Tip of the Week
Focus on Performance and Fun to Maximize Your Chances of Winning.

$2700 3-Star Butterfly MDTTC February Open
February 10-11, 2018 • Maryland Table Tennis Center • Gaithersburg, MD
[Here's my write-up of the tournament I ran this past weekend. If not interested, then as usual skip ahead to the many segments afterwards!]

Top-seeded Wu Junhan from New Jersey, rated 2691 (but over 2750 most of last year, with a high of 2788), cruised into the final without losing a game, or even going deuce. As someone on the sidelines said, "He makes it look so easy." Yes he does, but that's why he's 2700. How many players that level make it look hard? Well, maybe Chen Alex Ruichao, the other Open finalist, who goes after every shot in ways that do not look so easy. (Here's a nice picture of the final.)

Alex was also over 2700 for a number of months the last three years, with a high of 2722 before dropping to a likely temporary 2615. The lefty Alex may have the best pure serve and forehand rip game in North America, and you could see much of the match came down to Wu trying to stop that, and when Wu serves, trying to stop Alex from counter-ripping winners. It wasn't easy - here's video of the shot of the Tournament (46 sec, video by Mossa Barandao of PongMobile) - Chen Ruichao's lunging, down-the-line counter-smash in the Open Final against Wu - at 12-all!

Three Coaches Moving In Downstairs
The three MDTTC coaches are moving into my townhouse this morning, and I'm helping them, and doing last-minute clean-ups and fixes. Has there ever been a higher-rated group of movers? Chen Alex Ruichao, Wang Qingliang, Wu Jiacheng, Cheng Yinghua, and Jack Huang? The first three are renting the first two floors of the townhouse I own; I live on the third floor. I'm compiling a list of damages downstairs - the people before left much of it a mess, with everything from damaged windows to broken drawers, so I'm calling a handyman probably today to fix things. So no blog today. Back tomorrow, likely with an aching back. 

Addendum, added Tuesday afternoon: Here's the Tip of the Week, Focus on Performance and Fun to Maximize Your Chances of Winning. (This will go up in tomorrow's blog as well.) 

I'm off today - I'm resting from the MDTTC February Open I ran this past weekend, plus I have a todo list from here to Mars, much of it table tennis stuff. Below is a quick rundown of today's list - fortunately, I have no coaching scheduled for today, "my day off." But here's a new video (9 sec) of a great behind-the-back counter-smash to tide you over.

• USATT Tournament Report - DONE
• Tournament Accounting - DONE
• Tournament Write-up, Results, and Photos (Results and Photos - DONE)
• ITTF Coaching Report for a Coach - DONE
• Create ITTF Hopes Camp Flyer - DONE
• Finalize ITTF Hopes Tournament Flyer - DONE
• Finalize Coaching Committee Vote on Coach of the Year Guidelines - DONE
• Prepare for 7PM USATT Teleconference tonight - DONE
• I own a townhouse with three floors, and live on the top floor. The people who rented the first two floors for the past 4.5 years left this weekend, and today I've got a cleaning crew coming in to clean up the place, and then three coaches from MDTTC move in tomorrow - Wang Qingliang, Chen Alex Ruichao, and Wu Jiacheng. So I have to get everything ready for them. - DONE
• Change locks on doors - DONE
• Fix broken doorbell or get new one - DONE
• New cable arrangement with Comcast - DONE

See you on Tuesday!

Tournament Prep for Butterfly MDTTC February Open This Weekend
I'm running the Butterfly MDTTC February Open this weekend at my club, the Maryland Table Tennis Center. We'll have about 80 players in the eleven events.

MDTTC normally has 16 tables set up, about half full courts, the others smaller courts. For tournaments, we use eight full-sized courts, with the full-time coaches using the others throughout the tournament. With the tournament set-up the coaches have six tables that they'll be coaching on throughout the tournament, which is actually a strain since we have ten full-time coaches - but I'm one of them and won't be coaching, and another is out of town. After lunch some of them stop coaching as they are playing in the Open. (We sometimes use some of those tables in the afternoon.)

I run the tournaments on Omnipong. It's great for running tournaments, very user friendly, and the creator, Craig Krum, is very helpful when problems arise.

We ran into a potentially serious problem with this tournament. I'd made some changes to the time schedule in December, but I didn't think to upload the new entry form to Omnipong until about ten days ago. Yesterday I discovered some players had the old version, and so would likely have shown up at the wrong time - either way early, or (worse) way late, and so get defaulted. But Omnipong has a feature that allows me to email the players, so yesterday I emailed everyone about the entry form, making sure everyone had the correct one. Problem averted.

Illegal Hidden Serves: Letter to the ITTF

Two years ago I had an email with a pair of ITTF officials over fixing the problem with hidden serves. Both said they were working on it, but nothing so far as happened. So yesterday I sent them the following email. If nothing happens, I may once again go to the USATT Board on this. Previously I went to the Board and asked them vote to ask our Umpires and Referees Committee (then the Officials Committee) to enforce the serving rules as they are written, but it lost 6-1-1 as they didn't want to handicap USA players, since to compete internationally they'd both need their own illegal hidden serves and be able to return them. This time I'd simply ask the Board to send a note to the ITTF, imploring them to take action on this issue. My email below could be the draft of such a note.

Dear [NAMES WITHHELD],

I presume nothing has happened regarding fixing the problem of hidden serves? Coaches still have to go through that uncomfortable routine with their top juniors and parents where we explain that if they want to compete on an equal basis, they'll have to cheat as the top players do by illegally hiding their serves. Nearly every top player obviously hides their serves, and umpires, who cannot really tell if the serves are visible are not, simply do not follow the rules that specify that if they aren't sure whether the serve is legal, they must warn and then fault the player.

How to Change USATT Policy or Ask Questions
People regularly contact me about various USATT policies with their suggestions on what they think we should do. There's nothing wrong with this, as long as they approach it with an open mind - often there are things going on or info that they don't know about. But there's also this mistaken notion that I can single-handedly change things, or even that the USATT Board of Directors (of which I'm a member) would be the ones to make some of these changes. So let's look at how things actually do get done in USATT.

You have to separate the day-to-day operations and policy issues. Day-to-day operations are done by the paid full-time USATT Staff, mostly at USATT headquarters in Colorado Springs, CO. Policy issues are done by the USATT Board of Directors and by USATT Committees. (These latter two groups are unpaid volunteers.) Deciding which is which is key to getting things done, but if you aren't sure, contact the ones you think most likely and ask. There is a large overlap between these issues, and it often evolves. Often the CEO makes policy decisions on issues that involve staff, day-to-day operations, or issues that the Board has given him authority - ultimately, he makes far more decisions than the Board or anyone else. (There is also the USATT Media Team if you have news to report, though most of that would go through Matt Hetherington, USATT Media and Communications Director, who is listed both here and as a Staff person.)

Vintage Film Reels
Back on January 8-9 I flew to USATT headquarters in Colorado Springs to attend a USATT/USOC Meeting on Coaching Education and Certification. (I blogged about it on January 10.) I also wrote about my adventures in the USATT storage area:

"After the meeting Mark [Thompson] took me to the USATT storage area, and I was stunned at all the boxes of vintage stuff – film reels of vintage players from the 1930s like Viktor Barna and Lezlo Bellak; boxes and boxes of VHS tapes from the 1980s, USATT Magazines, program booklets, and so on. It was way too much to go over in the short time I had there. I may discuss having a USATT history person do a visit and spend a day going over it all."

Mark Thompson (USATT Chief Operating Officer) agreed to send the four vintage film reels I found to Scott Gordon, who is USATT's expert on vintage films, in addition to chairing the Classic Table Tennis Committee. (Here's info on both.) Below is what Scott wrote to us yesterday about them, describing the contents of the four film reels.. Scott has also agreed to fly to USATT headquarters later this year to explore the storage area, in particular the many boxes of old VHS tapes.

I finally had a chance to go through and review the reels. I'm so glad that you noticed them and thought to follow up on them, because there were some very pleasant surprises. These are all 16mm, and all in good condition.  I'll describe each reel:

#1 - probably the least interesting is one labeled "Bill Haid", which is just a series of slow-motion demonstrations of basic strokes by some young players.  I don't recognize any of them, and at some point Larry should have a look - he might recognize them.  It's silent.  Presumably it was meant as a teaching aid.  It's labeled "1982" and that looks about right.

Tip of the Week
Speed and Power are Easy with Good Technique, but Good Technique is Difficult.

The Three Types of Backhand Flips
It was another busy weekend of coaching, though not as busy as some weekends - two students were out of town, and with the Superbowl, we didn't have the adult training session. In the Beginning Junior Class we introduced them to pushing, and then the second half it was all footwork drills. At the end, they split into two groups, the older and stronger kids playing up-down tables (games to 11), while the younger ones built huge towers and walls from paper cups, and then we knocked them down with multiball. In the advanced Talent Program I mostly coached serves and fed multiball.

Perhaps the most interesting session was with a player who wanted to attack short backspin balls with his backhand. There are really three types of backhand flips, and he's the type that wants to know about everything, not just the techniques he works on. So I went over with him all three types. Many players and coaches lump the first two types of flips together, but comparing a regular backhand flip to a topspin backhand flip is like comparing a regular drive to a loop - one is light topspin, the other great topspin, so they aren't really the same.

Recent Coaching . . . and Frankenpaddle!
We had week three of the Thursday Beginning Junior Class, with the focus on footwork. There are 14 in the class, ranging in age from about 7 to 12, which I run, assisted by John Hsu and Martin Jezo. We demoed various footwork drills, including forehand-forehand side to side, backhand-backhand side to side, forehand-backhand side to side, and the 2-1 drill. (Backhand from backhand side, forehand from backhand side, forehand from forehand side, repeat.) Then we went into three groups with the players alternating hitting with the coach (live or multiball), and the others hitting among themselves or doing ball pickup.

The last ten minutes were the most disgusting in table tennis history. As I explained to them, I have a pet Saint Bernard (I don't), who slobbers everywhere, so I had gathered all his slobber into a bottle . . . and if they hit the bottle, I had to drink it! Suffice to say, my appeals to common decency ("Friends don't make friends drink dog saliva!") didn't work, and I was forced to take many drinks. Usually I do this with "worm juice," but I'd left my Gatorade behind, and so had to use a regular water bottle.

In another session I was working with an older beginner (under 1000 level) who was having trouble pushing in games - kept popping them up. We figured out the problem - he regularly practiced pushing with me and others, but in games many players his level, while they can push with backspin, can't serve with much backspin. And so he was getting no-spin serves and pushing them as if they had backspin, and so the balls popped up. After warming up his push, we did a simple drill where I serve no-spin, he'd push it back by chopping more down on the ball to keep it down (and where he has to create his own spin, since there's no backspin rebounding off his racket as backspin), and then we'd continue pushing, where he had to adjust to the balls that did have backspin.

Focus on Consistency in Drills
Normally I have four hours of coaching on Wednesday nights, from 5:30-9:30PM. But my 6:30PM student's dad came down sick and couldn't bring her over, and my 7:30 student is out for a month, so I only had two hours. (I brought a book.) The first one was with Todd, age 12.

Todd's improved rapidly this past year, and now has a league rating of just under 1600, though his USATT rating hasn't yet caught up. He loops from both wings, but can be erratic in rallies, especially on the forehand, which sometimes is on, others time not. We did the 2-1 drill, a three-shot sequence where he hits a backhand from the backhand corner; a forehand from the backhand corner; a forehand from the forehand corner; and then repeat. All his shots were supposed to go to my backhand. But he wasn't consistent, and the rallies were sloppy. I was struggling too, as his balls were spraying all over the table. The problem was he was looping his shots too aggressively, faster than he could control. I finally got him to slow it down, focusing on spin, consistency, and above all good technique, and a miracle occurred - suddenly he was super consistent, and the shots were all right where they were supposed to go (meaning I was consistent as well)! So we had lots of great rallies after that. Then I told him pick out some shots and rip his forehand, and he found that very easy - all that good, consistent stroking really warmed up his shots.