Visualizing the Serve
I think one of my most widely applicable Tips is A Journey of Nine Feet Begins at Contact. This has come up a lot recently in my coaching, both private and group. After a serving practice session with our Talent Junior Program (our best juniors, ages 7-13, about 24 of them), I gave a short lecture on this.

Let’s face it – most players really aren’t aware of what they are doing when they serve. Sure, they know the more obvious parts, like contact, and perhaps how it bounces on the far side. But they aren’t really aware of how high or low they contact the ball, where it bounces on their side of the table, the curve of the ball, not even how high it is when it crosses the net. They tend to notice only what’s happening on the far side, while ignoring what led to what happens on the far side. Without knowing and controlling what happens throughout the serve, including on your side of the table, you can’t really control the serve.

Seriously, if you want to have good serves, you need to be aware of every part of the ball’s journey, as noted in the Tip above. You should see it all in your head before you serve. If the serve doesn’t match what you saw in your head, then practice until it does. When you do this enough, it becomes second nature. Only when you can do that can you truly control your serves and make them do what you want them to do.

ITTF to Implement New World Ranking System in 2018
Here’s the ITTF news item.

Weekend Coaching and Coaching Correspondence
I was going to write about my weekend coaching yesterday, but then that thing about USA bidding for the Worlds came up, and, well, it was a tough call - what's more interesting, the World Championships or reading about Larry's coaching sessions? Of course you want to hear more about my coaching sessions, but I decided to save the best for later and write about the World’s first. 

As usual, I had three group sessions on Sunday. (I run two of them, help with the other.) In the Beginning Junior Class, Week 8, we introduced them to looping. Not world-class looping, not yet, but just easy spinning of a backspin ball on the forehand side. (We'll do backhand next Sunday.) About half the class was ready for this, while for others (mostly younger ones) we did more work on forehand, backhand, pushing, and footwork. We had 17 in the class, with four coaches.

In the Talent Junior Program, I fed a lot of multiball, much of it backspin so they too could work on looping, but now it was much more advanced players. I also spent time working with some of them on pushing. Two of the youngest were quite proud when they pushed 66 times in a row! (But I reminded them that at the 1936 Worlds, in the first point of their match two players pushed for two hours 18 minutes.) We had I think 24 in the class, with eight coaches and several practice partners/multiball feeders.

In the Adult Training Session, for the more advanced players we did the usual stroking and footwork drills, then some random drills, and finally serve and attack. For two who were more beginners, we did almost all stroking drills, including pushing. For the last 15 minutes I fed multiball to them so they could work on looping. (I did a lot of that on Sunday.) 

Tip of the Week
Become Your Own Feedback.

Three Cities Bid for 2020 ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships - Including San Jose, USA
Here’s the ITTF article. Yes, San Jose, USA is bidding for the Worlds against Ekaterinburg (Russia), Busan (Korea Republic). USA has never run the World Championships, but from I think we have a really good chance at winning this one. (I’m refraining from making any Russia/Trump jokes, and from hinting of the dangers of running anything in the Korean peninsula at this time. Oh wait, I just did.) Here’s a quote from the article:

“The bid from San Jose means that the USA is in the running to host only the second ITTF World Championships to be held outside of Asia and Europe. The first and only time that happened was in 1939 when Cairo, Egypt were hosts.  It’s positive signs for the global rise of table tennis, especially in North America, having successfully hosted the last two editions of the ITTF Women’s World Cup.”

And note the ITTF article from last week, ITTF Eyes North American Market. So you don’t really need any inside info to see that the ITTF would like to expand more into North America – and now we’ve run the last two Women’s World Cups, showing that yes, we can run these things. (Plus the World Veterans in Las Vegas next year.) The final decision on where the 2020 Worlds will be held will be made at the ITTF meetings at the 2018 World Championships in Halmstad, SWE, Apr. 29 – May 6.

Moving and Table Tennis
Once again I’ve run into the interesting fact that some players have better shots when they move, especially when moving to the wide forehand. I blogged about this on Sept. 22, where we discovered that Todd’s shots were much better when he did footwork.

Yesterday I coached a new player, Ron, and it happened again. He was an experienced tennis player but new to table tennis. His forehand was decent, but often a bit cramped, with the racket too close to the body, and the tip often tilted slightly up. We worked on this for a while, and then I noticed something. Whenever I went a little wider to this forehand, he’s reach out and hit a perfect forehand! He’d extend the arm so it wasn’t cramped, and the tip would drop down to where it should be. Often his shot would be very wide to my forehand, which was very obvious because, due to my ongoing shoulder problems, I can’t really extend my arm and so have less reach going that way.

I pointed this out to him, and had him shadow practice that “moving” forehand until he could do it (without the ball) from other parts of the table. Then we went back to hitting, and the stroke was much better.

When my shoulder is healthy, I’ve had the same experience. During my peak years it was very difficult for players to win the point going to my wide forehand as I covered that very well. (I was a bit weaker when they went very wide to my backhand, but that’s another story.) Part of the reason I covered it well was because I’d go into the shot (when hitting or looping) with my shoulders rotated back and arm extended, and so could rotate into the shot, giving the shot power.

New ITTF World Rankings
Here’s the ITTF article on the new world rankings, and here’s more from Table Tennis Daily. Here are the new rankings for Men and Women. They are using for the first time a newly updated rating system. Some big changes!

On the men’s side, Xu Xin and Zhang Jike were both removed for inactivity, with Germans Ovtcharov and Boll moving up to #3 and #4. (But their next player is Filus Ruwen, who moved from #24 to #21.) China’s Ma Long and Fan Zhendong are still #1 and #2, but the next two Chinese are Lin Gaoyuang and Fang Bo at #7 and #10. Japan’s Noki Niwa, Jun Mizutani, and Kenta Matsudaira move up to #5, 6, and 9, with their 14-year-old whiz kid Tomokazu Harimoto moving from #18 to #16. (He was #14 two months ago.) France’s Simon Gauzy went from #14 to #8. China is still dominant, but China vs. Germany or Japan could be interesting.

On the women’s side, reigning #1 Ding Ning was removed for lack of activity. The women ranked #2 to #7 last month all moved up one notch, with Zhu Yuling taking over the #1 spot for the first time. Only “big” jump among the top women was Cheng I-Ching of Chinese Taipei, who moved from #10 to #7. China had the top four women last month, but now have only the top three (Zhu Yuling, Chen Meng, and Liu Shiwen), with Japan taking the next three spots (Kasumi Ishikawa, Miu Hirano, Mima Ito). China is still dominant, but China vs. Japan could be interesting.

Table Tennis Writing and Book Sales
When I’m not coaching table tennis, I’m writing about it, along with a little science fiction. (Here’s my Amazon page for both.) As of today, I have 1766 published articles, plus approximately 1600 table tennis blog entries, 34 science fiction blog entries, and 13 books.

Of the articles, they include 1562 on table tennis, 142 science fiction & fantasy, 33 on the Baltimore Orioles, and 29 others. Throw in the 1600 blog entries, and it’s about 3400 articles, plus the 13 books. That’s way too much time I’m not watching Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead!

The 13 books include 8 on table tennis and 6 science fiction & fantasy. Yep, 8 + 6 = 13. That’s because The Spirit of Pong counts for both. (Campaign 2100: Game of Scorpions could count for both as well, since there’s a lot of table tennis in this science fiction novel. Here’s my blog on that.) My latest science fiction novel is When Parallel Lines Meet, which I co-wrote with Mike Resnick and Lezi Robyn. Here's my SF blog on that. 

Here’s a listing for book sales for October. I’ve combined print and kindle sales.

Happy Halloween! But I’m Off Today
It's Halloween, my new science fiction novel comes out today, and I've got an injured hip, shoulder, and knee. I'm taking the day off. See you tomorrow. (However, after a day of rest on Monday, the hip injury seems much better this morning. I don’t think I’ll have to miss any of my coaching on Wednesday. I have no coaching on Mondays and Tuesdays, my “weekend.”) But to tide you over, here are pictures and a video (34 sec) of Navin “Bionic Man” Kumar dressed as Randy Daytona from the movie “Balls of Fury.” (Here’s a direct link to the video. Here’s a non-Facebook picture.)

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Tip of the Week
How to Play the Bomber: The Player Who Tries to Blast Every Shot.
[Note – I wrote this as a Tip of the Week in 2010, and put it up as a coaching article once, but somehow it never made its way up as a Tip – so here is an updated version.]

Weekend Coaching, Hip Hurts, and Halloween Costumes
Another busy weekend – and this time a PAINFUL one. (More on that below.) On Sunday, as usual, I had three consecutive 90-minute group sessions.

In the Beginning Junior Class, the day's feature was smashing. They'd spent a lot of time until now on forehands, as well as backhands, footwork, pushing, serving, and so on. So now we had what is probably the most fun session of all for them. Yes, the only thing more fun than smashing is first learning to smash. I went over the basics, did a demo, and then we went into our groups. (Assisting were John Hsu, Martin Jezo, and Greg Mascialino, who was subbing for Coach Wen.) But it wasn't all smashing – we also did side-to-side footwork (as always) and pushing, and then Brazilian Teams and Up-Down Tables at the end.

For the Talent Junior Program (our advanced juniors), we did lots of multiball and other drills. I was working with the younger kids, and we did a lot of shadow practice. We spent much of the session with each coach doing a different segment. For the first half, mine was feeding backspin side to side as they forehand looped. For the second half we worked on pushing.

In the Adult Training Session, after a number of stroking and footwork drills, the focus was on serve and attack, and we spent the last half hour on that.

Ten Miscellaneous Mostly Table Tennis Items

A Song of Celluloid and Plastic
For many weeks now I've been coaching exclusively with Butterfly plastic training balls. Most players I work with still prefer celluloid, but accept plastic balls since they have no choice – it's what's used in nearly every tournament and league. In the MDTTC Tuesday and Friday night leagues they only made the final switch to plastic about a month or so ago. (Until then it had been optional, and most had still preferred celluloid.)

Yesterday I went in to coach. (I had four scheduled, but one called in sick, so only three.) At the same time I was coaching we were running our afterschool program with a bunch of kids, and they, and other coaches doing private coaching, were using all of the plastic training balls. There was only a basket of celluloid balls. Since my students had mostly been lamenting their not being able to use the preferred celluloid, I thought, what the heck, and grabbed that basket rather than check if we had more plastic ones in storage.

Instant problem. My first student, Todd, had recently gone over 1500 in league ratings, which closely match USATT tournament ratings. But when they switched over to plastic, he had trouble adjusting at first and immediately dropped 150 points. He is now working himself back up, and felt like he was finally used to the plastic balls. So when I brought over the celluloid balls, he was rightfully unhappy. "I just got used to the plastic balls!" he said. We decided to stick with the celluloid balls. They do play similar to the Nittaku Premium plastic balls he'll be using at the Open in December, though quite different from the plastic ball used in the league and in the upcoming North American Teams during Thanksgiving Break. These days we all need to be able to adjust back and forth.