Tip of the Week
How to Quadruple Your Chances of Winning Those Five-Game Matches.

Hidden Serves - the Ma Long Serve
I've recently gotten into some discussions about Ma Long's serve. He's the reigning World and Olympic Champion, and while his world ranking has dropped to #7 due to lack of competition (plus his recent loss at the Bulgarian Open to Liam Pitchford), he's still generally considered the best player in the world.

But the simple reality is that he, like many other world-class players, rarely serves legally. Most of his serves are forehand serves where he throws the ball high and towards him, and as it comes down, he thrusts his head forward and down. The ball illegally goes behind his head, and he contacts it behind his chin, so the opponent can't see contact. Then his racket follows the ball, making it appear that he contacts the ball below the head. That's one of the main advantages of this technique. 

But ask yourself this - why would he and so many other top players spend so much time developing such an obviously illegal serve, where they have to bend their body into a pretzel, throw the ball behind their head, and do that vigorous head thrust just before contact, and then let the receiver see contact?

Here's the key rule on hidden serves - I've bolded the key parts.

2.6.4 From the start of service until it is struck, the ball shall be above the level of the playing surface and behind the server's end line, and it shall not be hidden from the receiver by the server or his or her doubles partner or by anything they wear or carry.

Tip of the Week
Make Up-and-Coming Players Your Rivals - and Stay With Them!

USATT Board Teleconference
The teleconference started at 7PM and went until about 8:20 or so. (I'm on the USATT board of directors.) Ignoring formalities, there were three main segments.

1) USATT High Performance Director Jörg Bitzigeio gave a High Performance Update, which mostly covered recent USATT training camps and ranking tournaments. As I've noted before, the level and depth of play among our up-and-coming juniors is easily the best in modern history, i.e. since the hardbat era. (My club is helping - we had three of the four semifinalists in Under 10 Boys at the recent USA Nationals, and two of them - including the winner - is off today for two weeks training and competing in France, which finishes with the European Mini-Championships, Aug. 24-26. Here's the info page, but alas, it's in French.)

2) A long discussion of our upcoming in-person meeting in Colorado Springs, Sept. 21-23, where went over logistics and the agenda. Major topics that will be included:

I'm postponing the blog one day so I can include coverage of the USATT Teleconference scheduled for Monday night at 7PM. See you tomorrow!

Tip of the Week
Training the Subconscious.

Top Ten Surprising Thing About Top Table Tennis Players
Top table tennis players can often seem a different species than the rest of us. After all, they have powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men! Here are ten things about top players that might surprise you.

Blog is Now a Weekly
I have sad news. After 7.5 years of almost daily blogging (1800+ blogs), and much contemplation, I've decided to switch to once a week (probably Mondays), effective immediately. The reason is simple - while I'm still very active in table tennis, I'm also getting more and more involved with my science fiction writing. After doing the blog each morning, it's very hard to continue right into my SF writing - there's only so much mental energy in a day, especially when I often have to go straight from that to coaching at night. So I'll be focusing my writing on science fiction, both short stories and novels. (I just started a new novel.)

Another reason is harder to explain to non-fiction writers, but I'll try. When I write science fiction, especially novels that take many months to complete, I have to get completely immersed in it. Even little distractions take my mind off it, and then I'm done for the day as far as SF writing. So I'm trying to remove as many such distractions as possible. If I don't do this, I won't write SF nearly as much or as well, and someday I'll look back and regret it. 

So I'll be blogging now every MONDAY morning, along with a Tip of the Week. I'm not 100% set on Mondays; I'm toying with doing it on Fridays instead. If anyone has any suggestions on the best day for this, comment below.

Table Tennis Coaching Back Up Again - Sort Of
As you probably noticed, the site has been down since Friday morning, July 13. It literally went down minutes before I posted my Friday blog, which I wasn't able to post. My technical person wasn't able to resolve the issue until last night. What had happened was the "Access Log" went over 1 GB, causing an "overload of MySQL resources."

Unfortunately, due to some unforeseen side problem, the site almost immediately went down again. Hopefully it'll be up soon. Below is the Monday blog, where I took the Friday blog and added lots of new stuff. I was planning on blogs on Fri, Mon, Tue, and Wed (mostly covering the Nationals), but couldn't do them since the site was down. 

Last Blog Until August 1
Now the really bad news. I was out of town recently for 3.5 weeks (World Veterans and Nationals), and Thursday I'm going out of town again! I'll be away July 19-29, and so won't be blogging during that time. (I'm off to my annual science fiction writing workshop vacation in Manchester, NH.) After this I hopefully won't be missing any more days for a while.

Tip of the Week
Follow Through Back Into Position After Forehand Looping.

NOTE - Due to technical problems, the site went down Friday morning and didn't come back up until Monday night. (The problem was the "Access Log," which went over 1 GB, causing an "overload of MySQL resources.") Now that it's back I'll be blogging again on Tuesday morning.

Tip of the Week
Pinpoint Your Weakness and Then Pinpoint a Drill. (I linked to this yesterday in my short blog, but thought I'd link again for those who missed it.)

Three Weeks in Las Vegas
I could write a book about all that happened these past three weeks in Las Vegas - or does what happen in Vegas stay in Vegas? In my last blog before leaving, June 13, I wrote about my schedule, and it pretty much went as listed. I spent the first week writing 23 articles on the World Veterans - see segment and links below. Then I had a four-day reading/writing vacation. Then we had a three-day camp for MDTTC juniors where they did two sessions/day, about 2.5 hours each. And then a week of coaching at the U.S. Nationals. (See segment below with results.) I'll likely do several blogs on the various happenings, such as the Hall of Fame Banquet, the norovirus stomach virus outbreak (I spent the day before the Nationals sick in bed, along with many others) the USATT board meeting, discussions on national team selection process and hidden serve enforcement, the mini-table tournament, and the $10,000 Jim Butler-A.J. Carney hardbat challenge match.

I Need One More Day - Really!!!
After being away 3.5 weeks, I returned on Monday to an overwhelming todo list that took half a day just to put together. I need one more day to tackle that list before returning to daily blogging. However, the Tip of the Week is up: Pinpoint Your Weakness and Then Pinpoint a Drill. And here's a video (24 sec) of someone playing with an oven tray. Don't tell me you haven't dreamed of doing that!

World Veterans Articles
I am writing numerous daily articles for the World Veterans Championships in Las Vegas, June 18-24 (along with Matt Hetherington and Richard Finn). Come on over and read these articles that feature such champions as Istvan Jonyer, USATT Hall of Famers, many more!

Last Blog Until Wednesday, July 11 12
As noted below, I'll be out of town 3.5 weeks. See you in July!

Upcoming Schedule and Events
A detailed, day-by-day schedule of the next 3.5 weeks.

Tuesday - No Blog
I have a bunch of work being done on my house early on Tuesday morning, and a horde of things on my todo list to get done before I go out of town Thursday morning for 3.5 weeks. So no blog on Tuesday. See you on Wednesday! That, alas, will be my last blog for 3.5 weeks, where I'll be at a family gathering for three days in Eugene, OR; and then three weeks in Las Vegas - the World Veterans (one week); a one-week writing/reading "vacation" (though I'll also be helping to run a 3-day mini-camp before the Nationals); and then the USA Nationals.

Tip of the Week
How to Make Your Strengths Stronger with Serve and Receive.

What Makes Tomokazu Harimoto So Good
The Japanese whiz kid won't turn 15 until June 27, and yet he just won the Japan Open as a 14-year-old. This wasn't his first Pro Tour win - he won the Czech Open last year two months after turning 14. But that time he beat Hugo Calderano of Brazil in the semifinals and Timo Boll of Germany in the final. While beating Boll was an incredible victory for Harimoto, this one just seemed different as he beat world #2 (and really, the best player in the world) Ma Long in the quarterfinals, world #8 Lee Sangsu in the semifinals, and in the final won 13-11 in the seventh against Zhang Jike, who seems nearly back to his old form. (See segment below on Japan Open for more info.)