October 3, 2016

Tip of the Week
Returning Smashes: Reacting and Racket Angles.

Clinton Smashes Trump in Debate
Here’s the cartoon! As you can see, I had a little fun last night – and there’s no question now that she got quite a bump in the polls after the debate. (Here’s my 2016 Election Pong Style cartoon, posted previously.)

Eighteen Private Coaching Sessions in a Day
On Friday, I gave 18 private coaching sessions. You heard that right! Okay, that’s a bit misleading as it was 18 ten-minute sessions, plus two 30-minute group sessions. I was hired by a local business that has gone table tennis crazy to spend four hours at their headquarters. It was a wild afternoon!

They have two tables, both pretty nice ones, though one net is a bit ragged. They were mostly using hardbat and sandpaper rackets, stacked in a box by the table, with a few cheap sponge rackets mixed in. They had a huge quantity of orange 2-star celluloid balls.

My plan was to do a 30-minute group session where I’d introduce them to the sport, and teach the grip, stance, forehand, backhand, and perhaps the push. Then we’d finish with 30 minutes on serving and follow-up questions. In between I’d spend ten minutes with each player, working primarily on forehand and backhand. However, the plans at the start were a bit thwarted as it turned out they had lots and Lots and LOTS of questions! Most were about rules and equipment. They had many house rules, from 7-0 skunks to not being able to score the last point of a game on your own serve – when up game point, the other guy always got to serve. We went through 25 minutes of questions before I even got to teaching and demonstrating the forehand. Fortunately, I had no other coaching planned that day, so I decided to simply stay a bit late to get everything in. So the 30-minute opening session became a 45-minute session. And then began the 18 one-on-one sessions.

They had some seriously decent players, including probably 5-6 who could hit forehand-to-forehand and backhand-to-backhand pretty well, all perhaps in the 800-1200 range. Their best player was a hardbat player with very strong strokes from both sides – he was a tennis player – who would probably give stronger players a run for it except that he’d never really played against spin, and serves, loops, and inverted sponge in general would probably give him problems at first. However, before the day was done he had switched to one of their sponge rackets. He and several others plan to attend MDTTC’s Friday night league this week, so we’ll see how they do.

I went through all 18 players, with a ten-minute timer on each, which took three hours. About 12-14 of the 18 were part of their table tennis craze, with the others joining in for the day and perhaps becoming addicted.

In the closing group session, I went over the serving rules, and then taught them how to do spin serves. After going over the basics of grip, wrist and racket acceleration, and grazing contact, I brought out the soccer-colored balls so they could all practice spinning the ball off their rackets, with the colored balls giving them feedback on their spin.

I then called on volunteers to try to return my serves, and they lined up – and of course I did my usual exhibition spin serve tricks, where I’d serve sidespin, put my racket on the table, and step over to the side where the ball was going to go and catch it. Or I’d beg them not to put the ball in the net as I served backspin, and of course the ball would go straight down. After a bit of this I explained how to return the serves, and they picked it up pretty quickly.

There wasn’t enough time or tables for them all to practice their serves, but a number of them began practicing on the two tables. I showed them how you can have four to a table, with a box of balls in the middle on each side, and a player serving from each corner, so eight players could practice serves on two tables.

There were lots of closing questions. And then I showed them a number of table tennis tricks, starting with the blowing the ball trick. I finished by going to the other side of the office, directly to the side of the table, where I couldn’t even see the table due to the intervening cubicles. After some very careful calculations in my head, I did the 50-foot serve that spins about and hits both sides of the table legally (other than the detail that I’m in front of the end-line’s extension, since I’m directly to the side of the table), and got it on the first try. To do this serve requires not only lots of sidespin, but lots of backspin to pull the ball back after the first bounce. It also takes a lot of energy as that’s a long distance to serve!

At the end of the session they asked if I could come in every three months. So it looks like it’s going to be a recurring event.

LIEBHERR 2016 ITTF Men's World Cup
Saarbrücken, GER, Oct. 1-3
Here’s the home page for the Men’s World Cup, which finishes on Monday. As of this writing, China’s Fan Zhendong had just defeated Sweden’s Kristian Karlsson 4-1 in the semifinals, and Xu Xin defeated Wong Chun Ting 4-1 in the other all-Chinese semifinal. So it’s Fan vs. Xu in the final later today. (Breaking news: Fan wins, 4-1.) 

ESPN2 to Broadcast Final of Seamaster 2016 Women's World Cup of Table Tennis
Here’s the USATT news item. The event takes place in Philadelphia, Oct. 7-9. Here’s ticket info. (I’ll be there on Sunday.)

Werner Schlager Week at Expert Table Tennis
Last week was “Werner Schlager Week” at Expert Table Tennis, with daily articles from the 2003 World Men’s Singles Champion. Below are all five, including the Friday tip that didn’t make my Friday blog.

Tom's Table Tennis Newsletter
Here’s the new issue, with links to numerous coaching articles, including a new one, “Service tactics to win cheap points.”

Why Every Table Tennis Player Should Use Multi-ball Training
Here’s the coaching article from Pong Universe.

Articles by Samson Dubina
Here are three new ones.

How to Do a Multi Ball Training Session
Here’s the video (2:18).

Table Tennis Limbo: How Low Can You Go?
Here’s the article from Coach Jon.

Zhang to Compete in Table Tennis' Women's World Cup
Here’s the article from Palo Alto Online.

Li Xiaoxia Keen on Being Coach
Here’s the ITTF press release.

Weikert Announces His ITTF Presidential Candidacy
Here’s the ITTF press release. You may remember that Jean-Michel Saive also intends to run for ITTF President – here’s his Facebook posting.

New Father Ovtcharov Aiming to Become Men's World Cup Champion
Here’s the ITTF press release.

San-Ei Continue to Tokyo 2020 after Successful Rio 2016 Table Partnership
Here’s the ITTF press release.

Fan Zhendong - The Rising Dragon (Unstoppable Force)
Here’s the video (5:22).

Great Points by Waldner
Here’s the video (2:36).

Doubles Training on a Robot
Here’s the video (51 sec), with a “big” person and a “small” person!

Zhang Jike Training With...a Dog?
Here’s the video (3:32)!

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