October 9, 2015

Interview with Larry Hodges (hey, that's me!) on Tactics

Here's the podcast (55 min) that came out this morning from Expert Table Tennis. (We taped it last Friday.) Most of the discussion is on tactics, though we touched on other topics as well. Enjoy!!!

Top Junior Shocks World by Serving Legally

[And now for a little "fun," followed by a more serious note at the end, followed by the usual links to coaching and other table tennis items. I'm really frustrated that with lots of big tournaments and various U.S. team trials coming up, once again many of the wins and losses will be decided by the usual hidden serves (not to mention boosting), as we continue to honor those who cheat and cheat those who don't.]

---

An Ace Reporter from the New York Times read on the Internet that in an ongoing tournament a top USA junior had served legally. Astonished, he decided to check into the matter himself. So he hopped on a plane and flew there in time to see the matches. Being a player himself, he knew the rules stated that serves cannot be hidden from an opponent, but of course while all rules are equally important, some are less equal than others.

He soon found the Top Junior, who was 14 and playing Clash of Clans on an iPhone as he waited for his next match. "You were in the quarterfinals of Under 15 Boys," the Ace Reporter said, "and you chose to serve without illegally hiding your serve. For God's sake, why?"

"It just seemed wrong to cheat in such a big match," the Top Junior said, biting his lower lip. He was dressed from head to toe in a sponsor's uniform.

The kid's coach stood nearby, looking up into the sky. "Why me? How can I develop champions if they won't listen to me and cheat like all the others? What am I to do?" He began smacking himself on the forehead.

"But don't you understand that cheating is a good tactic?" asked the Ace Reporter.

The kid stared at his feet. "But isn't it against the rules?" he muttered under his breath.

"True," said the Ace Reporter, contemplating.

The Big-Shot Coach turned white. A passing top player stopped, looking stunned, then shook his head and walked on. Several girls nearby giggled.

"Of course it's against the rules!" cried the Big-Shot Coach. "But not all rules are equal. Since umpires won't call hidden serves, we're all on the honor system. And so when you serve legally, you dishonor your opponents, the umpires, and the spectators who paid good money to see you play your best."

"I'm sorry," the Top Junior said. "I'll cheat next time."

"Thank you," said the Big-Shot Coach. "But there won't be a next time. After this tournament, you're suspended from training for a month. When you're ready to apply yourself and be a champion, you can play again."

The Helpful Umpire who had umpired the quarterfinals wandered over. "I was shocked by the behavior of that kid," he said, shaking his head. "Showing us up like that." He was dressed in the blue blazer and tie of an official umpire, the very image of a professional.

"Technically, wasn't it the other kid who was cheating by hiding his serve?" asked the Ace Reporter.

"Well, sure," said the Helpful Umpire. "Why is that important?"

"But aren't you supposed to call serves that are hidden?"

"I wasn't sure if they were hidden," the Helpful Umpire said, "so I didn't call them."

"But the rules state that if the umpire is not sure about the legality of a serve he shall call the player for the serve."

"But I wasn't sure I wasn't sure," said the Helpful Umpire. "Besides, it's just a rule. What's the big deal?

"Isn't it unfair to the kid who serves legally when you let his opponent cheat?"

The Helpful Umpire shook his head vigorously. "It's not our job to enforce all the rules, just most of them. If he chooses not to cheat, well, he'll never be a champion."

The Distinguished Referee wandered over. He was dressed like the umpire, with a Referee tag on his blazer. "What seems to be the problem?"

"This crazy reporter thinks we should enforce the serving rules," said the Helpful Umpire.

"We are enforcing the serving rules," said the Distinguished Referee. "Most of them. If a player serves a soccer ball instead of a ping-pong ball, he'll get called for it every time. Usually."

"But don't you think all the rules should be enforced?" asked the Ace Reporter.

The Referee and Umpire stared at him for a moment, then began laughing.

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to see if a serve is hidden?" asked the Distinguished Referee.

"Since the players hide the ball so we can't see if they are hiding it, it's impossible to tell if they are hiding it!" said the Helpful Umpire.

"But if you're not sure if the serve is legal, you're supposed to call it," said the Ace Reporter, pretty sure he'd already said this.

The Referee and Umpire began whistling, so the Ace Reporter repeated the question. They only whistled louder.

"Okay, I get it," said the Ace Reporter. "It's a difficult rule to enforce, and umpires are reluctant to call a serve unless they are certain it's illegal. Then perhaps you should consider changing the rules to make it easier to enforce. For example, make the ball visible throughout the serve to the net and its upward extension, or even to the umpires. That would make enforcement much easier."

"Great idea!" said the Distinguished Referee.

"I'm all for it!" said the Helpful Umpire.

"They you'll try to change the rules to fix this problem?"

"Why would we do that?" asked the Distinguished Referee. "If it's a major problem, I'm sure someone else will take care of it."

Just then the Ace Reporter noticed that Under 18 Boys had started. The Top Junior was up against the same player he'd lost to in Under 15 Boys. This time both players cheated throughout; never was a serve to be seen. Since the umpires weren't calling serves, the Top Junior began to use more advanced tactics, such as spinning it out of his hand and spitting on the ball. On the last point of the match the Top Junior cleverly switched balls and served a soccer ball, which the opponent put into the net. The Top Junior won.

"I'm gonna be a champion!" the Top Junior said. "I've learned that to compete, you have to cheat! This is an important life lesson I've learned from this sport."

"I'm so proud of you," said the Big-Shot Coach. "We have taught you well."

The Big-Shot Coach, the Helpful Umpire, the Distinguished Referee, and the Top Junior had a group hug as the song "You're the Best" played in the background. The Top Junior went on to great fame as he won numerous titles until years later when he and hundreds of others were banned for life and stripped of all their titles when they were caught up in a future retroactive cheating investigation where videos of championship matches were studied and all those seen to be cheating were banned for life. Chairing the investigation and giving out the lifetime bans was the absolutely shocked – shocked! – Distinguished Referee.

---

[NOTE – I've blogged about the rampant cheating that goes on in our sport at the higher levels many times, most recently on Sept. 18 and Sept. 25, with the latter including a link to the Net Visibility Rule Proposal to fix the problem of hidden serves. (There's also the problem with boosting – I recently sent the USATT Rules Committee the Racket Testing Rules Proposal that I've also blogged about.) Hopefully the above illustrates the problem without offending the coaches, juniors, umpires, and referees, who are lampooned equally. Many of the quotes used are almost literal quotes from coaches, umpires, and referees. If anyone is offended by this, then they are missing the point. Nothing above is a fraction as offensive as the cheating we are teaching our kids and that dominates the higher levels of our sport. If sports is about sportsmanship, then we are no longer a sport.

I'm tired of hearing kids and parents point out that their role models, the best players in the U.S. and the world, are nearly all cheating, and ask me what they should do. I'm tired of watching our top kids divided into two groups: the majority who have been taught to cheat, and the minority who won't, and as a result lose to players who do cheat. I'm tired of umpires explaining they didn't call the hidden serves because they weren't sure they were hidden, without seeing the irony that their very words meant the serves were illegal. Let's fix the problem.

Most umpires and referees are hard-working and well-meaning. However, there just doesn't seem to be much understanding of the severity of the problem. Since most umpires don't call hidden serves, and few referees push for them to do so, it's not easy for an umpire to make a huge "nuisance" of himself by actually enforcing the rules. And so cheating has become the norm at the higher levels. This is a cultural problem that has to change. It's also easy for officials to give lip service to the problem but not take serious actions about fixing it – which is why the problem hasn't been fixed. Someday we'll look back and wonder, "What were we thinking?"

To any up-and-coming juniors who are reading this, you are likely going to face this problem that our refusal to deal with this problem has inflicted on you. My suggestion – serve legally unless the opponent cheats first, and the umpire won't call it. In that case, the match is no longer being played by the rules of table tennis, and so you are no longer bound by them. I no longer blame players for hiding their serves, but I do blame whoever is the first in a match to do so.

Some think the problem is not the rules, but strictly the umpires and referees who won't enforce the rules, and use that to justify rejecting the Net Visibility Rule proposal. (And that is a major part of the problem.) However, here's my question to you: Do you believe it is easier for an umpire to enforce the hidden service rule when he’s not sure if the ball is hidden, or when he’s sure it has been hidden? The latter would be the case under the Net Visibility Rule.

The rule would also give us a chance to reboot our thinking on hidden serves, since we’d be going to a rule where umpires can clearly see if the ball is hidden from a receiver, and so would call it – just as they usually call it if a player serves out of his hand. They may not call a serve that is borderline hidden from one of the net posts, just as they might not call a 5.5” toss, but it solves the problem of hiding the ball from the receiver, just as the six-inch toss solved the problem with players serving out of their hands. In both cases, it is the extreme cases that would be called – not hiding the ball from a net post or tossing the ball 5.5”, but when the server has obviously broken the rules by hiding his serve from a receiver or serving out of his hand.

I don't plan on blogging about hidden serves every other day, as I seem to be doing sometimes, but it's currently on the radar for USATT and ITTF officials, and we need to convince them both of the severity of the problem and of real solutions that can be passed by the ITTF (and USATT can submit a proposal), whether it be my proposals or some other solution – but the problem must be dealt with. Didn't we learn anything about cheating and looking the other way from the steroids scandals? There's something really wrong when we need to have coaching articles on How to Receive Hidden Serves, one of the most necessary articles that should never have been necessary. I'd rather be blogging about regular coaching issues, as well as upcoming plans on regional associations, leagues, state championship, and coaching programs.]

Marcos Freitas – Forehand Topspin Tutorial

Here's the new coaching video (3:27, in English) from the Portuguese star (world #8 and European Men's Singles Finalist last week).

Importance of Mental Fitness in Table Tennis

Here's the article. "Stay Focused. Learn to deal with tension. Think positive."

Table Tennis School – Training Defensive Chopping

Here's the video (12:50).

Anatomy of a Table Tennis Player

I linked to the article on this yesterday, which linked to this video, but I think it might have gotten lost in the shuffle. I thought it was such an interesting one that I'd link to it again. Here's the video (4:18), where European Champion Dimitrij Ovtcharov discusses the key attributes needed to be the perfect Table Tennis player. 

USATT Membership Program Update

On Tuesday USATT members received this letter from USATT CEO Gordon Kaye regarding new membership levels and rates. (No more rating fees!!!) There's an interesting discussion of it and other issues at the Mytabletennis.net forum, "A good set of deeds by the USATT." (Gordon joined the discussion several times.)

Chinese Nationals

Here are some good articles this from Tabletennista. Xu Xin just won the Men's Singles, Zhu Yuling the Women's Singles.

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.

Top Three Shots from Round One of the Champions League

Here's the video (56 sec), with highlight shots from Tiago Apolonia, Timo Boll, and Wang Yang.

Little Kid on a Robot

Here's the video (41 sec) – pretty good!

The Ultimate Candle Extinguishing Shot

Here's the video (68 sec).

A Little Dinner Plate Pong

Here's the video (41 sec) – it gets better and better! Why don't you try this?

Paddle Collage

Here's the picture.

Color Pong

Choose any color. The google this: [your color] table tennis pictures. Then throw in a few variations, like polkadot or striped. Lots of stuff comes up - have fun!

Non-Table Tennis – Capclave Science Fiction Convention

This weekend I'll be at the annual Capclave Science Fiction Convention in Gaithersburg, Maryland – coincidentally only 1.5 miles from MDTTC! I'll be there Friday night, all day Saturday, and probably Sunday morning. (I have a busy coaching schedule on Sunday afternoon and night.) I'm a panelist, plus I'm doing a reading. My main goals there are to have fun and to promote my novel Sorcerers in Space. (I have flyers and specially made bookmarks to give out.) Here's my Capclave bio, which mentions me once beating someone with an ice cube. If anyone's interested, here's my schedule – feel free to drop by!

10-11 AM SAT – Salon B/C Room – Democracy... IN SPACE!
Panelists: Day Al-Mohamed, Larry Hodges, Alastair Reynolds, Benjamin Rosenbaum (M)
With all these space empires around, why are there so few space democracies? What authors see a future for democracy? Why are there so few democracies in fantasy novels not set in the real world?

12-1 PM SAT – Bethesda Room – The Fantastic Private Investigator
Panelists: Kimberly G. Hargan (M), Bjorn Hesseler, Larry Hodges, Allen Wold
From Asimov's Elijah Baley to Butcher's Harry Dresden, science fiction and fantasy has melded with mysteries. Who are some of the best genre detectives? How do you write a mystery in a fantastic world where the murderer can use magic or high technology to commit the crime or provide an alibi?

3:30-3:55 PM SAT – Frederick Room - Reading
It's time for the annual "Larry Hodges Over-the-Top Humorous Flash Story Reading"! I'll be reading three rather short stories, each about 5-7 minutes long: Manbat, A Meteor Will Kill You in Five Minutes, and Happily and Righteously.

10-11 PM SAT – Bethesda Room – Fiction With A Laugh Track
Panelists: Brenda W. Clough, Andrew Fox, Larry Hodges, Alex Shvartsman (M)
What are the tips and tricks in writing humorous SF and fantasy? What can an author do to avoid the obvious pitfalls, and spot the not-so-obvious ones? How do you maintain a reputation for writing humorous SF or fantasy, and what is the benefit of doing so?

***
Send us your own coaching news!