Win a PingSkills Bat, Defense, Doubles Serve, Doubles Position, Awkward Grip, and Links.

Fan Zhendong 2017 "Sadness Deep Inside"
Here’s the video (4:47) from EmRatThich. There are many other videos there.

An Hour Before with Zhang Jike
Here’s the article about the preparation by the 2011 and 2013 World Men’s Singles Champion and 2012 Men’s Singles Gold Medalist. (In all, Zhang Jike’s won 7 golds at the Worlds, and 3 at the Olympics.)

2017 World Championships: Xu Xin and Lin Gaoyuan Training
Here’s the video (4:23). Xu (world #3) is penholder on right. Later, in the round before the quarters, Lin would be up 10-5 match point in the seventh – and lose seven in a row. (Here’s the video of that, which I linked to yesterday.)

North Korean Statue in Pyongyang
Here’s the picture. (Here’s the non-Facebook version.)

Table Tennis Postcard
Here’s the card – “It’s not whether you win or lose that counts. It’s whether I win or lose…”

***
Send us your own coaching news!

$4500 Maryland State Championships and Other Tournaments
They are this weekend! I’m running them at MDTTC, with 24 events. Deadline to enter is 7PM on Thursday - though it looks like some events may fill up before that. Mossa Barandao is assisting – he and his team from PongMobile may take over running our tournaments this fall. That way I can focus more on coaching and writing. (Note - while you must be a resident of Maryland to enter Men's and Women's Singles, Open Doubles, or any of the age events, the rating events are open to all.) 

I’ve run over 180 USATT tournaments, going back to the early 1980s. These include the 4-star 1998 Eastern Open (411 entries!), and lots of tournaments at MDTTC since 1992. I also ran dozens of tournaments at the Northern Virginia TTC in the 1980s, and a number of others. (Back in the 1980s I ran them all on paper – no computers, so you had to do each draw by hand. Scary!!!)

In the early 1990s I was assistant tournament director at two U.S. Opens, with Donna Sakai the director. Or was I? Just a few weeks before the first one they named someone from the sponsor – I think it was Dow Corning – as the “honorary” tournament director, and Donna’s title was switched to Operations Director, and me to Assistant Operations Director. (They did the same the following year.) But for months I was Assistant Director for the U.S. Open, and that’s what I’m sticking with!

The 1998 Eastern Open was downright scary to run. I was the director, with Richard Lee tournament president. We were expecting 200 or so entries, and got 411! (We did lots and Lots and LOTS of promotions.) I had to do all the scheduling, and it was very difficult. We ended up setting up tables in racquetball courts in the facility. Things got held up and it fell behind on Saturday afternoon. Heroic efforts by those assisting, including Dennis Taylor and Steve Gibson, kept things going. However, I decided afterwards that running big tournaments simply wasn’t fun, and didn’t run any more 4-star tournaments. The complexity of larger tournaments with more players and more events goes up something like to the square of the increases.

At the upcoming USA Nationals, I won’t be involved in running the tournament – North American Table Tennis does that, with Richard Lee, John Miller, and staff – but I’m involved in the new USATT University, which will have eight seminars there. I’m teaching two of them – one on Intermediate and Advanced Serving, and one on Setting Up and Running a Junior Program. I’ll also assist Stefan Feth in his Advanced Receive seminar, and will likely attend most of the others. Hope to see you all there!

The Best Ping-Pong Serve: Serve Up a Killer Ping-Pong Game
Here’s the article by Greg Letts. Here are many more table tennis articles from ThoughtCo.

Dozens of Table Tennis Interviews, Coaching Articles, and Videos
Here’s the Interview Page from MH Table Tennis! Of course, as linked to previously, he also has his Coaching Page and Video Page, with dozens of items in both.  

Ask the Coach
Questions Answered at PingSkills.

New World Rankings
Here they are after the Worlds, and here are the ITTF articles on the new Men’s Rankings, and on the new Women’s Rankings. (Note that Japanese whiz kid Tomokazu Harimoto, age 13, went from #69 to #39 – though the article at the time I’m reading it mistakenly has him at #59.) Ma Long is world #1 for the 58^th time, and the 28^th month in a row. Ding Ning is world #1 for the 44^th time, and the ninth month in a row.

Oddball: World Championship Weigh-in
Here’s the ITTF article. “The numbers have been crunched and the results are in. Which team heads the weigh-in heading in to the Liebherr 2017 World Table Tennis Championships?”

Timo Boll’s Great Sportsmanship at the 2017 Worlds
Here’s the article by Shashin Shodhan.

What Impact Has Table Tennis Had on Your Life?
Here’s the essay by Nicole Ebreo of Princess Anne High School. (Here’s the non-Facebook version.) “It [ping pong] taught me one very important lesson. It taught me the importance of resilience.”

Think-Move-Achieve Conference for Physical and Health Educators
Here’s the table tennis schedule this Thursday, run by the American Youth Table Tennis Organization, with Ben Nisbet and Sydney Christophe – all three sessions are filled!!!

Wong Chun Ting and Han Ying Head Ultimate Table Tennis Line-up
Here’s the ITTF article on this new professional league in India. Wong (HKG) is world #7 in Men’s, Han world #9 in Women’s.

Harrie and the Epic Table Tennis Journey
Here’s the article from Expert Table Tennis, featuring the progress of player Harrie Austin-Jones.

2017 World Championships: Life of a Player
Here’s the video (2:52).

Xu Xin’s Unreal Comeback against Lin Gaoyuan
Here’s the video (4:22), with the winner advancing to the quarterfinal of Men’s Singles at the Worlds. Lin led 10-5 match point in the seventh. Both are Chinese National Team Members, with Xu #3 in the world, Lin #29.

Footwork in Table Tennis
Here’s the video (31 sec) – “Do you still think that leg work doesn't serve in the table tennis?” That’s Fan Zhendong!

PongUniverse Point of the Week
Here’s the video (48 sec) of this point between England's Alan Cooke and Portugal's Joao Manteiro at the 2005 European Championships.

Ping Pong Trick Shots: Much Better than Dude Perfect
Here’s the hilarious video (4:13)!

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Tip of the Week
Rallying Tactics for Blockers.

World Championships
By now you’ve seen all the results, read all the articles, and watched all the videos (see yesterday’s blog) from the World Championships. Life can now go back to normal!!! Here’s the article on the Men’s Final, Ma Long Retains Title, Most Dramatic Final Ever?, and here’s video of the final (15:06). A few observations:

• The Push Heard Round the World. Fan Zhendong was serving up 9-7 in the seventh. At 9-8 he serves, and Ma Long does a seemingly simple push to the forehand, and Fan is right there, in position to rip it – but instead weakly loops off the end. What happened? The simple-looking push was actually an extremely effective one, outside the corner but short enough so that the table was in Fan’s way, forcing him to adjust. If the push had been longer, Fan would have ripped it; if it had been shorter, he would have flipped it. So Ma found the perfect balance. But this wasn’t the first time Ma used this push tactics. Down 1-7 in the first game he uses it and gets a weak Fan loop, and so he used it effectively throughout the match.
• Tomokazu Harimoto in Training (3:34). Is he the future? Probably – at age 13 he beat world #6 Mizutani and a slew of others to make the quarterfinals of the Worlds. Go 51 seconds in, when he’s on the far side doing forehand loops, and see how he loops with while rotating in a circle? His head and body don’t move forward, always rotating in that circle, so he’s constantly balanced, instantly in position and ready of the next shot. This is how top players mostly loop, when in position. Here’s Ma Long ripping a forehand in the first point of game two, also going in a near perfect circle. It’s called “circling the rod,” where you imagine a rod going through your head from the top. This is why top players can relentlessly attack without backing up. Most players think one loop at a time, and so aren’t ready for a follow-up. (Here’s Harimoto vs. Xu Xin in the Quarterfinals - 7:16. Here he is against Mizutani – 4:12.)
• Hypothetical question that keeps me up late at night: If a player is up match point against the greatest of all time, but flubs three easy shots and blows it, who is the GOAT?

How Ma Long Became World Champion – Analysis of Final Points
Here’s the great analysis by Shashin Shodhan. He also wrote about the Worlds regularly in his daily blog.

USATT’s Coverage of the Worlds
Here’s their news page, with lots of articles on the Worlds, both links to ITTF ones and ones by Matt Hetherington.

Timo Boll on Loss to Ma Long
Here’s the video (4:39) – “He’s a machine!”

The Best 13 Year Old Ever Seen
Here’s the article from Coach Me Table Tennis, on Tomokazu Harimoto.

Sweden's Golden Era Legend - Interview with Jorgen Persson
Here’s the interview. Some great stuff from the 1991 World Men’s Champion!

Tom’s Table Tennis Newsletter
Here’s the new one. It includes links to a number of coaching articles, including one of mine.

Ask the Coach
Questions answered at PingSkills.

Eberhard Schöler Recognised in Düsseldorf
Here’s the ITTF article on the 1969 World Men’s Singles Finalist – the last player to make the final with hardbat (on his backhand). He’s a chopper, and was up 2-0 in the final against Shigeo Itoh of Japan before losing in five. “There were three persons who marked the history of the German Table Tennis: Boll, Rosskopf and Ebby Schöler, who dedicated all his life for table tennis. German table tennis has been lucky to have someone like him and he deserves our all thanks.”

History of U.S. Table Tennis, Volume 19 (1991-1992)
Here's chapter eleven! Or order your own print copies at TimBogganTableTennis.com, as well as Volume 19!

Virginia State Championships
Here’s the write-up and results, by Michael Levene - they were held this past weekend!

Mexico City the Home Basic Umpires Course Proves Equally Successful
Here’s the ITTF article.

And the Vlogs are Back! – Nathan Hsu in China
Here’s the video (6:16), where he mostly reviews the movies he watched during his 14-hour flight to Shanghai, China. Training starts soon!

Beer Pong vs. Ping Pong
Here's yesterday’s “Zits” cartoon!

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Worlds
Due to a sudden last-minute “emergency,” I have to run an errand this morning. (I might write about it tomorrow.) So no blog, and the Tip of the Week will go up tomorrow. But there’s only one thing you should be watching and reading about right now, and that’s the Worlds!!! Here are videos of Men’s Singles from TTInfo. They haven’t yet put up the shortened videos of Women’s Singles – I’ll put them up when they go up. (Shortened means time between points taken out. If you want to watch the complete matches, here's the ITTF video Page.)

• Final – MA Long vs. FAN Zhendong (15:06) - Deuce in the Seventh!!!
• Semifinals - MA Long VS XU Xin (6:33)
• Semifinals - FAN Zhendong VS LEE Sangsu (5:46)
• Quarterfinals - MA Long VS BOLL Timo (6:10)
• Quarterfinals - HARIMOTO Tomokazu VS XU Xin (7:16)
• Quarterfinals - NIWA Koki VS FAN Zhendong (6:45)
• Quarterfinals - JEONG Sangeun VS WONG Chun Ting (5:59)

Service Practice
In preparation for the Serving Seminar I’ll be running at the USA Nationals, I did something a few days ago that I only do about once or twice a year these days – I practiced my serves! I’m retired from tournaments (except for occasional hardbat events at the Nationals and Open, and sometimes doubles), and so practicing my own game just isn’t high on my priorities list. But I did about 30 minutes of serve practice this past weekend, and it paid off.

At my peak I had pretty good serves. I practiced them regularly my first three years (1976-1979, ages 16-19), and from 1979-1981 (ages 19-21), I practiced them 30 minutes/day, six days/week, for two years. I continued practicing them regularly until the early 1990s. (Yes, I didn’t start playing until I was 16 – a very late starter, but I still reached 18^th in the U.S. at my peak.)

I have a huge variety of serves, mostly centered around forehand pendulum serves. My best serves were a variety of short side/top serves, which looked like backspin, and various deep serves, including fast down-the-line, fast no-spin to the middle, and big breaking serves into the backhand. I also had a nice reverse pendulum serve short to the forehand that caused havoc if I used it sparingly. Then there were the backspin/no-spin combos, the forehand tomahawk serve, the windshield wiper serves, and others.

But without practice, they have gradually deteriorated. They still give fits to “weaker” players, but my students face them regularly and so have little problem with them. Until now.

I played a number of practice games with my more advanced students this past week, and my serves were alive! Maybe not as good as they were 25 years ago, but suddenly they were no longer able to catch the subtle racket changes between my side/top and backspin serves, and so their returns shot off the end or to the side, or into the net. My deep serves were shooting at them like torpedoes or jumping like kangaroos. Anyway, I left a trail of frustrated kids behind this past week. I feel very guilty.

So . . . have you been practicing your serves? I have many articles on serving, but here are two of the better ones:

• Ten Steps to a Great Service Game
• Practicing Serves the Productive Way

For more, why not try out one of these books?

• Table Tennis Tips
• More Table Tennis Tips
• Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers

World Championships
The Worlds are going on right now, May 29 – June 5 in Düsseldorf, Germany. Alas, USA is finally out of everything, with Lily Zhang/Wu Yue losing in the quarterfinals of Women’s Doubles to the #3 seeds from China, Chen Meng/Zhu/Yuling, at -12,6,9,5,7. But can you imagine the excitement after they won that first game? Below are some links. (And don’t miss “The Lighter Side of the Worlds” at the end of the blog!)

• Main Page - Live scoring, draws & results, photo galleries, and other info.
• News Page – Lots and Lots of stories!!!
• Videos – Livestreaming and Lots and Lots of videos!!!
• More Worlds Videos from ItTV
• Day 4 Point of the Day (54 sec)
• USA’s Zhang and Wu Progress to Quarterfinal in Dusseldorf.
• Age No Barrier as Harimoto Defeats Mizutani. Yes, the 13-year-old sensation from Japan (world #69) upset his teammate, Jun Mizutani (world #6)! Here’s the match video (6:49, time between points removed). Here’s video of the last point (30 sec) – notice how he steps over to backhand receive from the forehand corner with a banana flip against a short serve, as he and more and more world-class players are doing? Here’s an interview with him (42 sec).
• USA’s Linda Leaf Umpiring at the Worlds (on left) umpiring at the Worlds. (Here’s the non-Facebook version.) She and Deepak Somarapu are the two USA umpires there.
• Men’s Singles (Full Draw) (Last 32)
• Women’s Singles (Full Draw) (Last 32)
• Men’s Doubles (1-32, 33-64) (Last 32)
• Women’s Doubles (1-32, 33-64) (Last 32)
• Mixed Doubles (1-32, 33-64) (Last 32)

China's Grand Slam Table Tennis Sensation - Interview with Ding Ning
Here’s the interview from Matt Hetherington.

Learn How to Counter-Attack (and take your game to the next level)
Here’s the article from Tom Lodziak.

How to Improve Reflexes in Ping Pong
Here’s the article with links to video, from PingPoolShark.

Planning Your Week of Practice
Here’s the article with links to video, from PingSkills.

Ask the Coach
More Questions Answered at PingSkills.

USATT Insider
Here’s the issue that came out Wednesday.

Sid and Nandan at Little Big Shots
Here’s the video (7:36). The show was actually taped last year, but just came out yesterday. They’re great kids – I worked with both of them at the two-week USATT Supercamp last year.

Ping Pong of the Future
Here’s the article. “There are only two annoying things about playing pingpong… setting up the net and keeping score. Smart Net takes care of both in one simplistic solution!”

MrThePortal
Here’s an interesting table tennis shirt. (Here’s the non-Facebook version.) I wondered what the meaning of MrThePortal was and googled it, and discovered it was a youtube site dedicated to table tennis videos!

The Lighter Side of the Worlds

• Watch this Guessing Game Contest (2:08) between Team USA’s Lily Zhang and Wu Yue, and Spain’s Alvaro Robles – warning, lots of giggling involved!
• Team USA Battles It Out . . . on a Mini-Table! (40 sec) That’s Nicholas Tio on the left at the start, Kunal Chodri on the right, and Kanak Jha coming in on the left halfway through.
• Who is the most unluckiest player (1:25) in the TataDoorTricks challenge?

***
Send us your own coaching news!

World Championships
The Worlds are going on right now, May 29 – June 5 in Düsseldorf, Germany. Here are some links.

• Main Page - Live scoring, draws & results, photo galleries, and other info.
• News Page
• Videos
• Live Steaming of Tables 1-8 (at top of ITTF home page)

USA is doing pretty well, especially Lily Zhang! For specifics of our players, see the draws in the Main Page, and do a search for “USA.” Or click on the below. (Note that where it says, for example, “1-32” in the Men’s Singles, that means the top 32 spots in the draw, i.e. the top quarter.)

• Men’s Singles (1-32, 33-64, 65-96, 97-128)
• Women’s Singles (Full Draw) (Last 32)
• Men’s Doubles (1-32, 33-64) (last 32)
• Women’s Doubles (1-32, 33-64) (Last 32)
• Mixed Doubles (1-32, 33-64) (Last 32)

Here are USA Highlights:

• Lily Zhang/Wu Yue – they are into the quarterfinals!!! In the first round they upset the #5 seeded team, Lee Zion/Yang Haeun (KOR), at 3,4,-8,7,11. Then they knocked off Hana Matelova/K. Tomanovska (CZE) at 9,-10,5,-8,2,7. Then they defeated S. Polcanova (AUT)/Mo Zhang (CAN), 11,-6,9,9,15. In the quarters they will face Cheng Meng/Zhu Yuling, the #3 seeds from China, at 1:30 PM on Friday. (That’s 7:30AM Eastern time, or 4:30AM Pacific time.)
• Lily Zhang (world #82) – she upset Sabine Winters (GER, world #39) at -7,-4,7,10,-7,6,6, to reach the final 32 before losing to Li Jie (NED, world #21), 13,-5,4,4,9. Here’s the USATT article and the ITTF article on her.
• Lily Zhang/Kunal Chodri – in the first round of Mixed Doubles they went seven games with the #7 seeded team of Fang Bo (CHN)/Petrissa Solja (GER), and led 3-2 before losing at -9,4,-9,3,-5,2,6.
• Kanak Jha (world #246 at age 16) – he upset Adrian Crisan (world #67) at 8,8,-5,-11,-9,8,9 to reach the Final 64. Here’s the USATT article on this. He will next face Mattias Karlsson (SWE, world #27) at 8:30 PM (2:30 PM Eastern time). He’s in the 65-96 draw. Here are video highlights (3:48) of Kanak’s match against Paul McCreery of Ireland in the preliminaries.

ITTF Election
It’s over – Weikert won re-election over Saive for ITTF president, 118-90. Here’s the USATT article.

Across the Net: Melton Table Tennis
Here’s their new newsletter. It includes a number of interesting essays. One that caught my eye was the “Proposed Rule Changes” on page 3, where they make the same type of argument about hidden serves that I’ve been making, while pointing out some rather . . . interesting rules proposals at the ITTF. Other articles include “The Dividing Line” (about table tennis in the Southern Hemisphere) and “G.O.A.T.” (who is the Greatest Of All Time?). Here’s their archive of past newsletters.

Hopping Footwork and Other Forms of TT Physical Training
Here’s the video (47 sec).

Weird Vectored Ping-Pong Image
Here’s the picture.

***
Send us your own coaching news!