Service Practice
In preparation for the Serving Seminar I’ll be running at the USA Nationals, I did something a few days ago that I only do about once or twice a year these days – I practiced my serves! I’m retired from tournaments (except for occasional hardbat events at the Nationals and Open, and sometimes doubles), and so practicing my own game just isn’t high on my priorities list. But I did about 30 minutes of serve practice this past weekend, and it paid off.

At my peak I had pretty good serves. I practiced them regularly my first three years (1976-1979, ages 16-19), and from 1979-1981 (ages 19-21), I practiced them 30 minutes/day, six days/week, for two years. I continued practicing them regularly until the early 1990s. (Yes, I didn’t start playing until I was 16 – a very late starter, but I still reached 18^th in the U.S. at my peak.)

I have a huge variety of serves, mostly centered around forehand pendulum serves. My best serves were a variety of short side/top serves, which looked like backspin, and various deep serves, including fast down-the-line, fast no-spin to the middle, and big breaking serves into the backhand. I also had a nice reverse pendulum serve short to the forehand that caused havoc if I used it sparingly. Then there were the backspin/no-spin combos, the forehand tomahawk serve, the windshield wiper serves, and others.

But without practice, they have gradually deteriorated. They still give fits to “weaker” players, but my students face them regularly and so have little problem with them. Until now.

World Championships
The Worlds are going on right now, May 29 – June 5 in Düsseldorf, Germany. Here are some links.

• Main Page - Live scoring, draws & results, photo galleries, and other info.
• News Page
• Videos
• Live Steaming of Tables 1-8 (at top of ITTF home page)

USA is doing pretty well, especially Lily Zhang! For specifics of our players, see the draws in the Main Page, and do a search for “USA.” Or click on the below. (Note that where it says, for example, “1-32” in the Men’s Singles, that means the top 32 spots in the draw, i.e. the top quarter.)

Tip of the Week
Contact Point on Racket When Serving.

Habits and Homework
One of the kids I coach has a nasty habit of standing up straight, both when receiving and in rallies. You’d think this would be an “easy” habit to break, but no – it’s like the minute he goes out on the table, he forgets what he’s been practicing and he stands up like a giraffe stretching for leaves on a tree. We’ve videotaped him to show him the problem, and he understands it, so that’s not the problem. He also tends to reach for balls rather than move to them, another bad habit that mostly comes from standing up straight. Central to these problems is that he has good ball control and very nice rallying skills, and plays at a high level despite these problems – but he pays for them when he plays stronger players. (He’s about 1700, age 11.) So how to you get someone to break such a seemingly simple bad habit?

We’ve given him homework. Four days a week he is to spend about fifteen minutes shadow-practicing, with four specific exercises assigned, all involving footwork. Staying low and moving are stressed. He’s agreed to do these, and seems enthusiastic, so we’ll see if it works.

His serves aren’t every strong either, so along with the above he’s supposed to practice serves for 15 minutes after doing the shadow-practicing, i.e. 30 minutes total, four days a week. (This is in addition to three private sessions, one group session, and three nights of match play each week.) The good thing here is that at first I told him to practice serves 10 minutes, and he thought he could do 15. I’m too lenient!

He’s splitting his serving practice into three parts: Short spinny serves; long, breaking serves; and doubles serves, since he’ll be playing doubles at the upcoming Nationals. We spent some time yesterday going over the serves he should practice.

NOTE - the Tip of the Week will go up tomorrow.

Prepping for a School Club Tournament
Here’s something I’ve never done before – “dumbed down” my play so a student would be better ready to face such competition at his school! The student, who just started a club at his Middle School, was worried about their grand opening, since they were running a tournament on the first day. Everyone knew he was the big star who trained regularly, but he’d seen some of them play, and despite being about 1900 level, he was somewhere between worried and outright scared of losing to one of these basement players.

The problem was that several of them were very experienced and high-level basement players, who used cheap paddle (i.e. hardbat or slow, dead inverted), and either kept the ball in play with dead balls, or swatted in winners. They also – and most scarily – served fast serves right out of their hands, which of course is illegal, but the student didn’t want to sound like a crybaby on day one by complaining about them.

As long as he has his own racket – which he will – I don’t think there’s any way he would lose to anyone – none of his potential opponents have had training before. There is a long history of experienced tournament players finding themselves in some basement environment where they are forced to use the local cheap sponge/hardbat/sandpaper paddles that they are not used to, against basement “stars” who are, and so losing. Scott Gordon, who chairs the USATT hardbat committee and plays with a hardbat in tournaments (rated about 2000) told me this is why he originally got into hardbat, after losing to some basement player because he had to use the local equipment, and so he learned to play with other surfaces.

NOTE – I’ll be away Fri-Mon at the Baltimore Science Fiction Convention, where I’m on four panels (moderating one), plus a reading and a book signing. (While table tennis coaching and writing are my primary living, I’m also a SF writer with four novels and over 80 short stories sold.) So no blog on Friday or Monday. See you next Tuesday!

USATT University
USATT University is a reality! USATT will be running eight seminars at the upcoming USA Nationals. I’ve argued for about a zillion years that we should have increased programming like this at the Nationals and Open, and some of you may remember that when I ran for the USATT Board, one of the things I wanted to do was set up a “USATT Coaching Academy.” Well, that has morphed into USATT University! Special thanks goes to USATT CEO Gordon Kaye for making it happen, and to USATT staff members Andy Horn and Jon Tayler. Thanks also goes to others who will be teaching these seminars.

I think this is a great opportunity for USA Table Tennis to educate current and prospective coaches and organizers, as well as adding more “glitz” to our major tournaments as a further draw. If you have suggestions for future such panels, let me know.

Descriptions of the eight courses or seminars are on the USATT University flyer. Here’s the short version, in chronological order.

Table Tennis Trick Shots
On Sunday, after running a training session, I gave an impromptu clinic on trick shots, with about a dozen players joining in. Here are twelve of my favorites, with video of some of them. Why not learn a few of these and show off at your club? Let’s have a little fun today.

Backhand Flipping
There was a time when I was at the forefront of backhand receive technique. One of my strengths during my peak years was my ability to consistently backhand flip any short serve, regardless of how low it was or what type of spin, including heavy backspin. It drove many opponents crazy, since they often wanted a push return to attack. It allowed me to force neutral backhand exchanges on my opponent’s serve, while I’d dominate with my attack when I served. Gosh darn it, come to think of it, on paper I must have been the best player in the world!!!

Many-time U.S. team member (and 3-time Men’s Doubles Champion and Men’s Singles Finalist) Han Xiao developed at my club, and we spent probably a thousand hours hitting together. He once said he learned from my backhand receive that you could attack any ball, even a short, low, heavy backspin serve – but he took it to the next level. While my backhand flips had topspin, it was only light topspin, just enough to control the receive. At the higher levels, players could attack them. (Oh, that’s right, that’s why I wasn’t the best player in the world….)

Worldwide there was a technical revolution going on where players were learning the new “backhand banana flip,” which is basically an over-the-table backhand loop against a short serve. The extra topspin makes the shot even more effective – the topspin allows a more consistent aggressive shot, and makes it harder to counter-attack against. Here’s my article on the Backhand Banana Flip, which links to this video of Ma Long (3:25) demonstrating it.

Tip of the Week
Looping to the Forehand, Backhand, and Middle.

Another Brutal Weekend
Sixteen hours of coaching on a weekend is brutal. I can personally attest to this – and as usual, I’m feeling the aftermath on Monday. Okay, it’s brutal for me, but just another couple days at the office for many of my workaholic fellow coaches, who do this six days a week and have this much energy.

What made things worse was a silly sort of mishap on Saturday. After doing five hours of private coaching, we had the Saturday night junior league, 6:30-8:30PM. It’s really sort of a misnomer as it’s a combination of league and coaching. For me, it was a nice break – after standing up for five hours, I got to sit down for most of the first hour, watching and taking notes of our players for future use. But here’s where the silly mishap happened – I stood up. Yes, I was sitting in a chair, and I stood up, and pulled something in my left leg. Really.

So I hobbled about for a while, and then we finished the session with doubles. Surprise – to even things out, they put me down for doubles with one of the players! I had neglected to mention to them that I’d hurt my leg. I decided I could do it, so went out and played – and of course aggravated it a bit. (Add the fact that I had no warm up, and let’s just say it took me a game or two to get going, and then it was hobble and loop.)

So on Sunday, where I had even longer hours, I found myself favoring the leg – which led to me straining my back. Yes, that’s how it starts – one injury leads to another. I went through most of the day okay, but toward the end I almost brought in another coach to substitute. However, I made it to the end, which fortunately ended with 4.5 hours of group sessions (so I could hobble about without having to run down balls).

ITTF Election - Saive and Sharara vs. Weikert?
Here’s the article. Now it can be told!!! Until now, nearly everyone assumed that former ITTF President and current ITTF Chairman Adham Sharara was supporting his previous protégé and handpicked successor, current ITTF President Thomas Weikert. However, I’d learned a while back they’d had a falling out. In the upcoming ITTF election, Sharara is backing Jean-Michel Saive against Weikert.

This sort of throws a lot of cold ping-pong balls on many voters’ plans. Some want to get away from the Sharara years, and so opposed Weikert, thinking he was a continuation of that – and that a vote for Saive was a vote against both Sharara and Weikert. And if you like what’s happened during these years, which way do you vote to continue it?

In fairness to Saive, we have no idea how close he is to Sharara, and he might not have any control over who is supporting him. If elected, hopefully he'll be a fresh face who will take table tennis to the next level. Or perhaps Weikert will do so. 

The election will take place at the Worlds at the end of May. All ITTF member nations will vote anonymously, including USA. Note that the USATT CEO will make the final decision on who USATT votes for – I blogged about this on April 20 (see second segment). I'm told the election is looking to be very close. 

82 Forehands
Yesterday I was coaching an 8-year-old girl who’s a relative beginner. In our last session we had set a goal of hitting 50 forehands in a row (live, not multiball), but despite spending 20 minutes on the quest, she wasn’t able to do it, though she got 43 one time. We tried again yesterday, and made it past 20 a few times, but couldn’t break 30. (She did manage to get 54 backhands in a row.)

The problem was obvious – she’d get nervous and try to consciously guide her stroke rather than let her subconscious – i.e. muscle memory – guide the shot. So I made it my goal to fix that. As is well known at the club, I keep a bag of candy in my bag (Jolly Ranchers) which I give out as rewards. So while hitting with her I asked her about her favorite flavor. The discussion continued, branching off into gummy worms and chocolate, and various foods she liked. Meanwhile, she completely forgot about the forehands, which she continued to do mindlessly (i.e. subconsciously) as we chatted. When she finally missed one, I asked her how many she thought she’d hit in a row. She guessed 15! Actually, she did 82 in a row. And was quite excited!!!

Next week we’ll go for 100. We’ll probably set aside about 20 minutes of the 60-min sessions for this, if necessary, and perhaps we’ll discuss her other interests – soccer, basketball, and dancing. She’s working hard as she wants to get into the Talent Development Program at MDTTC, with tryouts in August. Besides working on forehand and backhand, we do pushing, serves, and footwork. Her backhand push is coming around – yesterday she pushed one that bounced backward on my table! – and yesterday I introduced her to the forehand push. I think next week I might introduce her to blocking, and see if she can block my (as I’ll explain it) unbelievably powerful forehand loop.