Junior Hamburger Incentives

A few days ago I promised Crystal Wang and Nathan Hsu that I'd eat a cheeseburger if she won Women's Singles at the Nationals or if he made the Junior Boys' Team.  Doesn't seem like much of an incentive, does it? Here's the story of my 33-year hamburger estrangement.

In 1980, when I was 20, I was living in Wilson, North Carolina, training every day at the Butterfly Table Tennis Center. My highest rating achieved at the time was 1954, but I'd been stuck at around 1850 for the past two years. I entered four events in the North Carolina Open - Open Singles, Open Doubles (with Tom Poston), Under 2100, and Under 22. I wasn't seeded in Open Singles, and was one of the lower seeds in the other events.

After pulling off an early-round upset I ate a quarter pounder with cheese from the McDonalds down the street. When I pulled off another upset, I had another. Every time I pulled off an upset I ate another. (I was notorious in those days for my appetite.) We'll now jump all the way to the final of Open Singles. At this point, here is the situation:

Tip of the Week

Tournament Toughness. (Also covered is the question that's been raised a lot over the years: Should a player play a rating event if he's eligible but who has improved beyond the rating event cutoff?

Coaching Darren O'Day

On Friday last week I had a 90-minute coaching session with Baltimore Orioles pitcher Darren O'Day at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. He's a 6'4" submarining reliever who had a 2.18 ERA in 68 games last year (the best record of any Oriole pitcher), a 2.28 ERA the year before in 69 games, and a lifetime record of 20-9 with a 2.62 ERA. These are great stats! (That is why he makes $3.2 million/year.)

Readers of this blog know that on May 13 I coached Orioles shortstop JJ Hardy and former centerfielder and current Vice President of Baseball Operations Brady Anderson, and that on August 21 I took four of our players to the Orioles clubhouse (they have a table) where we did a demo and played them for three hours. Here's a video (1:19) made of the visit at Orioles.com, and here's another video (5:28) played on Orioles Extra TV. Here's a group picture.

While at their clubhouse, several players asked for my business card for future lessons. (Even Chris Davis asked for one.) And so, out of the blue, I got an email from Darren last week asking for lessons. The session was from 1:00-2:30 PM on Friday. Local schools were closed that day for some teacher meeting, and so we were running a mini-camp - and so a number of our junior players were around to watch.

Another Oriole Takes Lessons

Okay, cat's out of the bag (or Oriole is out of the nest?), since most of the local table tennis juniors now know. The Baltimore Oriole baseball player I blogged about yesterday that I'm coaching is Darren O'Day, the 6'4" submarining $3.2 million/year relief pitcher with a lifetime 20-9 record and 2.62 ERA. Last year in 68 games he had a 2.18 ERA, the best of the O's relief pitchers. I hit with him some in August. I'm coaching him later today; afterwards he's hitting with our local kids, who are out of school today (some teachers meeting) and so doing a one-day training session (10AM-6PM).

I did find it interesting how fast these Oriole players pick up the sport. As noted yesterday, of the 25 Orioles, about half are at least 1200, the result of non-stop competitive play in their clubhouse. Surprisingly, most have decent technique - they copied much of it from JJ Hardy and Brady Anderson, who play 1800+ level. The lefty Brady actually has the best technique, running around attacking with his forehand, and not a bad backhand either. JJ has a nice counter-hitting game, but tends to point his racket up when he strokes - but it gives him an excellent blocking game, and he can smash as well, along with a surprisingly spinny forehand pendulum serve, made even more effective because he does it from his forehand side, which almost nobody does in "real" table tennis - except me, who does it in close matches as a variation. (Why don't you?)

Scream Halloween

Learning to Return Fast Deep Serves

Many players have trouble with them. How do you learn to return them? By practicing against them! I have a student, Doug, who was having trouble with them, especially when served to a certain spot I won't name since he may have to play some of my readers. So yesterday we played games where I started each rally off with a straight fast, deep topspin serve, and where I had only one shot to win the point. At the start he was horrible, missing the serve over and over. But guess what? Practice does make perfect (or at least better), and he improved and eventually won. (It's not easy trying to win on one shot when the opponent is looping your deep serve over and over!)

Now I wasn't using my best fast-breaking sidespin serves or the sometimes almost unreturnable dead ones, but few players have those serves except at the higher levels. But I'm going to press Doug on this, and soon he'll be facing these nightmares - and if history repeats, he'll get used to them.

I do a similar thing with other students. Sameer had trouble with a player's deep sidespin serve to his backhand in a tournament, so we played games where all I did was serve that serve. When he got used to it, I started throwing two variations at him and later more. Now he's comfortable with the serve when he sees it coming, and reacts to it pretty well even when I vary the serve.

One of our top juniors had fits with certain short serves to his forehand. So we played matches where I gave him that serve over and Over and OVER. Soon he was flipping it all over the table and I had to practically retire that serve against him in matches. Yes, my goal is to teach all my students to return all my serves so that soon they'll all be beating me.

It always amazes me that players win or lose more on serve and receive than anything else, and yet few actually practice these things systematically.

Table Tennis is a Dangerous Sport

How many other sports features killing and smashing and chopping? But that's not what I'm writing about. I'm writing about arm and knee problems, illnesses, and concussions.

Recently my students and I have been coming down sick or injured. I've blogged about my recent arm and knee problems (now all better, for now). I normally have four hours of coaching on Wednesday nights. But two students will miss tonight. Daniel, age 8, hurt his arm a week ago (did he catch it from me?), and seems to have aggravated it. He saw a doctor, and his arm is now in a sling - no table tennis for at least two weeks. Matt, 12, accidentally got hit in the head by a door (!), and has concussion symptoms. He said he won't know for sure if he has a concussion until next week (he's seeing a specialist), but can't do any sports activities for a week. I've had a couple other students miss sessions over the last few weeks because of illness.

On a more serious note, knee problems in table tennis often come from playing on cement floors. MDTTC had cement floors its first 12-15 years or so, and toward the end I was having severe knee problems and had to wear a knee brace. After going to the red cushioned flooring, I had zero problems until eleven days ago, when I simply pushed off the foot wrong while stepping around to forehand loop, but that's mostly better now. Knee braces are excellent in preventing further injury. They not only keep the knee warm, but keep the injured part pressed together, so it doesn't injure further if you don't overdo it.

Tip of the Week

Start Drills with a Serve.

Butterfly South Shore Open

It was an exhausting weekend, but so is every tournament I coach at. There's no question - coaching is far more tiring then playing. Seriously!!!

Here are results and pictures. I didn't get to see much of the tournament since I was busy coaching.

I traveled to and from the tournament with Nathan Hsu (17) and his mom, Wen; Crystal Wang (11) and her dad, Quandou; and Derek Nie (12) and his mom, Jenny. (Derek and his mom traveled separately going out, but were on our flight coming back. Roy Ke, 14, another top junior from my club (MDTTC) also went but traveled separately.) We flew to Chicago, and then rented a car to drive to South Shore, about 45 minutes away. We arrived at the playing hall (Lincoln Center Fieldhouse in Highland, IN) around 8PM on Friday night, just after they'd closed the gym. We found an open door and were able to look over the place and survey the draws before they shooed us out.

Crystal, rated 2267, was top seed in all three junior events she was in - 13 & Under, 15 & Under, and 18 & Under - and she swept all three events without losing a game to anyone, capturing $1700 in prize money, care of the Nate Wasserman Junior Championships. She played Anushka Oak (13, rated 2091) in all three finals.

No Blog or Tip Today

I returned from the South Shore Open in Indiana at 1:30 AM this morning, and because I had to take care of some things I didn't get to bed until after 4AM. So no blog today, and the Tip of the Week will go up tomorrow. But for diehards who need something, here's video (1:05) of the rally of the tournament at the Men's World Cup, with Vladimir Samsonov lobbing down Xu Xin.

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Back Foot on Forehands

I began to write a blog entry about how the back foot positioning on forehands has evolved at the higher levels from being back to mostly being parallel to the table in the modern game, where it's not just power, but speed of power that's paramount - and so there's no time to bring that foot back. Then I realized it should be a Tip of the Week for Monday.

South Shore Open

I'm off to the 4-star South Shore Open in Indiana right after lunch today, where I'll be coaching MDTTC juniors Nathan Hsu, Derek Nie, and Crystal Wang. (Also going from MDTTC: Roy Ke, along with coach/practice partner Dong "Steve" Yiming.) There are 214 players entered. I've got my coaching notes printed out, a list of things to bring (I pack right after I finish the blog), and I think the kids are ready. There's a lot of prize money in the Wasserman junior events! But as far as we're concerned, it's just another day of matches at the club. Right?

USATT Tips of the Day

USATT is still going through the 171 Tips of the Week I wrote for them from 1999-2003, putting one up each day. Here are the Tips they've put up. Below are the Tips from the past seven days.

Serve, Receive, or Side?

In this week's Tip of the Week (which goes up every Monday), I wrote about "Should You Choose Serve, Receive, or Side at the Start of a Match?" Here are some examples from real tournament experiences.

I almost always give away the serve, for the reasons given in the Tip. I want to be serving at the end of the first, third, and fifth games, where there's pressure and where I can pull out my trickiest serving combos, based on what I've learned in the points played so far. I'd rather let the other guy serve first so I can get into the match a bit more (even if it's only two points) before I serve. But there are exceptions.

When I play an all-out hitter, especially a pips-out penholder, I often keep the serve, especially if the player seems the nervous type. High-risk players like that need a lot of confidence to go for their shots, so don't give it to them. An example was Ron Lilly, a top pips-out penhold hitter from the 1980s and 1990s who was sometimes rated over 2300. When he was fearless in his hitting his level skyrocketed. But when he fell behind he tended to play safer, and then he'd fall further behind. So my goal against him was always to build up a lead early. This not only meant serving first, but it meant throwing every trick serve I could right from the start rather than holding back on anything for later. I did the same thing against Lim Ming Chui, another pips-out hitter.

Knee Update

I gave a 1.5 hour coaching session yesterday, but could only hobble around, and ended up doing multiball or serve practice for over half the session. As I blogged on Monday, I injured the right knee on Saturday. So I've had to cancel all my coaching tonight - three hours. (Every other week I have four hours on Wednesday nights, but this was an "off" Wednesday.) Coach Raghu is subbing for one of the hours, while the other two are taking the week off. (One is having arm problems and could use the rest.)

Coaching is one of those professions where you HAVE to stay healthy or you run into serious problems. Some remember all the back problems I had in 2011; I overcame that with a lot of stretching and specialized weight training. Then, other than a cold or two, I was healthy for two years. A few weeks ago I had to take most of a week off with arm problems. And now this.

For most of our 21 years, MDTTC had cement floors. This has no give, and so led to knee problems for me (and others) during the late 90s and early 2000s. Then, about 6-7 years ago, we went to the soft red flooring that's so popular at professional clubs and major tournaments. Since then I've had no knee problems until now. This injury wasn't because of the floor, however; I just put weight on it wrong.

Lefties at the 2013 LIEBHERR Men's World Cup