Tip of the Week
What to Focus on to Improve.

Things Are About to Get Busy
Life is about to get really, really hectic for the next two months. Yikes! (But don't worry, I plan to continue blogging through most of it.)

Starting this morning I'm running a three-day camp, Mon-Wed, at MDTTC for disabled veterans. This is the third year in a row I've run this. This'll also be the third year in a row that Steve Hochman comes in to help out! (We only have one person signed up for days two and three, so unless get some last-minute signups, we may cancel those days. Meaning I'll only have about three hours of coaching those days.) I'll likely blog about the camp tomorrow.

On Thursday morning USATT Historian Tim Boggan moves in with me so we can do Volume 18 of his History of U.S. Table Tennis. As usual, it'll likely be around 500 pages and 1000 graphics - and I have to lay out all those pages and fix up all the photos. Yikes! (Mal Anderson helps tremendously by scanning all the photos in advance.) We'll be on this for about two weeks, normally starting about 7AM (yikes!) with the slave labor continuing until about 2:30PM, when I leave to do afterschool pickups each day (followed by group and private coaching). 

USATT Date of Birth and Citizenship, Ratings Searches, and Nationals
If you are a USATT member, you should go to USA Table Tennis; click on the Update Profile link (on right, under the "Get Your USATT Merchandise Here" ad); log in; click on "Edit my Info"; and check your Date of Birth and Citizenship. If either needs to be added or corrected, email USATT Membership Director Jon Tayler. And then explore the pages, adding additional info as you choose. If you find any problems – and some of this is still being tested – email Jon. (Note that if you are thinking about giving a false DOB or citizenship – DON'T. You will likely be asked to provide proof at tournaments!)

On a side note, there is a chance that when you click on Update Profile, it'll take you to a page that says, "Sorry, you're not authorized to view this page." If so, click on the Dashboard on top right. They are fixing this problem, but as of this writing I'm still getting that. [UPDATE: As of now, shortly after noon, the link now takes me directly to the Dashboard, so I think this problem is fixed.]

On another side note, there have been numerous database problems with age searches in USATT ratings searches. USATT knows about the problem – I've brought it to their attention approximately ten million times – and they are working on this as well. (There seems to have been a problem I think with the Date of Birth field being filled in with Date Last Played, leading to numerous older players being listed as being under one year of age, and so showing up in all the junior age searches. This is being worked on.)

How Table Tennis Has Changed Since I Started
I started playing 40 years ago in 1976 – and wow has the game changed in the U.S. since then! Here are 21 major changes (actually more, since I've grouped some together).

Yin and Yang – Forehand and Backhand?
I was contemplating how many players favor the backhand on short balls, but the forehand on long ones, and realized it was just Yin and Yang. In Chinese philosophy, "this describes how opposite or contrary forces are actually complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another."

Now look at the symbol for Yin and Yang, which is from the page linked above. (Ignore the two dots – perhaps they represent holes in your game?) Imagine the white is your backhand, the black the forehand. Then when the ball lands short (the top of the picture), you only cover a little of the table with the forehand, while covering most with the backhand – all that white up there. But as you move away, the black area increases while the white decreases, as the forehand coverage goes up while the backhand coverage decreases. Yin and Yang!

I'm sure some of you could write more on the various Yin and Yangs in table tennis. And of course it's not all Yin and Yang – some, like myself, sometimes favor the forehand even on short balls. (I can go both ways – sometimes receiving nearly every short ball with my backhand, other times nearly all with my forehand.)

Tip of the Week
How to Cover a Short Ball to the Forehand.

MDTTC Open House
Here's a great video (4:18) of the Open House at the Maryland Table Tennis Center this past Sunday, created by Ming Li. The event started at noon and ran for three hours, all free. (Here's the Facebook version.) Here are five photos, also by Ming Li. Throughout the event were periodic raffles - and lots and lots of food and refreshments! Here's a rundown:

MDTTC Open House, Balticon, and a Four-Day Weekend!
I'll be mostly away the next four days, mostly at the Balticon Science Fiction Convention, which is Friday through Monday (Memorial Day). However, I'll be back at MDTTC on Sunday (12-3PM) for our Open House, where I'll be doing a demonstration and exhibition; running a Parade of Champions (single elimination, one game to 3 points – you heard that right! – with everyone welcome to participate); doing a trick shot demo (where I teach the 50-foot serve, blowing the ball in the air and over net, backspin serves that bounce back over the net, speed bouncing, playing alone with two paddles, etc.), and a service seminar. I'll be doing some private coaching afterwards.

At Balticon I'm a panelist, and will be doing a reading Saturday night at 8PM (either from my new novel, or one of my short stories). I'll also get to hobnob with fellow SF and fantasy writers, including Guest of Honor George R.R. Martin – who I've met before! Yes, I Know Him!!! (Okay, maybe he'd vaguely recognize me from conventions as that stalker fellow writer he once met.) For you ignorant people scratching your heads and wondering what Martin's rating is and what sponge he uses on his forehand, he's the author of Game of Thrones, now the hit HBO series. He does more kills in a typical chapter than most of you do in your table tennis careers. (I've read all five of the Game of Thrones novels – but they average over 1000 pages, so it's like reading 15 books.) Hopefully they'll sell a bunch of my novel in the dealer's room. 

Rarely Used Hand Signals for Illegal Hidden Serves
Here's the video (5:38), which came out in February. But there's something surreal to me about having signals for hiding the ball (with the arm, the shoulder, and the head), when these are almost never called, no matter how blatantly the player hides the serve.

As I've blogged many times, we have a culture of cheating in our sport, where essentially every major title is won with illegal hidden serves that are done right out in the open, where everyone can see it, and the umpires will not call it. Yes, it's tough to see if a serve is hidden, but that's clearly covered in the serving rules – 2.6.6.1: "If either the umpire or the assistant umpire is not sure about the legality of a service he or she may, on the first occasion in a match, interrupt play and warn the server; but any subsequent service by that player or his or her doubles partner which is not clearly legal shall be considered incorrect."

And in case that's not enough, there's also 2.6.6: "It is the responsibility of the player to serve so that the umpire or the assistant umpire can be satisfied that he or she complies with the requirements of the Laws, and either may decide that a service is incorrect."

Backspin Mania Continues!
Yesterday was quite a site – ten minutes before the scheduled 4-5PM session with two kids there were FIVE of them all on a single table, all practicing and competing to see who could do the most backspin serves that came back into or over the net. This past week it's been a battle to get some of them to do regular practice – they are absolutely backspin crazy. That's all we did from 4-4:30.

When we went to regular practice, guess what they insisted on working on? More backspin. So we did a lot of pushing. (Maybe we're developing a bunch of choppers? Should I explain long pips to them?) I stopped trying to explain that keeping the ball LOW is important – they were more interested in pushing so the ball bounced backwards. Since they ranged from beginner to advanced beginner, and were 7-8 years old, I allowed it – they got great practice learning to graze the ball. (Have trouble creating great spin on your serves? Then learn from the kids, and try to make the ball bounce back into the net! Here's my article Visualize Your Serves and Make Them Do Tricks.)

The youngest, age seven, goes absolutely bonkers whenever he makes a serve where the ball bounces back over the net onto his side – and he can do it about 10% of the time now, which I wouldn't have  believed possible a week ago. At that time, he'd not only never done it, he didn't know what a backspin serve was – and now, one week after learning how to do one, nearly all his serves bounce back into the net! He's rather single-minded about this, as you can guess.

Tip of the Week
Contact Point on the Forehand. (I actually did an entire Tip for this morning, only to discover I'd already done How to Serve to the Backhand Attacking Receiver. After over 270 Tips of the Week, that's the first time I've ever done that.)

Why My Forehand Push Is Much Better Down the Line
Here's something I hadn't really noticed before - my forehand push down the line is pretty good, but crosscourt not so good. Unless I'm chopping, I only forehand push against short balls, mostly when someone serves short to my forehand or drops my serve short there, and I decide not to flip. Off this ball I have a big angle into a righty's forehand - but the very threat of this means opponents automatically cover it. And so what do I almost always do? Fake it crosscourt, and then, at the last second, taking it right off the bounce, I push it down the line into their backhand. And that's what I became used to doing, and so have great control over it. But when I do go crosscourt, as I often do in drills with students, I don't have nearly the same control because I so rarely did it that direction. 

You'd think I would have developed the crosscourt forehand push for playing lefties - but there's a different reason why I didn't. Against lefties who serve short to my forehand I almost always fake a down-the-line flip, and then, at the last second, flip it crosscourt into their backhand - which almost always sets up my forehand against their backhand return. (I was a strong forehand player.) For variation, I drop it short to the lefty's forehand. And so again, I rarely pushed crosscourt. 

Serving Mania
Serving Mania has struck MDTTC! At least with my students. I blogged about this on Wednesday, about two kids who spent an entire one-hour session doing almost nothing but backspin serves (trying to make the ball come back into the net or bounce back over the net). It happened again on Thursday, where two kids (including the 7-year-old I blogged about on Wednesday) spent 40 minutes doing it again. There's getting better and better at it, and get pretty excited when they make the ball jump backwards and over the net.

We have a scoring system: one point if you get the ball to bounce back and hit the net; three points if it bounces back over the net cleanly after one bounce; two points if it bounces back over the net, but nicks the net in either direction, or takes more than once bounce on the far side to come back over the net. Here's a video (78 sec) of Ma Lin demonstrating the "ghost serve, where the backspin pulls the ball back into the net. But the ultimate backspin trick is making it bounce back over the net!

When I do the Trick Shots demo at the MDTTC Open House on May 29 I'm going to demo and teach these "Come Back" serves. It's a fun trick shot, though more advanced players see it coming and either reach forward or go to the side of the table, and smack it in. (I'll also demo and teach the 50-foot serve; blowing the ball so it balances in the air – sideways!; rallying by blowing the ball over the net; speed bouncing on the table; and playing alone with two paddles.