May 7, 2019

Tip of the Week
Playing Short Pips on the Forehand.

Sorry, no regular blog this week. I just went through the most painful 24 hours of my life. I came down with a "minor" toothache last week, but since I had a dentist appointment already for this week - ironically, at 9:40AM today (Tuesday), which is about when I'm writing this - I thought I could wait. But on Sunday it got very, very painful, and I barely made it through the two classes I teach those days.

I discovered that if I swirled room-temperature water over it the pain went away for about 30 seconds. So starting sometime on Sunday night, and until a little before noon on Monday (when I saw the dentist), I literally sat in my lounge chair with cases of water and some big plastic cups, and every 30 seconds or so would take a small mouthful of water, swirl, and spit out into the big cups. I kept that up for about 15 hours straight, never sleeping - I had no choice, it was either that or searing pain. I went through 47 bottles of water, was up for over 40 hours straight, and ate nothing but room-temperature Slimfast breakfast shakes since I couldn't chew anything. (I also popped Ibuprofen like M&Ms, but that didn't help much.)

Anyway, the dentist mostly fixed the problem, but as he warned, the tooth will hurt for a few more days - and he was right. It's not as bad as it was on Sunday and Monday, but it's pretty painful despite the Codeine prescription he gave me. (Today's regular check-up was cancelled - as he predicted, I'd be in no shape for it.) My arm, mouth, and the rest of me are also very, very sore and tired from that 15-hour bottle grabbing and water swirling marathon.

For your weekly news fix, here are a few links:

May 6, 2019

This week's blog will go up tomorrow (Tuesday). I have an incredibly painful toothache and have an "emergency" appointment at noon today. Until this is fixed I won't be doing much of anything. 

April 22, 2019

Tip of the Week
No More Excuses - Develop World-Class Serves with TNT. 

Serving Seminar at Maryland Table Tennis Center
Here's the info flyer for the Serving Seminar I'll be running at MDTTC in two days (Gaithersburg, MD, USA), on Wednesday, April 24, 7-8:30PM - hope to see you there! 100% of all fees will be donated to the HW Global Junior Program at MDTTC. I'm dividing the seminar into two parts - third-ball serves (serves that set up attacks, which should be the majority of your serves) and trick serves (serves designed to win the point directly, if not overused - I'll demonstrate a number of these). There is, of course, overlap between the two, as I'll go over. We already have a bunch of people signed up - hope to see you there! I'll likely stay late to work with players.

2021 World Championships - in Houston, USA!!!
Yep, we won the bid this morning at the ITTF meetings in Budapest, 83-44 over Morocco. This will be for Singles and Doubles, as are the current 2019 World Championships - for roughly the last 20 years they've alternated each year between that and World Team Championships. This is the first regular World Championship ever held in the USA, though we've had others for Veterans, Juniors and various World Cups. (See listing below.)

April 1, 2019

Tip of the Week
Positioning After Serve.

Donald Trump Visits MDTTC
We were all excited to welcome the President of the United States to our club. He played some matches, bragged about how good he was. Here's a picture of him playing. 

ITTF and USATT Rule Changes and Announcements and a Board Brawl
And so this is what happens the minute I leave the USATT Board of Directors? The ITTF
proposed and approved a new rule that says that the umpire, at his discretion, after a great
rally, may award both players a point. This has got to be the single most ridiculous rule
idea ever, and yet has been approved, first by the ITTF, and now by USATT. And so,
literally right after winning an incredible point, your opponent will now also get a point!
Foolishly, when I first heard about the proposal, I assumed it would be voted down,
or perhaps laughed into oblivion, but it passed unanimously. Suppose there is no umpire,
only you and your opponent, and you win a great point - and your opponent applauds and
laughs, and says, "We each get a point!" I just hope they will rethink and revote on this
silly new rule.

March 25, 2019

Tip of the Week
Advanced Sponge but No-So-Fast Blades.

USATT Committee Selection Task Force
Did your eyes glaze over just reading that headline? I'm on the task force, along with Eric Wu and chair Gary Schlager. We had three teleconferences, sometimes joined by USATT board chair Anne Cribbs and USATT attorney Dennis Taylor. The purpose of the task force was to sort through the 45 people who had volunteered for 19 USATT committees and make recommendations for the USATT board on who should chair and be members of each committee. It was a herculean task, made much easier by the herculean efforts of Gary and Dennis, who kept us updated on all the needed info. This weekend the board will meet for two days in the Bay Area in California where they will, among other things, finalize and approve the committees for the next two years.

As noted before, my latest two-year term as coaching chair ended recently, and Pieke Franssen has already been approved as the new coaching chair. I have agreed to stay on the coaching committee as a member, pending the board's approval.

Cary Cup
I'll be coaching at the Cary Cup in North Carolina this next weekend, and so no, I won't be at the USATT board meeting held 3000 miles away. I'll be in coaching four kids. This will actually be my first trip to the Triangle Club there since they were super-sized into the largest club in the country. 

Bojun "Bryan" Zhangliang - Full-time Since Five

Bryan ZhangBy Larry Hodges

Bojun - "Bryan" to most locals - was born in the Hunan Province of China in 1997. When he was three, his dad, a semi-professional table tennis player, gave him a ping-pong ball to play with. He'd throw it against a well over and over. That began his nineteen years - so far - in the world of table tennis.  Later he'd move up to using a racket and a table.

When his dad saw that he had talent, he sent him to the local table tennis club for serious training. From age 5-8 he was training 4-5 hours/day. When he was eight he was chosen by head coach Liu Wen Hua for the Hunan Provincial Team. To join the team, he had to leave his family behind and go out on his own - at age eight. This is surprising to Americans, but is somewhat common in China for those who aspire to athletic heights.

From there on he was a full-time player - though in reality, he had essentially been full-time since age five. During his eight years on the Hunan Provincial Team he was selected to the Chinese Teenage National Team twice (2010 and 2012) and made the "A" Division in 2012. He was a member of the Chinese Super League in 2011 and 2012. Along the way he won a number of local and national titles.

When he was sixteen he was invited to the U.S. to join the Maryland Table Tennis Center as a player/practice partner/coach. And from that point on, as he put it, "My life in the U.S has definitely become more interesting and productive."

When he first arrived, the only English words he knew were "thank you." Coaching was difficult because of the language problem, except when coaching Chinese players, which fortunately made up a lot of his coaching, plus he couldn't really communicate with other players when he trained unless they were Chinese. So he decided that he needed to go to school to learn English. As he put it, "I hope I can contribute to the table tennis field with my playing." His English is now somewhat fluent - and it needs to be, as he hopes to become a U.S. citizen, and maybe represent the U.S. at the Olympics and world competitions.

He now coaches part-time as a volunteer at the Northern Virginia Table Tennis Club, and on weekends at the Maryland Table Tennis Center, where he is one of the coaches for the Talent Development Program, which trains at MDTTC. "I enjoy it very much when I see people are improving with my help." A student of his, Michelle Kang, won the Maryland Regional Hopes Girls' Title in March, 2019.

He says that he has noticed that players in the U.S. do not train efficiently. He said, "I think that Chinese are the best in table tennis not because they are the most talented ones, it is because the way we train that is different from the rest of the world."

He was also a bit out of practice when he first came to the U.S., and acted as a training partner for others at times when he would have preferred to train. And yet, he's won quite titles during his USA years:

  • 2018 Smash Winter Open semifinalist
  • 2018 America Championships 1st
  • 2017 U.S Open Adult Teams semifinalist
  • 2017 Triangle Summer Teams tournament 3rd
  • 2016 Potomac Fall Open 3rd
  • 2016 Cassel’s Giant RR Open 2rd
  • 2015 Butterfly MDTTC Open semifinalist
  • 2015 Virginia State Championships 1st
  • 2015 XIOM Open RR single 1st
  • 2014 Potomac Spring Open semifinalist
  • 2013 Butterfly MDTTC Open semifinalist

Outside of table tennis he likes to go to gym and hiking. He likes outdoor activities, which is ironic for a table tennis player.

What are his plans for the future? "Eventually, I want to open my own table tennis club to help develop table tennis in the USA. I want to bring Chinese table tennis training method to the U.S."

March 18, 2019

Tip of the Week
Challenge an Opponent's Strength.

USATT Election
As I write this, I am a member of the USATT Board of Directors. However, very likely later today I will no longer be on it as they will be counting the ballots in the current election. (I chose not to run for re-election.) The result will be announced on the USATT news page, though I don't know for sure if it will go up today. (I'll link to it directly from here when it goes up.) BREAKING NEWS - Bruce won, 260-208. Congrats to him!

The two candidates in the final runoff are Bruce Liu and Mike Babuin. While both have been sharply critical of USATT in many ways, I'm fine with either of them; I know I can talk to either of them. But that might not be the case for some of the people with USATT - there's going to be some friction involved with either of them. But maybe that's a good thing as it makes us really look at what we're doing.