I've had a growing stomachache the last couple of days, and this morning I woke up feeling like I swallowed a jackhammer, plus a sore throat. I hope it's not the beginning of the flu. (I was completely healthy my entire 6.5 weeks in Europe and Egypt, so I guess I'm due.) I'm taking today off, and hopefully by tomorrow I'll feel like I only swallowed a few ping-pong balls, and so will be back to blogging. Meanwhile, the Tip of the Week is up: Top Ten Reasons You Might Not Be as Good at Table Tennis as You Could Be.
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-Larry Hodges, Director, TableTennisCoaching.com
Member, USA Table Tennis Hall of Fame & USATT Certified National Coach
Professional Coach at the Maryland Table Tennis Center
Recent TableTennisCoaching.com blog posts
Next Blog Will Be on October 7, but Tips Will Go Up Every Monday
I'll be away until the end of September - see segment below. However, I've written a bunch of Tips of the Week in advance, and so they will continue to go up every Monday while I'm gone.
Tip of the Week
Serving Short. I've done similar articles on specific short serves, but this is a more general article.
What's Your Non-Playing Table Tennis Expertise?
If you are reading this, you are probably a table tennis player, or at least a former player. But there's more to table tennis than just playing. There are other aspects of the game you can do, either because you enjoy doing it, or to help out. So . . . what's Your Non-Playing Table Tennis Expertise? (The links below are for people in the U.S., but others can contact their country's association.)
Tip of the Week
Serving Long. I've done similar articles on specific long serves, but this is a more general article. Next week: Serving Short.
Solution to the Mexican Wall Problem
Let's have a little table tennis fun this morning. The U.S.-Mexico border is 1954 miles long. That's 10,317,120 feet. A table tennis net is six feet long, so it would take 1,719,520 nets to cover it. I did some online checking and the absolute cheapest net I could find was $7.46. But that's retail; we could probably buy them directly from China for $2/net. (That's $1.60 plus a 25% tariff.) So it would cost $3,439,040, or about $3.5 million, to put up a U.S.-Mexico ping-pong net.
We'll make China pay for it. If they don't, we'll threaten to boycott any tournament with a Chinese player. That'll show 'em; they'll back down and pay the $3.5 million.
We'd get umpires and referees to put them up. They are volunteers, right? So we don't have to pay them. Isn't table tennis great?
In my 43 years in table tennis I've never seen a player climb or jump over a ping-pong net. (Well, there is this guy. But this is what usually happens.) Only in tennis, i.e. court table tennis, do people jump over nets, another example of the superiority of our sport. So these 1954 miles of ping-pong nets should make our border 100% secure.
