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July 15, 2024

Larry Hodges — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 12:47:29 +0000

July 15, 2024

Next Blog Will Be Aug. 26, 2024
I was called for jury duty today (leaving shortly), and I’m traveling almost non-stop for the next five weeks. So, I’m putting my blog on hold until I return. HOWEVER – the Tip of the Week will still go up every Monday – I’ve written them through August, and have others outlined for September. Here is this week’s Tip of the Week, as well as last week’s, since I was also out of town and didn’t blog that week.

On a side note, my (non-TT) story, “The Annual Albert Einstein Race to the End of Time,” went up last week at Flash Fiction Magazine! Highly competitive trillionaires race expensive timecars to the end of time – but when one of them is impatiently sidetracked on a wrong timeline to the past as other racers pull ahead, he learns a valuable lesson. And while I’m gone, don’t forget to browse and maybe a few of my table tennis books!

Larry Hodges Mon, 07/15/2024 - 13:47

July 1, 2024

Larry Hodges — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 17:01:36 +0000

July 1, 2024

Next Blog
Next blog will be ~~July 15~~ Aug. 26, since I’ll be out of town ~~next Monday~~ for most of the next five weeks.

Tip of the Week
Should You Guard Against the Long or Short Serve?

Illegal Chair of the Board
It’s now been 511 days (73 weeks) since USATT elected Richard Char to an illegal third term as chair of the USATT board on Feb. 6, 2023. Here’s my email to the USATT Board in February on the matter. I also blogged about it on Feb. 12, 2024 and Feb. 19, 2024, where I also wrote about other abuses of power.

The key issue is simple. The bylaws say a chair cannot serve more than two consecutive full terms. It defines a full term as any term over one year. The current chair became chair of the board on June 1, 2020, and continued as chair until the next election, on Dec. 6, 2021, 18 months later. Since 18 months is more than a year, that’s a full term, with his second term starting on Dec. 6, 2021.

As explained in the email, in the Dec. 6, 2021 election, the board voted to make the election “effective as of Jan. 1, 2021,” eleven months earlier, so that the chair, who had already served a full term, could claim that he had not served a full term – thereby creating the fiction that his first full term started seven months after it actually began. But the bylaws are specific – 8.3: “The Chair shall hold office until the Chair’s successor is elected and qualified.” (The successor includes himself if reelected.) That election took place on Dec. 6, 2021, after 18 months on the board – a full term. (This is in addition to three months as chair of the Interim board.) He then served a second full term, which Char claims was his first, and then was elected to an illegal third term on Feb. 6, 2023.

A little clarification. They held the election on Feb. 6, 2023 to continue the fiction that his first full term had started on Jan. 1, 2021; in reality, his second term would have ended on Dec. 6, 2023. But by holding that election, his second term was from Dec. 6, 2021 to Feb. 6, 2023, which is 14 months, and since that’s over a year, it’s a full term.

Here’s an even simpler way of looking at this. According to the bylaws, a chair stays chair until the next election for chair. It doesn’t say anything about “effective as of” dates; it says until the next election, and no vote of the board can change that unless they change the bylaws. Char was chair continuously from June 1, 2020 to Dec. 6, 2021. That’s a full term. He was chair from Dec. 6, 2021 until they held an election on Feb. 6, 2023. That’s a second full term. He was then elected to an illegal third term on Feb. 6, 2023.

As I wrote in the email, it’s likely that some board members did not understand the implications of the wording at the time. The USATT lawyers, who were brought in by the CEO (who backs the chair) essentially represent the CEO and chair (instead of the whole board) and argue their case to the board instead of apprising the board of the actual situation. That’s an ongoing problem that needs to change. (The previous USATT lawyers represented the whole board and apprised them of the actual situation rather than just argue the case for the CEO or chair.) Whenever I confront board members about these bylaw violations and other issues, they invariable say some variation of, “We’re just doing what the lawyers told us to do.”

History will not look fondly on this chair and a majority of the current board that has gone along with these shenanigans, the lawyers who rationalized them, or the CEO who wrote an email supporting this. Neither will voters in the USATT elections this Fall. (Plus, of course, the CEO shouldn’t be involved in decisions about who chairs the very group she reports to.)

USATT Board Member Denied Access to USATT Financials
USATT Board member Thomas Hu, who was elected to the board by the membership and has an MBA, said he didn’t understand something in the budget during the budget meeting late in 2023, including the formulas and the assumptions that went into creating the budget. He asked for the detailed financials. Response? On the recommendation of the USATT lawyer (brought in by the CEO who oversees the budget in question), the board voted that Thomas had a “potential conflict of interest” because of his 1/3 ownership of PongSpace (an organization devoted to promoting table tennis) and his position as CEO of AYTTO since 2017 (a non-profit devoted to promoting youth table tennis), and he was denied access to detailed financials.

I’ve been in the sport since 1976 and this is the first time in their history that I know of where a USATT board member was not allowed to see the full USATT financials. So, do you think this is a matter of finding he had a conflict of interest and then barring him from seeing the financials? Or do you think it was a matter of not wanting him to see the financials and so finding a way to bar him from seeing them? I think the answer is fairly obvious. (Here are the minutes of the Dec. 18, 2023 board meeting – see “Conflict of Interest Determination.”)

By taking this action, they prevented a board member from fulfilling his duties. According to Bylaw 7.2, Board members do the following – bolds are mine:

c. Review and approve USATT’s strategic plan and the annual operating plans, budget, business plans, and corporate performance;

f. Oversee the financial reporting process,

h. Approve capital structure, financial strategies, borrowing commitments, and longrange financial planning;

i. Review and approve financial statements,

n. Monitor USATT’s operational and management performance. At the minimum, the following should be reviewed on an annual basis: i. Key performance indicators; ii. CEO performance; iii. Strategic Plan; iv. Investments and accounts; v. Fundraising strategies and goals;

US Nationals
I’ll be at the US Nationals, July 3-8, in Huntsville, AL. There are only 621 players, a big drop-off from the 810 last year in Fort Worth, TX. Here’s the player listing by rating and by event. As usual, I’ll be coaching (though we have fewer players from my club going this year than normal) and playing a couple of hardbat events, Over 40 and Over 60. I’ll be doing some sightseeing as well. Here’s an article from WHNT in Northern Alabama, Table tennis nationals coming to the Rocket City

I’m doing a scientific experiment this year. I injured my back while warming players up at the Junior Trials a month ago. Since then I haven’t played except for feeding some multiball. So, I’m out of shape, out of practice, and have various nagging injuries (back, shoulder, neck, knees). How will I do? If I win anything, it’s mind over matter.

First Galactic Table Tennis Championships
Here’s the Butterfly news item on it, by Steve Hopkins.

Two Weird Table Tennis Things
I had a weird dream a few nights ago. I was at the US Nationals. Hundreds and hundreds of players and tables, all battling it out . . . except instead of hitting ping-pong balls back and forth, everyone had a box full of bugs and were throwing live bugs across the table at each other!!! No ping-pong paddles, it was more like snowball fight from across the table.

A few weeks ago I made up a joke during a training session. What do you call a stupid table tennis player who sings? A Ding-Dong Ping-Pong Sing-Song. (Okay, you can throw bugs at me now.)

World's Longest Table Tennis Rally
Here’s the video (6 min) from Table Tennis Daily!

Butterfly Training Tips

Forehand Underspin Power Looping (62 sec) with Lingshuai Meng
Backhand Push to Topspin Loop Transition (92 sec) with Rachid El Boubou
Forehand Loop Around the Net Loop (63 sec) with Bob Chen
Forehand & Backhand Attack of Serve (50 sec) with Tiffany Ke
Forehand Loop from Underspin (53 sec) with Hong Lin
Forehand Smash & Footwork (56 sec) Tiffany Ke
Forehand & Backhand Transition (79) with Geovanny Coello
Backhand Counterloop (78 sec) with Rachid El Boubou
FETHOMANIA 10: Drill 1 (42 sec) with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman
FETHOMANIA 10: Drill 4 (46 sec) with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman
FETHOMANIA 10: Drill 5 (38 sec) with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman
(Note – Drills Fethomania Drills 2-3 were linked in last week’s blog.)

New from PongSpace

Speed Up Drill (2:32) with Damien Provost
Yang Xiaoxin's Serve Analysis (1:41)

Use Pre-Point Routines: Mastering Crunch Time Like Timo Boll
Here’s the article by Alan Chu, Ph.D., CMPC.

The Secret to Improving Forehand Push Skills
Here’s the video (4:45) from Ti Long.

Top 3 Most Effective Serves in Table Tennis
Here’s the video (10 min) from Rational Table Tennis Analysis.

New from Table Tennis Daily

Tomokazu Harimoto Evolution (Age 4 - 20) (9:24)
Table Tennis Serve Evolution 1940-2024 (13:20)
0% Sportsmanship but it gets increasingly more disrespectful (4:33)

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

Will China win GOLD in Paris Olympics 2024 (2:57)
MA Long vs LIU Shiwen | Who is better? (27:25)
When Ping Pong Turns into Ping Pong Rage 2024 ! (5:03)
Xu Xin vs Sun Yingsha | Who is better? (22:30)
Amateur Xu Xin version with only forehand (8:05)
Chen Meng vs Fan Zhendong | Who is better? (33:29)
(For Team India) Team China prepares for Paris Olympics 2024 (4:47)

Ask the Coach
Here are the latest questions and answers from PingSkills.

Inspiring Best Points
Here’s the video (9:25) from Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis.

Bowmar Sports Tournament Highlights

Sally Moyland Junior WTT San Francisco (2:26)
Daniel Tran – US Junior Trials Highlights (2:19)

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

Sandbagging in Utah – Part 4
I hope this is the last I have to write or link to about this! Nam Nguyen - Sincerely Apologized - Apology Accepted by Players and Tournament Staff.

Amy Wang Talks Stepping Up from Developing to Professional Level
Here’s the article from JOOLA.

Classic Table Tennis World Cup
Here’s their YouTube page where you can watch all the matches from this past January! Care of the International Classic Table Tennis Federation (ICTTF).

Ping Pong Players Exhibit Superior Brain Structure and Function, Study Finds
Here’s the article from PsyPost.com.

Are Ping Pong Players Better Than The Rest Of Us? Here’s What The Research Says.
Here’s the article from Early Chirp.

ITTF News

Dan and Lloyd on Top of the World After Breaking Longest Table Tennis Rally Record
Here’s the article from Table Tennis England by Paul Stimpson.

Beware of Long Pimples
Here’s where you can buy the shirt at Amazon!

What’s Your Table Tennis Style?
Here’s where you find out! I’m “Tremendous Lobber.”

Teqball Scissors Kick
Here’s the video (13 sec)!

Hey Man Wanna Play Some Ping Pong?
Here’s the cartoon (8 sec)!

10 FUNNY Table Tennis Moments That Will Make You LOL
Here’s the video (5:27) from SF Sports and Entertainment!

Pongfinity vs. Football Goalkeeper
Here’s the video (6:44) from Pongfinity!

Recent Publications
First Galactic Table Tennis Championships (10,000 words) was published a couple weeks ago at New Myths Magazine, as noted in my last two blogs. Aliens from around the galaxy come to Beijing for the championships! Note that I put a permanent link to it in the menu on the left.

My story First Step (6,600 words) was published just today at Abyss & Apex Magazine. Sorry, no table tennis!!! When Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon in 1969, he said, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." But he apparently left out the "a," and so the quote didn't really make sense. It turns out he didn't leave it out. This is the story of what really happened when mankind first landed on the moon, and about the super-slow, high-tech aliens they found there. It’s up to Buzz Aldrin, using perhaps the most unique communication technique ever invented, to save humanity from being burnt to a crisp.

And don’t forget to buy some of my table tennis books! Perhaps the best-selling Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers, or my most recent, Table Tennis Doubles for Champions.

***
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Larry Hodges Mon, 07/01/2024 - 18:01

June 24, 2024

Larry Hodges — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 17:01:09 +0000

June 24, 2024

Tip of the Week
Leave Your Comfort Zone to Develop Strategically.

First Galactic Table Tennis Championships
If you didn’t read it last week, you can still read First Galactic Table Tennis Championships – it’s FREE!!! Aliens from around the galaxy come to Earth for the championship. I had a LOT of fun creating all those aliens, plus there’s lots of intrigue – bribery and blackmail! I also worked in a number of my own experiences into the story, including my infamous quarter-pounders with cheese debacle when I won the 1980 North Carolina Open. Here’s the review at PingSunday.

I have another story that came out on Friday, “Don’t Look!” at the Sci-Phi Journal. And just this morning I sold “Life and Death and Bongo Drums” to the “Ruth and Ann’s Guide to Time Travel” Anthology. (Alas, no table tennis in these latter two.)

Illegal USATT Chair
It’s now been 505 days (72 weeks) since USATT elected Richard Char to an illegal third term as chair of the USATT board on Feb. 6, 2023. I’ve twice emailed the board on this. I blogged about it on Feb. 12, 2024 and Feb. 19, 2024. History will not look fondly on this chair and a majority of the current board that has gone along with it, nor the CEO who wrote an email supporting this. Neither will voters in the USATT elections this Fall. (Plus, of course, the CEO shouldn’t be involved in decisions about who chairs the very group she reports to.) I’ve blogged about various USATT issues quite a bit, and will do so again as the elections approach.

Sandbagging in Utah – Part 3
I wrote about this in my last two blogs, with links to the petition on Change.org and to the Facebook Discussion. Mario has posted an apology on Facebook and says he’s returned the money.

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action!

Major League Table Tennis Announces the Formation of Minor League Table Tennis
Major Pong Head (blog coverage)
Home Page

Butterfly Training Tips

Multi ball Speed Play (57 sec) with Arantxa Cossio Aceves
Backhand, Middle, Backhand, Wide Forehand (62 sec) with Kef Noorani
FETHOMANIA 10: Drill 2 (50 sec) with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman
FETHOMANIA 10: Drill 3 (43 sec) with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman

Yang Xiaoxin's Serve Analysis
Here’s the video (1:4) from PongSpace.

New from Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis

What is the Difference Between ‘Topspin’ and ‘Loop’ in Table Tennis?
Here’s the article by Tom Lodziak.

Illegal Serve - the Biggest Problem in Table Tennis
Here’s the video (10:21) from PingSunday/EmRatThich. (The illegal serve issue doesn’t come up until 1:50.)

Penhold Grip: How To Learn and Practice with the Penhold Grip
Here’s the video (6:15) from Pingispågarna.

Ask the Coach
Here are the latest questions and answers from PingSkills.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

ITTF News

Old Ping-Pong Comic Covers
Here are three that I saw recently.

King’s Comics #34, January, 1939 - Popeye and the Hatching Ping-Pong Ball
The Barker #9, Autumn, 1948 – Not sure what’s going on here
Little Dot #106, 1966 – She gets hit by lots of balls

It’s Only Ping Pong Said the Loser
Here’s where you can buy the shirt or mug at Amazon.

Level 1-10 (India)
Here’s the video (15 min) from Adam Bobrow!

***
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Larry Hodges Mon, 06/24/2024 - 18:01

June 17, 2024

Larry Hodges — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 16:47:21 +0000

June 17, 2024

Tip of the Week
The Surprise Test.

First Galactic Table Tennis Championship
“First Galactic Table Tennis Championships” by Larry Hodges (me!!!) is now online and FREE to read! The 10,000-word novelette, just published by New Myths Magazine, is likely the world’s first science fiction table tennis novelette, with aliens from around the galaxy coming to Beijing for the Galactic Championships.

The story, which takes place about a century in the future, centers around Li Yi, a member of the Chinese National Team and the #1 woman in the world. She has trained long hours since she was a child. But now she faces her greatest challenge – aliens! Table tennis has spread to the galaxy and alien players now dominate the sport. The best are the giraffe-like Ith, with their dominating champion Egrayu. Their ancestors snatched flying insects out of the air for food. Smacking flying ping-pong balls is second nature for them.

But Earth isn't part of the galactic community, not since the cowboy Americans tried colonizing a moon in the Ith home system, which led to a blockade of Earth. The Chinese hope to reopen trade with the galaxy by using "Ping-Pong Diplomacy" – by running the first Galactic Table Tennis Championships in Beijing. Li, her teammate Fan Xin (#1 man in the world), and the American champion *Danny See – a literal cowboy – take on aliens of all shapes and sizes, including the seemingly unbeatable Egrayu, as they battle for the biggest cash prize in table tennis history with Open Singles the only event. But Li is drawn into a corrupt conspiracy that will shake the very foundations of honor and sportsmanship. Plus, there's that problem with the Chinese dumplings…
[*Yes, he’s named after Dan Seemiller, with his permission!]

Some of the events of the story were taken from my actual table tennis experiences. Here’s my Nov. 5, 2013 blog where I wrote about my eating nine quarter pounders with cheese enroute to winning the 1981 North Carolina Open with a massive stomachache – well, poor Li Yi faced a similar problem, but with dumplings!!!

US Nationals and US Open
The Nationals are July 3-8 in Huntsville, Alabama. This will be my 40th Nationals in a row, and the Open in December will be my 40th Open in a row. (The Teams in November will be my 48th in a row!) As usual, I’ll be both coaching and playing in a few hardbat events, though I usually use sponge. I’m only in Over 40 and Over 60 Hardbat. (I’ve won the Over 40 event eight times and Over 60 one time, along with winning Hardbat Singles twice and Hardbat Doubles 14 times.) I debated about whether to enter Hardbat Singles. Let’s just say that I can’t bring myself to say I can’t win the event, but if I were able to say I can’t win the event, then I’d say I can’t win the event.

The number of entries for Huntsville are (predictably) rather low, only 621 entries. Last year, in Forth Worth, they had 810. Presumably, they had a local deal to make up financially for losing nearly 200 entries (or more like 400 if they went back to Las Vegas or Florida), but USATT is supposed to service its members, and that’s a lot of people voting with their feet – and of those going, I’m pretty sure a large majority would also prefer another location.

Perhaps USATT has learned their lesson (one learned over and over in the past but regularly forgotten by whoever is currently in charge) – they are going back to Las Vegas (finally!) for the US Open, Dec. 16-21. Here’s the USATT news item, which came out yesterday, literally the day after entries closed for the Nationals. As at least one person has posted online, perhaps they were worried that some might only be able to afford one such event per year, and may have cancelled Huntsville if they’d known the Open would be in Las Vegas? Who knows. But they’ll likely get close to 1,000 entries in Las Vegas, as they would at this year’s Nationals if it had been held there, or some other vacation spot. Remember when the Open used to be held in Miami or Fort Lauderdale? They’d also probably get 1,000 entries at a place like that. I like the “old days,” when every year the Nationals were in Las Vegas, the Open in Miami or Fort Lauderdale, with the Teams in DC.

Upcoming Travel
I have three major trips coming up – but only the first is table tennis.

July 3-8 – US Nationals in Huntsville, Alabama.
July 19-27 – the annual “The Never-Ending Odyssey” science fiction writing workshop (TNEO) in Manchester, New Hampshire. This is for graduates of the six-week Odyssey Science Fiction Writing Workshop, which I attended in 2006. This will be my 15th TNEO and 12th in a row. (They did the online during Covid.) We critique each other’s work, run “master classes” on SF writing, do readings, and other SF writing-related activities.
Aug. 1-18 – World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, Scotland (Aug. 8-12) and a series of Scottish tours, many of them featuring old castles up to 2,000 years old.
And one other - I just got a jury summons for July 15. Great...

Sandbagging in Utah
I wrote about this a bit in last week’s blog. There’s now a petition on Change.org which they are asking players to sign. (It currently has 101 signatures.) It basically asks the two players to apologize, promise not to do it again, and to return the $2,500 prize money they won. As I wrote last week, Apparently two high-rated players from Las Vegas pretended to be unrated, and entering under different names as unrated players, won lots of prize money in rating events at a charity tournament in Utah. Here’s the Facebook Discussion that I linked to last week.

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action!

Jordan Schlachter Named Chief Business Officer of Major League Table Tennis
Major Pong Head (blog coverage)
Home Page

Paris Olympics: Interview with Table Tennis coach Massimo Costantini on India’s preparations, pimpled rubber and more
Here’s the interview from the Indian Express. Constantini, originally from Italy, coached extensively in the US for a number of years before being hired by the Indian TTA.

Butterfly Training Tips

Pendulum Short Serve (52 sec) Karolayn Maldonado
Backhand Loop from the corner, Backhand Loop (48 sec) Rachid El Boubou
Forehand Loop Underspin to Topspin Transition (65 sec) with Rachid El Boubou
Two Forehand Loops & Footwork (63 sec) with Anav Gupta
Two Backhand Loops, Two Forehand Loops (65 sec) with Anav Gupta
Random Play (1:50) Hanwei Wang
FETHOMANIA 9: Drill 6 (55 sec) from Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

MA Long vs WANG Chuqin | Who is better? (41:37)
Should we ban comeback serve? (2:18)
Fan Zhendong, Felix Lebrun, training at WTT Champions 2024 (1:12:20)
Is Fan Zhendong better than Wang Chuqin | WTT 2024 (11:07)
Home page (news and coaching articles)

New from Ti Long

Increase stability & placement accuracy for the serve (10:19)
A way to help conserve energy after training (5:34)
Improved Heavy Backspin Serve - 3 Levels (6:13)
Improve Forehand Topspin against Backspin with Short Pips (5:13)

New from Pingispågarna

Simplifying the Serve Return with Pips
Here’s the video (4:27) from PongSpace. “If you play with long pips, one of the banes of your existence is when opponents serve long to the pips. Yang Xiaoxin identifies the main criteria for dealing with those pesky serves.”

Ask the Coach
Here are the latest questions and answers from PingSkills.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

Kanak Jha Video Interview: Join Us as We Catch Up with Kanak (22:37)
Support Kanak Jha in Making History at the Paris 2024 Olympics (GoFundMe page)
Calderano Dominates in Slovenia

Two Trip Reports: WTT Korea and Burlingame “A Busy May”
Here are the reports by Sally Moyland.

Kevin Finn “In the Loop”
Here are two table tennis-related articles from technical journals, care of Kevin at Peak Performance Table Tennis. Enjoy!

ITTF News

Ping Pong Periodic Table Funny T-Shirt
Here’s where you can buy the shirt at Amazon!

Headis: Game Combines Table Tennis And Football
Here’s the video (3:02) – this is for real!

Alien Pong
In honor of my story “First Galactic Table Tennis Championships,” here are other aliens playing table tennis!

Alien Day from Table Tennis England (30 sec) – this is great!
Can Mia's table tennis skills save her from an alien known to eat inferior opponents? (3:07)
Argos Aliens Play Table Tennis (29 sec)
Argo Aliens (gif image)
Creepy Green Alien Plays Table Tennis
Four Happy Aliens Play Table Tennis
Alien vs. Predator (1:46)
Alien vs. Predator 1 (gif image)
Alien vs. Predator 2 (gif image)
Alien vs. Predator 3 (gif image)
Alien vs. Predator 4 (still image)
Marvin the Martian (I have this pin)
Human vs. Alien (27 sec)
Alien Pong in the Forest (Mural at Comet Ping Pong Pizza)
Long-armed Martian playing alone
Vulcan Pong
Alien Head Ping-Pong Balls at Amazon
Alien Head Ping-Pong Paddle at Zazzle
Xenos Table Tennis Orbs

***
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Larry Hodges Mon, 06/17/2024 - 17:47

June 10, 2024

Larry Hodges — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 15:17:25 +0000

June 10, 2024

Tip of the Week
Hitting to the Same Spot Twice.

US Nationals Prize Money Cut
Here’s something many of us didn’t notice until Dan Seemiller pointed it out – USATT canceled prize money in Men’s and Women’s Singles at the Nationals for the quarterfinalists. They also aren’t increasing the prize money to keep up with inflation. Here’s the prospectus. For both Men’s and Women’s Singles, it’s 1st $7,000, 2nd $3,500, and 3-4 $1,750. Quarterfinals? Nothing. (They used to have prize money for the Final 16.)

Now we get to the really weird part. Here’s the 2022 prospectus showing the exact same prize money, except with $500 for the quarterfinalists. Here’s the 2023 prospectus also showing the same prize money, but without money for the quarterfinalists. The weird part? I have a copy of the 2023 prospectus that I proofed, and it has $500 prize money for the quarterfinalists. So, when did they make the change? Did they have $500 prize money for the quarterfinalists in 2023? (If you know, contact me.) Either way, USATT seems to be moving backwards on this, both in cutting out the quarterfinal prize money and in not keeping up with inflation. If we are moving forward, or even just treading water, there should at least be small annual increases.

=> UPDATE - SOMETHING HAPPENED - As of Tuesday, the very next day, the $500 quarterfinal prize money is back!!! (USATT didn't tell me, I just went to the prospectus for something else and saw the update. I have a printout of the previous version with no prize money for the quarterfinals of Men's and Women's Singles.)

Ping Pong Leadership by Justin Bookey
Yesterday I read Ping Pong Leadership: 18 Principles to Succeed at Any Table in Business, Sports, and Life. (Available in print and kindle, 266 pages.) I thought it was an excellent way to present leadership skills using table tennis and other examples. The book is perhaps 1/3 table tennis, with the rest using examples of leadership from the worlds of business, government, science, and sports. From the book’s description, “Tens of millions of people worldwide enjoy ping pong on some level. And if you’re looking to enhance your leadership skills, ping pong offers surprisingly relevant lessons for success.”

The book features both Justin’s table tennis experiences and those of a number of prominent table tennis players and coaches, and from lots of successful people from outside the table tennis world, with their stories. There are eighteen chapters featuring eighteen “Pong Principles.” Each chapter ends with “Core Questions to Ask.”

There’s a segment from me in Chapter 3, titled “Pong Principle #3: When Deception is Fair Play” on page 36, called “Flip the Script.” It starts with a quote from “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu: “Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.” The segment is about my once playing a player who was equally good attacking and chopping. As an attacker, it might have been a close match, but back in those days I ate up choppers – and so I spent the entire match faking difficulty with his chopping game, and so convinced him to play defense. He never knew I was carrying him the whole way and he never had a chance chopping.

Others featured include Stellan and Angie Bengtsson, Adam Bobrow, Kanak Jha, Sean O’Neill, Thilina Piyadasa, Vladimir Samsonov, Danny Seemiller, Will Shortz, Amy Wang, Jan-Ove Waldner, and Wei Wang.

Who is Justin and why did he write this book? From the book’s description: “Justin Bookey has spent decades in both worlds. As an Emmy-nominated content creator and strategist, he’s worked with leaders at global companies to accomplish their business goals. As a competitive table tennis player, he’s trained with national and world champions and won medals at the US Open. Those two worlds rarely overlapped—until Bookey realized that the core principles he learned while training to compete at the table also apply to success in business and leadership.”

Weekend Coaching and the Backhand and Windshield-Wiper Serves
It was mostly the usual fundamentals. To quote the Ping Pong Leadership book, "Don't practice until you do it right. Practice until you can't do it wrong." (I will probably turn that into a Tip of the Week.)

I spent some time helping players with their serves. One girl was working on her backhand serve but was facing the table as she did it, serving with just her arm and a short backswing. When doing a backhand serve, you have to rotate sideways to give yourself room to backswing and so you can put your body into the serve, and then rotate into it rather vigorously. I demonstrated – for a time, many decades ago, this was my primary serve until I stopped using it due to shoulder problems. Here’s a tutorial on the backhand serve (7:32) with Craig Bryant.

Then came a blast from the past. One kid was experimenting with the forehand windshield-wiper serve, a relatively rare serve these days but a bit more common way back when. He was trying to do it with a shakehands grip. I showed him how for this serve, it’s better to switch to the Seemiller grip, though you can also do it with the index finger down the middle. (You should change your grip for the large majority of serves. What’s the perfect grip for playing table tennis is rarely the perfect grip for any particular serve. You just change back to your regular grip right after the serve.) The serve was especially made famous by Ricky Seemiller, but many others used it, including me as a variation. The serves allows you to get tremendous sidespin in either direction. The downside is it’s more difficult to get great backspin, though you can learn to get pretty good backspin with practice. Here’s a tutorial on the windshield-wiper serve (2:59) from PingSkills.

Sandbagging in Utah
Apparently two high-rated players from Las Vegas pretended to be unrated, and entering under different names as unrated players, won lots of prize money in rating events at a charity tournament in Utah. Here are two links.

Presentation of the Case by Albert Huang
Facebook Discussion (87 comments and four shares as of this writing)

This reminds me of a similar occurrence way back in the late 1980s. There were two Chinese women with the same name, a 2100 player from California, and a 1000 player from the northeast. The 2100 player flew in and pretended to be the 1000 player in a big 4-star tournament with lots of prize money in the rating events. She won something like six or seven events. But someone took pictures and she was later recognized. It went to the USATT disciplinary committee, which found they had conspired together and split the money. They were given long suspensions.

Improving Table Tennis Forehand Technique Using a Bounce Wall
Here’s the technical journal with this scientific paper – but it’s in Indonesian. You can use Google Translate to see what it says. All I can say is you haven’t made it in life until you’ve been cited five times in an Indonesian technical journal!

Butterfly Training Tips

Forehand Loop from Underspin and Footwork (68 sec) with Daniel Gonzalez
Loop from the corner, Loop from the middle (63 sec) with Rachid El Boubou
Modified Falkenburg (70 sec) with Anav Gupta
Backhand Off the Bounce Looping (59 sec) with Kou Lei
Kids Coaching Clinic Highlights (75 sec) with Oscar Birriel
Forehand Counterlooping (1:46) with Kou Lei
FETHOMANIA 9: Drill 4 (51 sec) with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman
FETHOMANIA 9: Drill 5 (41 sec) with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman

PERFECT WAY To Improve In Table Tennis
Here’s the video (4:02) from Pingispågarna.

New from PongSpace

How to Attack the Serve with Pips (2:25)
Confuse your Opponents with This Service Return (3:16)

Improve Forehand Topspin against Backspin technique
Here’s the video (4:55) from Ti Long.

New from Ping Sunday/EmRatThich

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action!

Home Page
Major Pong Head (blog coverage)

2024 NCTTA Board Elections Voting
Here’s the article. Deadline to vote is this Wednesday at 11:59PM eastern time.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

Junior National Team Member: Isabella Xu (17) Founds North Carolina Youth Table Tennis Association (NCYTTA) to Share the Joy of Table Tennis
Here’s the article.

New from ITTF

Why I Lose At Table Tennis Shirt
Here’s where you can buy it at Amazon!

Adam vs. Toa 3.0
Here’s the video (11:29) from Adam Bobrow!

World's Weirdest Ping Pong Match
Here’s the video (10:42) from Pongfinity! This may be one of the funniest ones ever. I may bring some pillows to one of our junior training sessions and have them do pillow-pong!

***
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Larry Hodges Mon, 06/10/2024 - 16:17

June 3, 2024

Larry Hodges — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 16:37:34 +0000

June 3, 2024

Tips of the Week
I’m including last week’s since I was out of town and didn’t have a blog, and so you might have missed it.

May 27: What to Do in the First Game.
June 3: Down the Line Training.

US Junior Team Trials #2
They were held May 24-27 at the 888 club in Burlingame, CA, just outside San Francisco. Here are complete results. It’s a very nice club and the tournament was well run. I also got to visit the famous Pier 39! USATT uses a two-part junior trials, with the first one held two months ago. Using a point system, they get the final rosters for the teams – here’s the 2024 National Junior Team Rosters.

I was there along with fellow MDTTC coaches Wang Qingliang and Jack Huang to coach the MDTTC juniors. We had some nice results at these Trials. Stanley Hsu came in first in Under 17 and seventh in Under 19. (He’s 15 and has another year of eligibility for Under 17. His rating is now 2499. Combining the two Trials, he was #1 in Under 17 and #6 in Under 19.) Mu Du came in seventh in Under 17, and pulled off some nice rating wins – his new rating is 2423. Ryan Lin came in third in Under 15 – and came within one game of finishing first. (Ryan has been training recently in Taiwan, and had his Taiwanese coach with him. He’ll be returning this Fall to MDTTC in Maryland as he starts high school. His new rating is 2393, not bad for age 14.) Daniel Anteneh made the Final Twelve in Under 11 and is now rated 1891.

As usual, lots of tactical stuff. Here are some highlights.

One player kept getting caught off guard by his opponent’s big breaking serve to the backhand. After the first game I told him to simply assume that serve was coming every time and so prepare for it, even though the opponent only used it about every fourth serve, and to simply react to the other serves. It worked – he began to dominate against the problematic serve, both backhand and forehand looping it, and easily won the match.
One player kept getting rushed on the backhand by quick, aggressive pushes and so kept missing backhand loop. I told him to hold his racket lower so he didn’t have to rush to bring the racket down to backhand loop. It fixed the problem and he won the match.
One player’s opponent served mostly backspin, my player would push to his backhand, and the opponent stepped around and forehand looped over and over. After the first game I told him to take the backspin serve quick off the bounce and mostly push it back quick as wide to the backhand as possible, and get ready to backhand loop. But I also told him to push the first one to the wide forehand. The opponents looped the push to the forehand in for a winner. But guarding against that, and because the pushes were now quick and wide to the backhand, the opponent began to serve and push, and sure enough, my player got to backhand loop over and over, and won the match.
A lot of coaching, especially with junior players, is psychological. I started writing about some of this, but decided the players might not want me to write about it. It’s often the trickiest part of match coaching.

Weekend Coaching and Forehand Flips
I did two sessions, one with the beginning/intermediate juniors and one with the elite (“Select”) juniors. With the intermediates, the focus was (as always) on fundamentals and consistency. I spent some time working with the youngest and newest in the group, age six, where she managed to get 35 forehands in a row, and 20 or more four times. I also worked with her hitting shots down-the-line.

With the advanced group there were a few drills that included flipping short serves. I worked with several on the forehand flip, with the emphasis on setting up as if you are going crosscourt, so opponent has to guard against that, and at the last second turning the wrist back and flipping down the line to the often open backhand.

In terms of technique, modern players are generally ahead of their peers of the past, but forehand flipping is one area where they are often behind. Why? Two reasons. First, looping is so emphasized that beginning players often barely learn to hit regular forehands before switching to looping. This pays off in stronger forehand loops, but they don’t always develop the feel for a regular, flatter forehand drive, which is how you contact the ball with a forehand flip. Second, with the rise of the backhand banana flip, most players focus on that, often using it even against short balls even to the forehand side, at the expense of developing their forehand flip. And so, against short but slightly high balls to the forehand side, many modern players can’t forehand flip winners as well as their peers from the past. This was a problem in a few matches at the recent US Junior Trials – hopefully our players can get better at this.

News from All Over
Since I’ve been away two weeks, rather than try to list every interesting article, here are links to some of the main news and coaching pages that have been active in that time, and you can pick and choose. I’ll get back to linking to individual articles next week.

Butterfly News
ITTF News
NCTTA News
Major League Table Tennis
PongSpace
Ti Long
PingSunday/EmRatThich
Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis
Pingispågarna
TT11TV
PingSkills Ask the Coach
Tenis de Mesa from Sevilla (AI table tennis cartoons)
Adam Bobrow

$800,000 WTT Champions
Here’s the ITTF page for the event in Chongqing, China, May 30 – June 3 (finishing today).

Colorful and Flamboyant Table Tennis and Ping-Pong Clothing
Here’s the link from Nova Modish!

Fantasy Table Tennis League
Here’s the link for this league!

What to Do With Ping-Pong Balls and a Hair Dryer
Here’s the video (9 sec)!

Brother vs. Brother: Sid Naresh vs. Nandan Naresh
Here’s the video (90 sec)!

Mostly Non-Table Tennis – Short Story Sales and Publications
I’m in the middle of a rather strange streak in my science fiction & fantasy writing world. These are very difficult markets to sell to. The larger “Pro” markets (paying a minimum of 8 cents/word) typically get over 2,000 submissions PER MONTH (!), and can only publish perhaps six. The smaller ones also get hundreds of submissions each month and can also only publish perhaps six. Lifetime, I’ve sold 205 stories to these markets, including 53 to “pro” markets.

So, what is this streak I referred to?

On Thursday, I sold “The Annual Albert Einstein Race to the End of Time” to Flash Fiction Magazine.
On Friday, I sold “The Heist of Humanity” to Flame Tree (a “Pro” market)
On Saturday, I sold “Tooth Apocalypse” to Dragon Soul Press for their upcoming Apocalypse anthology.
On Sunday, a “Pro” market requested a partial rewrite of “The Bloody Shooting War on the Purple Senate Floor.” This usually means a sale, pending the successful rewrite. (Alas, I can’t give out the name of the publication at this time.)
On Monday . . . nothing yet, but the day is still young as I write this!!! (If I have a sale today, I’ll update here.)

But actual publication is more important than announcing sales, since you can’t read my stories until they are published! Most of my past publications are linked in my science fiction & fantasy bibliography. The most recent was Madam President, which just came out on Saturday, an anthology of stories about the first woman president. It includes my story, “You Are President, Madam President.” I have three other stories scheduled to come out in June – including, on June 15, my novelette, “First Galactic Table Tennis Championships” at New Myths Magazine!

***
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Larry Hodges Mon, 06/03/2024 - 17:37

May 20, 2024

Larry Hodges — Mon, 20 May 2024 17:43:45 +0000

May 20, 2024

Junior Trials #2 and No Blog Next Week
I’ll be out of town this next week, coaching at the US Junior Trials Part 2, May 24-27, at the 888 Table Tennis Center in Burlingame, CA. (The broke the trials into two parts this year, with results from both used to finalize the US junior teams.) Here is full info and the player listing. I fly out on Thursday, May 23, and return on Tuesday, May 28. So no blog next week, but there will be the usual Tip of the Week on Monday.

Tips of the Week
I was out of town last weekend, so no blog, but the Tip of the Week went up as usual. In case you missed it, here is that tip and this week’s tip.

May 13: Focus on Placement to Win and Increase Consistency
May 20: Smother the Table When Blocking

Weekend Coaching
Only one group session this weekend. I spent parts of it working with two girls who each had a separate stroke issue. One of them tended to cut her backswing short and so had maybe a six-inch forward swing before contact, with a long follow-through. You want your contact point at the middle of the forward swing. The solution was shadow-practice, where she also (at first) had this six-inch backswing and long follow-through. So I had her exaggerate the backswing. The idea here is if you are in the habit of a too-short backswing, then if you shadow-practice the correct backswing, you’ll likely end up doing something in between the two when you start real hitting. But if you shadow-practice a longer backswing then you really want, then you’ll likely end up doing it more correctly (with some adjustment) when you actually hit the ball.

The other girl had this habit of raising her racket tip before contact, and so meeting the ball with the racket tip pointed almost straight up and just blocking the ball. Again, the answer was shadow-practice first, and then stroking. But the key was that her backswing was too low, and so she felt forced to raise the racket tip up to meet the ball. Once we raised her backswing a bit, her stroke was fixed.

After the session, one of the kids presented me with this Certificate for Best Forehand!!!

As mentioned in past blogs, I have an ongoing thing where I have a different name each weekend. When I was asked my name, I told them I come from the Bad family – Grandma and Grandpa Bad, and my parents were Mr. and Mrs. Bad. My first name was Iam. So, my name was Iam Bad, and if they needed help on something, they just needed to say, “Coach Iam Bad”!

Non-Table Tennis - South Dakota (Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse Memorial, Black Hills, and Dinosaurs and Reptiles and Bears, Oh My!)
I took a vacation last week in South Dakota, flying out on May 11 and returning on May 14. In between I had two action-packed sightseeing days. The first day (Sunday) was the nine-hour Bus Tour of Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills, which I strongly recommend. That included Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial, and Black Hills State Custer Park. We had a great view of Mount Rushmore (picture by me), especially with my binoculars. There was also a nice museum next to it featuring its history, where I spent another 45 minutes.

We spent much of the day driving through Black Hills Custer State Park, including Custer State Park Resort (the “Western White House” for President Coolidge), Iron Mountain Rd, Needles Highway, and Sylvan Lake. There were lots of great views. I kept track of animals – final totals were 3 bighorn sheep, 1 deer, 1 golden eagle, 5 geese, a herd of cattle, dozens of horses, and 2 cats. (However, those numbers would be greatly topped the next day.) The final stop was the Crazy Horse Memorial. It was a good distance away, and in profile, so couldn’t see the face as well as I’d like. Also, it’s not finished – I may have to come back in about fifty years. That night I visited Dinosaur Park (eight large but simplistic dinosaur statues, but little kids seemed to like them) and the Berlin Wall Memorial (small but interesting, with a large segment of the old Berlin Wall and lots of info plaques).

On the second day I visited:

Dinosaur Museum - not large but great stuff, spent an hour there.
Reptile Gardens - lots and lots of spectacular reptiles, including many huge snakes (pythons, king cobras, etc.), alligators, crocodiles, giant tortoises, and so on, plus lots more, from prairie dogs to a large bald eagle. Even a snake show and bird show. Spent over two hours there.
Museum of Geology - both paleontology and geology, and free. Was there for over an hour.
Bear Country USA - wow, you stay in your car as you drive through the park, and the animals are right next to you! I spent half an hour surrounded by black bears and other large animals, often within five feet! Here’s a picture of a black bear just outside my car – he was often no more than three feet away. And lots and Lots and LOTS of other animals, many running free and so just outside my car, and others at the end in cages, such as wolves, mountain lions, lynx, badgers, anteaters, skunks, racoons, otters, and others. Running free included bears, reindeer, bighorn sheep, rocky mountain goats, elk, pronghorn, bison, and mule deer.

As is my custom, I collected souvenir magnets at each of the attractions – here’s my catch! Then it was time to fly home. On the spur of the moment, I did something I’ve never done before – I spent $130 and upgraded my flight home to first class. Result – I was able to work on my laptop the whole flight home. I’d already written the Tips of the Week for May, so I wrote four new ones for June, and still had time to work on a new science fiction story.

Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers Review
Here’s a new review of Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers, from Tampa Bay Table Tennis! You can also read the 212 ratings and reviews at Amazon, where it has a 4.7 out of 5 average.

Table Tennis Doubles for Champions – An Interview With Larry Hodges
In case you missed it - here’s the interview and feature on my recent book, from Racket Insight (by David Bruce), where I answer twelve questions about Table Tennis Doubles for Champions, ranging from questions about the book, doubles strategy, and modern doubles play. (It mentions my other books – here they are!)

Kanak Jha and Nikhil Kumar Seek Olympic Qualification in Lima, Peru
Here’s the USATT article. They are a little behind. I haven’t followed it closely, but I believe they had four SE events in the ITTF Americas Olympic Qualification in Lima, Peru, with the winner of each going to the Olympics. Kanak won his and will be going. Nikhil lost in the final of his. Here are complete results – Nikhil is in KO1, Kanak is in KO3. (We didn’t have any women entered.)

Here’s ITTF Americas Qualifier: Kanak Punches Ticket to Paris by Steve Hopkins.

Butterfly News
ITTF News
NCTTA News
Major League Table Tennis
PongSpace
Ti Long
PingSunday/EmRatThich
Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis
TacoBackhand
Pingispågarna
TT11TV
Table Tennis Daily
PingSkills Ask the Coach
Tenis de Mesa from Sevilla (AI table tennis cartoons)
Adam Bobrow

Pabst Blue Ribbon Table Tennis Ping Pong Beer Vintage 1942 Ad
Here’s the ad!

Mutt and Jeff
Here’s the cartoon from 1943!

Gentleman's Ping Pong
Here’s the video (11:13) from Pongfinity!

***
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Larry Hodges Mon, 05/20/2024 - 18:43

May 6, 2024

Larry Hodges — Mon, 06 May 2024 16:35:39 +0000

May 6, 2024

Tip of the Week
Shadow Practice for Fitness and Improvement.

No Blog on May 13 - Off to South Dakota!
I’m taking a quick vacation to Rapid City, South Dakota (no, I'm not bringing a dog), May 11-14, Sat-Tue, where I’ll see (much of it in a group tour):

Mount Rushmore
Crazy Horse Memorial
Dinosaur Park
Dinosaur Museum
Reptile Gardens
Bear Country USA
Custer State Park Resort (the “Summer White House” for President Calvin Coolidge)
Museum of Geology
Iron Mountain Road
Needles Highway
Sylvan Lake
Rapid City Berlin Wall Memorial

I also plan to drive out from the city at night, where it’s very dark, and really see the Milky Way Galaxy for the first time since camping in the Boy Scouts many decades ago. (I’m actually coaching at MDTTC on Saturday morning, then leaving for the airport right after lunch.) This will be my second time in South Dakota – we drove through it on the way to a tournament in North Dakota sometime in the late 1980s when I was at various times the manager, director, and a coach at the USATT Resident Training Program in Colorado Springs. We probably should have taken a detour to see Mount Rushmore and an earlier version of the Crazy Horse Memorial! We might actually have done so – I have a vague memory of seeing it off in the distance, but I’m not sure. I can’t remember who was driving or who else was in the car. (I’ve been to all 50 US states.)

Table Tennis Doubles for Champions
I did a small update to Table Tennis Doubles for Champions. In the original version, chapter 8 was “Secrets from the Pros” while chapter 9 was “Tactical Doubles Stories.” But the latter really goes with the rest of the doubles technique and tactics chapters I’d written. And so I switched the chapters, with “Tactical Doubles Stories” now chapter 8. I also had to change a couple of references to the chapters in the book, including the back cover, and one typo. On the Copyright page you can actually see what version it is – the original version says “v3-7-24” while the updated one is “v5-3-24.”

MDTTC Open
Here are complete results of the tournament at my club this weekend. Due to the tournament there were no coaching sessions this weekend. Here’s one interesting result – usually it’s up-and-coming, way under-rated juniors who sometimes dominate a rating event, and sometimes win multiple events. But this time it was Eugene Zhang, a senior player, who won both Under 1600 and Under 1900. He did so as a long pips blocker, which made things harder as he was playing against players who play him regularly and so presumably know how to play his different style. Players like Eugene usually do really well out of town against players who are not used to this style. The Zhang’s are a family of TT players, with son James (17, rated 2283) and Stephanie (student at University of Maryland, 2097).

Third Issue of Table Tennis History is Out!
Here’s the page where you can click on the new May 2024 issue, edited by Steve Grant. Also there are the first two issues, September 2023 and January 2024, plus two other historical issues, plus a link to the book Ping Pong Fever, all by Steve Grant. I’m mentioned in the new issue – you’ll have to go there to find out why!

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action!

ICTTF News
Last week I wrote about the first issue, April 2024, from the International Classic Table Tennis Federation and Steve Claflin, chair of the ICTTF. (Classic here means hardbat, sandpaper, and wood.) Here’s the newsletter signup page so you won’t miss any issues! If you are interested in writing for the newsletter, here’s the info page!

Illegal USATT Chair
It’s now been 455 days (exactly 65 weeks) since USATT elected Richard Char to an illegal third term as chair of the USATT board on Feb. 6, 2023. I’ve twice emailed the board on this. I blogged about it on Feb. 12, 2024 and Feb. 19, 2024. History will not look fondly on this chair and a majority of the current board that has gone along with it, nor the CEO who wrote an email supporting this. Neither will voters in the USATT elections this Fall. (Plus, of course, the CEO shouldn’t be involved in decisions about who chairs the very group she reports to.) I’ve blogged about various USATT issues quite a bit, and will do so again as the elections approach.

Butterfly Training Tips

FETHOMANIA 7: Drill 5 (41 sec) with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman
FETHOMANIA 7: Drill 6 (51 sec) with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman
Forehand Loop to Forehand Smash Transition (57 sec) with Hong Lin
Forehand Underspin to Topspin Transition (62 sec) with Angel Naranjo
Flip Serve Return Variation (49 sec) Angel Naranjo
Forehand High Ball Smash (74 sec) Bob Chen

Mastering the Backhand Chop Block
Here’s the video (1:41) with Yang Xiaoxin from PongSpace.

Simple Tactic When Returning Serves in Doubles
Here’s the article by Tom Lodziak.

New from Ti Long

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

Will Fan Zhendong Get to Play Olympics?
Here’s the video (2:47) from TacoBackhand.

New from Street TT

Yes, Ma Long is still winning the championships! (57 sec)
I look into your eyes and refuse to give up - Ma Long (16 sec)

Ask the Coach
Here are the latest questions and answers from PingSkills.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly
(Here’s the home page for the Saudi Smash, with results, etc.)

New from USATT

New from ITTF

Loa Trying Other Sports
Here’s the video (4:03) from Pingispågarna, where a top table tennis player tries other sports!

Appelgren, Jonyer, Waldner & Other Legends Wildin' In 1983
Here’s the video (3:39) from Table Tennis Media.

Wild Pong
Here’s the kickstarter page for this ping pong card game – but I just like the picture of a giraffe and crocodile playing table tennis!

Wild Ping Pong Clothing
Here’s where you can buy them from Novamodish!

Tenis de Mesa from Sevilla
As usual, there’s lots of new AI table tennis artwork from Tenis de Mesa from Sevilla.

Adam vs. The Youngest Pro
Here’s the video (14:45) from Adam Bobrow!

***
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Larry Hodges Mon, 05/06/2024 - 17:35

April 29, 2024

Larry Hodges — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 16:41:13 +0000

April 29, 2024

Tip of the Week
Forehand or Backhand Receive in Doubles.
(Excerpt from Table Tennis Doubles for Champions by Larry Hodges. April is Doubles Month!)

Weekend Coaching
Saturday was “Forehand Down-the-Line” day, as I worked with a number of players on that. They’d hit or loop forehands from their wide forehand down the line to my backhand, working on consistency and placement. It means adjusting their foot positioning a bit (right foot more back), turning the shoulders back, and taking the ball a little later than usual so they could line up the shot. I often put a ball net on the table, restricting them to hitting on only half of my backhand court, so 1/4 of the table, or 15 inches. I told them to focus on keeping the ball toward the table-edge side of those 15 inches – if they missed, I wanted misses going too wide, not toward the middle of the table. This is how you learn to play the ball wide when going down the line.

One variation – I put a target on the wide forehand side, such as Froggy. They have to hit five down the line shots, and then they get one crosscourt shot where they try to hit poor Froggy.

There are two reasons for practicing down-the-line shots. First, because in games you want to use the whole table so the opponent has to cover the whole table, and to do that you need to be able to play wide in both directions, crosscourt and down the line. Second, to quote USTT Hall of Famer David Sakai, who I used to practice with regularly, “If you can attack down the line consistently, then crosscourt is easy.” And it’s true – crosscourt, the table is about 10 feet 3.5 inches, while down the line it’s only 9 feet, so you have a shorter target. If you can attack down the line, then that extra 15.5 inches crosscourt looks HUGE! (I just realized I’ve really written a Tip of the Week here. Yes, it’ll probably show up as one in June. I’ve written all the Tips for May. UPDATE - I spent Monday afternoon working on Tips, and wrote four more for June, including expanding on the above for one of them.)

Table Tennis Doubles for Champions – An Interview With Larry Hodges
Here’s the interview and feature on my recent book, from Racket Insight (by David Bruce), where I answer twelve questions about Table Tennis Doubles for Champions, ranging from questions about the book, doubles strategy, and modern doubles play. (It mentions my other books – here they are!)

Illegal USATT Chair
It’s now been 448 days (64 weeks) since USATT elected Richard Char to an illegal third term as chair of the USATT board on Feb. 6, 2023. I’ve twice emailed the board on this. I blogged about it on Feb. 12, 2024 and Feb. 19, 2024. History will not look fondly on this chair and a majority of the current board that has gone along with it, nor the CEO who wrote an email supporting this. Neither will voters in the USATT elections this Fall. (Plus, of course, the CEO shouldn’t be involved in decisions about who chairs the very group she reports to.) I’ve blogged about various USATT issues quite a bit, and will do so again as the elections approach.

ICTTF News
Here’s the first issue, April 2024, from the International Classic Table Tennis Federation and Steve Claflin, chair of the ICTTF. (Classic here means hardbat, sandpaper, and wood.) I’ve got a few articles in it. Here’s the newsletter signup page so you won’t miss any issues!

Table Tennis and Sports Psychology with Dora Kurimay
Here’s her home page, where you can learn more about what she has to offer, as well as receive two free ebooks. She just sent out her April Newsletter – here’s where you can sign up to receive them. Dora is both a championship table tennis player and a sports psychologist. I’ve used her book “Get Your Game Face On Like the Pros!” as a reference book for the many sports psychology sessions I’ve run with kids in the MDTTC training program.

Signed Blade from 1981 World Table Tennis Championships in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia
The blade is for sale, jammed with autographs. (For example, side one includes Istvan Jonyer of Hungary, the 1975 World Men’s Singles Champion. Look it over and see if you recognize others.) If you are interested, email Dzafer Buzoli. Here are pictures:

Andrzej Grubba | The Most Entertaining Table Tennis Player Of The 80's
Here’s the video (5:02). I watched Grubba play many times. Tragically, the great Polish star died in 2005 at the age of 47 from lung cancer, likely from the fumes from many years of speed gluing, which was legal during his era. (The speed glue increases the bounciness of the sponge, allowing much better and more powerful loops. But the fumes were toxic, and so were eventually banned. These days you get the same effect with the various “tensored” sponges.) Two interesting and related facts about Grubba – he likely had the best backhand loop in the world during his time, and he was likely the best opposite-hand player in the world – he was #3 in the world for 2.5 years as a righty, but was about 2500 as a lefty! The “tragedy” here was what’s the point of him switching hands and playing a lefty forehand when he arguably had the best backhand in the world? (One answer – you get more range by playing the lefty forehand, and it’s easier to smash high balls.)

Support Kanak Jha Make History at the Paris 2024 Olympics
Kanak is trying to raise funds on his GoFundMe page for his training for the 2024 Olympics. Can you help? Here’s a note from Kanak:

“I am Kanak Jha and I am USA’s top professional Table Tennis player. I started playing in California when I was 5 years old and my love and passion for the sport grew over the years and to pursue my dream of being a world class table tennis player I moved to Europe at a young age of 15. Through 8 years of hard work l managed to reach a world ranking of 19. Along the way, there have been setbacks, obstacles and hurdles and just recently I came back after 15 months of inability to compete. This resulted in a total loss of income for 15 months; however, with the dedicated help of my coaches, my sponsors & supporters, my friends and my family I have remained true to my cause and pursuit of my dream. With my story I hope to continue inspiring the young talent in the U.S. that with determination and hard work, dreams do come true.” [Three more paragraphs follow.]

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action!

Home Page
Major Pong Head (blog coverage)
BREAKING: Pitchford, Vivarelli & others sign with MLTT
Texas Smash vs. Princeton Revolution (Championship Game) (2hr 46m)

USA Table Tennis Designates 888 Table Tennis Center as a National Training Center
Here’s the USATT article.

Butterfly Training Tips

FETHOMANIA 7: Drill 3 (48 sec) with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman
FETHOMANIA 7: Drill 4 (49 sec) with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman
Forehand Flip (1:54) with Hong Lin
Backhand Loop Underspin to Topspin Transition (61 sec) with Bob Chen
Forehand & Backhand Looping Stroke Chemistry (61 sec) with Tiana Piyadasa
Opening Loop Underspin to Topspin Loop Transition (58 sec) with Angel Naranjo
Footwork Looping with the Amicus (64 sec) with Sanuka Herath
Forehand & Backhand Looping with Footwork (55 sec) with Tashiya Piyadasa

New from Ti Long

Backhand Push recovers as Backhand Topspin Against Backspin (6 min)
2 advanced Forehand Push Sidespin techniques (5:35)
Improve the Backhand Push technique for returning Tomahawk serves (5:32)
Happy World Table Tennis Day 2024 - TI LONG CLUB (10:36)
13 advanced modern techniques (10:01)

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

Disguising the Direction of Your Serve
Here’s the video (2:35) with Damien Provost/PongSpace.

The Smartest Win of Ma Long's Career!? World Cup 2024 Final: Tactical Breakdown
Here’s the video (6:06) from Table Tennis TimeOut

World’s Best Serve?
Here’s the video (3:12) from Pingispågarna.

Take a Bow: Ved Sheth’s Intrepid Debut Performance
Here’s the NCTTA article by Jia-Yu (Trinity) Sung

Best Points With Best Angle!
Here’s the video (3:57) from the recent ITTF World Cup in Macao, from Street TT.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from ITTF

Bench Bouncing
Here’s the video (15 sec) – I counted 40 bounces. Can you do this against a similar object?

Ma Long, Lin Gaoyuan & Fan Zhendong Interact with Children
Here’s the video (2:01) as they pair up with kids and play doubles, from the MALONG Fanmade Channel.

Tenis de Mesa from Sevilla
As usual, there’s lots of new AI table tennis artwork from Tenis de Mesa from Sevilla. I’ll let you browse over them this time rather than my going through them.

Dog vs Cat
Here’s the cartoon – when dogs play cats you know the game is going to the birds.

Tears of My Ping Pong Opponents
Here’s where you can buy the mug at Amazon!

TableTennisDaily vs Pongfinity | BIGGEST MATCH EVER!
Here’s the video (27:54)!

Ping Pong Survival Game
Here’s the video (10:25) from Pongfinity! “We challenged 50 table tennis players in Bristol for a chance to win £100 if they beat all three of us!” (They only needed to score one point from each, and these were serious players.)

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Larry Hodges Mon, 04/29/2024 - 17:41

April 22, 2024

Larry Hodges — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 13:09:44 +0000

April 22, 2024

Tip of the Week
Serve or Receive First in Doubles?
(Excerpt from Table Tennis Doubles for Champions by Larry Hodges. April is Doubles Month!)

Support Kanak Jha Make History at the Paris 2024 Olympics
Kanak is trying to raise funds on his GoFundMe page for his training for the 2024 Olympics. Can you help? Here’s a note from Kanak:

Little known fact – I was one of Kanak’s early coaches! Well, sort of. When he was about ten, at a tournament, I taught him and a few others, in a "group" session, how to blow the ball up and sideways so that it just floated in the air. I also coached against him in tournaments probably a dozen times. I knew exactly how to play Kanak when he was a junior, studying numerous videos. Alas, whatever weaknesses I found back then are no longer weaknesses.

This year is also the thirteenth anniversary of “Servergate,” the most ridiculous umpiring fiasco I’ve ever been involved in as a coach. At the 2011 US Nationals I was coaching Tong Tong Gong in the Cadet (Under 15) Boys’ Singles semifinals against Kanak. (Kanak was a true prodigy – he was only eleven at the time. Tong Tong went up 4-2 in the fifth with the serve, so he had all the momentum going for him. He did his usual forehand pendulum serve, and Kanak missed it – but the umpire yelled, “Fault!” What the heck? He claimed Tong Tong had hidden the serve, which didn’t happen. We even had video showing the serve clearly was not hidden from the opponent at any point during the serve. He had served the same way he had the whole match. But there was nothing we could do, and so instead of leading 5-2 in the fifth, Tong Tong led 4-3. Flustered and forced to change his serving motion (and we’d already used our timeout), Tong Tong lost seven points in a row to 4-9, and the match, 11-8 in the fifth.

Afterwards, we were all over the umpire for this call. The referee asked him what happened, and in front of us, the umpire said, “He hid the ball from me.” The referee (and me, very loudly) explained that the rule was the ball couldn’t be hidden from the receiver, not the umpire, and that it was entirely legal for Tong Tong to turn his back to the umpire as he served as long as he didn’t hide the ball from the receiver – and since his shoulders only pointed at the opponent and didn’t dip in to hide the ball, the ball was not hidden and the serve was legal. (Plus, of course, if the umpire thought doing so was illegal, why didn’t he call it earlier since that’s how Tong Tong served every point of the match?) Alas.

And now Kanak wants money from me??? :) (Go to his GoFundMe page to find out how much I and others have donated.)

ITTF World Cup Coverage
Ma Long and Sun Yingsha are the Champions! (See also Ma Long Secures Third World Cup Title in Macao by Steve Hopkins.) Here are complete results and ITTF coverage.

World Table Tennis Day
Tomorrow (Tuesday, April 23) is World Table Tennis Day. See all the activities that are going on that date, and join in the fun! “World Table Tennis Day (WTTD) has been celebrated annually in April since 2015. It is the day we celebrate table tennis, as well as the universality and social inclusiveness the sport represents. World Table Tennis Day is celebrated on 23 April, honouring Ivor Montagu, organiser of the first World Table Tennis Championships in 1926 and the founder and first president of the ITTF. WTTD celebrates the joy of playing table tennis for fun, bringing people together, focusing less on competition and more on participation and enjoyment.”

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action!

Home Page
Major Pong Head (blog coverage)
Enzo Angles and Hong Lin Named MVPs of Major League Table Tennis Inaugural Season
Major League Table Tennis Championship Tickets Now On Sale (for Championship Weekend at Loyola University, Chicago, IL, Apr. 27-28)

Butterfly Training Tips

FETHOMANIA 7: Drill 1 (47 sec) with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman
FETHOMANIA 7: Drill 2 (46 sec) with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman
One or Two Backhands & Forehands (67 sec) with Rogelio Castro
Forehand Loop & Footwork (84 sec) with Angela He
Underspin to Topspin Transition Play (2:54) with Oscar Birriel
Serve & Attack Backhand Loop (74 sec) with Lingshuai Meng

New from PongSpace

Make Your Serves Trickier (3:25) with Damien Provost
Quick Hitting Drill (4:01) with Damien Provost
Amazing behind the back shot in the first ever PeakaPong event held in the 2024 NCTTA Championship (9 sec)

3 Different Forehand Techniques
Here’s the video (2:07) from Pingispågarna. Three ways to dominate with the forehand!

Lin Gaoyuan and Fan Zhendong Performing Services of Different Distances and Rotations
Here’s the video (3:24) from Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis.

Xu Xin's Counterattack Symphony: Precision, Power, and Pure Table Tennis Elegance!
Here’s the video (8:11) from Street TT.

New from Table Tennis Central

Greatest Plays in Table Tennis (8:12)
NEVER forget about prime Xu Xin (4:32)

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

New from NCTTA

The Dark Horse from UChicago - Chenxi Sui, by Shaquila Sarapao
Dallas Father-Daughter Duo - Vikas & Kanika Dusad, by Shaquila Sarapao

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

Countdown is on: 100 days to Paris
Here’s the ITTF article.

Ian Seidenfeld at the Team USA Media Summit
Here’s the video (21 sec).

Throwbacks from the Past from Table Tennis Media

Desmond Douglas vs. Peter Engel | 1980 (5:12)
Andrzej Grubba | The Most Entertaining Table Tennis Player Of The 80's (5:02)
Jiang Jialiang vs. Lo Cheng-chun | 1985 WTTC (24:03)
Jan-Ove Waldner vs. Chen Longcan (1990) (17:10)

A Field of Kids Training in China
Here’s the video (14 sec).

Tenis de Mesa from Sevilla
New AI table tennis artwork from Tenis de Mesa from Sevilla. (Click on the image to see the next one.)

Table Tennis Shoes (3)
Simpsons pong (9)
Lion King pong (12)
Disney pong (14)
Muppets pong (7)
Flintstones ping pong (11)
Rugrats pong (5)
Ancient warrior pong (4)
Mario y Luigi pingpong (1)
Viking Pong (1)
Caveman Pong (1)
Dragon pong (1)
Portable animal traction tables for hire (3)
An explosive mix: a little bit of poker and a lot of ping pong (4)
Senior Marines play with Marines no matter the gallons (4)
Dawn dazzles us with its southern splendor (4)
What he saved from the shipwreck (1)
Shipwrecks with luck (1)
This intelligent kid wishes you a good weekend – with a genie (1)
Soldier Pong (4)
99 Days to Paris (1)
100 Days to Paris (3)

5-in-a-Row Challenge w/ Amy Wang & Lily Zhang!
Here’s the video (1:29)!

What Just Happened?
Here’s the video (17 sec)!

I’m a Table Tennis Player, Of Course I...
Here’s the video (18 sec)!

Magnetic Ping Pong Racket and Playing in a Pool
Here’s the video (8:01) from Pongfinity!

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Larry Hodges Mon, 04/22/2024 - 14:09