July 3, 2015

Last Blog Until Tuesday, July 14 (after U.S. Open)

I'm off to the U.S. Open this Sunday, where I'll be coaching and maybe vacationing when I have time. As usual, I don't blog when I'm at major tournaments, so this'll be my last blog until afterwards.

I urge you to browse over the links in yesterday's blog (Thursday, July 2), if you haven't already. Why? I was sick all last week, and so didn't blog from Friday until Thursday – meaning yesterday's blog was packed with links to coaching articles and other items. But it is today's blog that'll be the front page for the next eleven days, and so it'll be seen and read by far more people. (My Friday blogs, which are read Fri-Sun, typically get twice as many reads as my other blogs.) Yesterday's blog had four coaching articles (by Han Xiao, Richard McAfee, Ben Larcombe, and Samson Dubina), plus seven coaching videos (including four "Ask the Coach" from PingSkills), so you don't want to miss those.

2015 US Open – Links

Here are a few – you can follow the action from afar! The Open is in Las Vegas, July 6-11.

2015 U.S. Open – Number of Players

It looks like a record number of entries for this year's U.S. Open, though as usual it's not quite that simple. There are 1065 players entered this year, the most ever, excluding 1990 (where it was held in conjunction with the World Veterans Championships and an International Junior Championship, and had over 2000 total entries), and 2013 (which technically had "only" 914 entries, but was run in conjunction with an ITTF Pro Tour event, where those entries were separate – I was told they had 1085 total).

There's another complication. The only data we have on past U.S. Opens are from the USATT ratings database, and they only run from 1994 to the present, and they only include players who entered in rated events – so players who entered only hardbat, sandpaper, or doubles events are not included. There were no sandpaper events until just a few years ago, and the number of players who entered hardbat but no rated events has always been relatively small, probably less than a dozen. I doubt if the number of doubles-only players is very large either, but I'm not sure. This year there are a lot more of these events, so there might be a larger disparity than usual in the number of players entered and the number of players that are in rated events and so will show up in the USATT ratings database.

So how many entries have we received in the past? Here's a chart I created showing U.S. Open Entries, 1994-2015. The figure for 2015 will have to be adjusted as it currently is listed as 1065, but as noted, that includes those not in rated events, while the figures for all previous ones include only those in rated events. My guess is that it'll end up well over 1000, and way ahead of the previous record of 914 listed for 2013. I've been told that the 1974 and 1975 U.S. Opens also had around 1000 entries and I think it was reported in the USATT Magazine.

2015 U.S. Open – Top Seeds

One thing we do need to work on is attracting more top players. Eventually it's be helpful if we could once again be part of the ITTF World Tour, but that's expensive, meaning we really need a sponsor to do it. Otherwise . . . well, like I said, it's expensive, and without a sponsor means we'd have to cut other items an equal amount, which isn't easy. I'll likely blog about this sometime later, at which time I'll get actual numbers needed, etc.

But we did get lots of players – there are 292 entered in Men's Singles! That's likely a record.

Originally Aruna Quadri was entered and was the top seed in Men's Singles at #45 in the world. But two things happened. First, he dropped to #60 in the world (after being #30 as recently as January). And then, he apparently withdrew. (He's no longer listed as entered – I'll check into why when I get to the Open.)

This leaves us with two men in the top 100 in the world: top-seeded Adrian Crisan of Romania, world #54, followed closely by Bojan Tokic of Slovenia at #60 (tied with Quadri). Interestingly, Crisan would be seeded only #4 by ratings, at 2713, but that rating is from the 2009 U.S. Open and so is six years old. By rating, Tokic is #1 at 2836, followed by Bob Chen (2744), Tao Wenzhang (2714 and the defending champion), and then Crisan.

But also entered are an incredible depth of players in the 2600-2720 range. By rating, the top seeds in Men's Singles have ratings of: 2836, 2744, 2715, 2713, 2709, 2708, 2702, 2700, 2698, 2692, 2689, 2682, 2679, 2677, 2672, 2671, 2670, 2667, 2665, 2661, 2659, 2657, 2642, 2642, 2634, 2631, 2617, 2608, 2606, and 2601. That's exactly 30 over 2600, and then there's another 14 between 2550 and 2600.

In Women's Singles there are also two players in the top 100: Elizabeta Samara of Romania (world #17), and USA's Lily Zhang (#94). The depth there isn't so great, with only two players over 2600 (Yuko Fujii of Japan at 2651, but apparently no world ranking) and Samara (2617), along with six players over 2500, and twelve over 2400. Lily at 2530 is #5 in ratings.

2015 U.S. Open – Biggest/Smallest Events

The events with over 100 entries are, in order of numbers, Men's Singles (292), Under 2100 (276), Under 2250 (275), Under 1950 (210), Under 2000 Tiered Super RR (200), Under 2400 (191), Under 1800 (187), Under 1650 (184), Under 1500 (161), Under 1350 (154), Men's Doubles (139), Junior Boys (134), Under 1200 (118), Under 1850/O18 (118), and Under 21 Men's Singles (111).

Events with small turnouts included all the Paralympic events (four had zero, others ranged from 2-5 entries); Over 80 Women (0), Over 70 Women's Doubles (0), Over 80 Women's Doubles (0); Women's Hardbat (1); Women's Sandpaper (1); Women's Hardbat Doubles (1); and Over 85 (1).

Korean Open

Meanwhile, while we're running the U.S. Open here, there's some little thing called the ITTF World Tour going on, with the Korean Open going on right now. Here's the home page with results, articles, pictures, and video.

All About Tenergy

Part 1 and Part 2 (which is new). (Disclosure: I’m sponsored by Butterfly, and both I and most of my intermediate and advanced students use Tenergy. I use Tenergy 05 black 2.1 on forehand, Tenergy25 red 2.1 on backhand.)

Peak Performance: Learn About the Four Stages of a Training Cycle

Here's the new coaching article by Samson Dubina

When Do You Use Your Best Serve?

Here's the new coaching article by Tom Lodziak.

How to Play Table Tennis in Ten Days

Here's the guide from Expert Table Tennis. Could be a classic beginner's guide!

Navin Kumar – Bionic Man of Table Tennis

Here's the article from Uberpong about Navin – he's one of my students!!! "He is the first Parkinson’s athlete in history to represent the USA in international table tennis competitions as part of the Paralympic Program." He also has a partially mechanical heart.

USATT Insider

Here's the newest issue. It comes out every Wednesday morning.

Six New ITTF Blue Badge Umpires Includes Two from USA

Here's the article. The USA ones are Michael Meier and Kagin Lee.

Even the Greats Miss

Here's video (should go to 71 seconds in) from the Japan Open this past weekend as China's Yan An (world #11, #7 last year) misses against a short lob. Admittedly, the ball had a crazy sidespin that jumped away from him, but it's still funny watching someone that good miss a ball like that.

Around Net Backhand Receive

Here's the weird return at 4:33 of this match between Tristan Flore and Elias Ranefur at the Korean Open.

International Table Tennis

Here's my periodic note (usually every Friday) that you can great international coverage at TableTennista (which especially covers the elite players well) and at the ITTF home page (which does great regional coverage). Butterfly also has a great news page.

More Mike Mezyan Pictures

NOTE - If you are unable to see these pictures, all you have to do is join the Table Tennis Group - it's easy! Here are all the past, present, and (soon) future pictures he's collected. (I pick out his best ones for here - he has more.)

Minion Table Tennis

The Minion Movie is coming July 10. All the younger kids at the club are incredibly excited about this movie – so am I. Why? Because the minions play table tennis!!!

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