Tip of the Week

Start Drills with a Serve.

Butterfly South Shore Open

It was an exhausting weekend, but so is every tournament I coach at. There's no question - coaching is far more tiring then playing. Seriously!!!

Here are results and pictures. I didn't get to see much of the tournament since I was busy coaching.

I traveled to and from the tournament with Nathan Hsu (17) and his mom, Wen; Crystal Wang (11) and her dad, Quandou; and Derek Nie (12) and his mom, Jenny. (Derek and his mom traveled separately going out, but were on our flight coming back. Roy Ke, 14, another top junior from my club (MDTTC) also went but traveled separately.) We flew to Chicago, and then rented a car to drive to South Shore, about 45 minutes away. We arrived at the playing hall (Lincoln Center Fieldhouse in Highland, IN) around 8PM on Friday night, just after they'd closed the gym. We found an open door and were able to look over the place and survey the draws before they shooed us out.

Crystal, rated 2267, was top seed in all three junior events she was in - 13 & Under, 15 & Under, and 18 & Under - and she swept all three events without losing a game to anyone, capturing $1700 in prize money, care of the Nate Wasserman Junior Championships. She played Anushka Oak (13, rated 2091) in all three finals.

No Blog or Tip Today

I returned from the South Shore Open in Indiana at 1:30 AM this morning, and because I had to take care of some things I didn't get to bed until after 4AM. So no blog today, and the Tip of the Week will go up tomorrow. But for diehards who need something, here's video (1:05) of the rally of the tournament at the Men's World Cup, with Vladimir Samsonov lobbing down Xu Xin.

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Back Foot on Forehands

I began to write a blog entry about how the back foot positioning on forehands has evolved at the higher levels from being back to mostly being parallel to the table in the modern game, where it's not just power, but speed of power that's paramount - and so there's no time to bring that foot back. Then I realized it should be a Tip of the Week for Monday.

South Shore Open

I'm off to the 4-star South Shore Open in Indiana right after lunch today, where I'll be coaching MDTTC juniors Nathan Hsu, Derek Nie, and Crystal Wang. (Also going from MDTTC: Roy Ke, along with coach/practice partner Dong "Steve" Yiming.) There are 214 players entered. I've got my coaching notes printed out, a list of things to bring (I pack right after I finish the blog), and I think the kids are ready. There's a lot of prize money in the Wasserman junior events! But as far as we're concerned, it's just another day of matches at the club. Right?

USATT Tips of the Day

USATT is still going through the 171 Tips of the Week I wrote for them from 1999-2003, putting one up each day. Here are the Tips they've put up. Below are the Tips from the past seven days.

Serve, Receive, or Side?

In this week's Tip of the Week (which goes up every Monday), I wrote about "Should You Choose Serve, Receive, or Side at the Start of a Match?" Here are some examples from real tournament experiences.

I almost always give away the serve, for the reasons given in the Tip. I want to be serving at the end of the first, third, and fifth games, where there's pressure and where I can pull out my trickiest serving combos, based on what I've learned in the points played so far. I'd rather let the other guy serve first so I can get into the match a bit more (even if it's only two points) before I serve. But there are exceptions.

When I play an all-out hitter, especially a pips-out penholder, I often keep the serve, especially if the player seems the nervous type. High-risk players like that need a lot of confidence to go for their shots, so don't give it to them. An example was Ron Lilly, a top pips-out penhold hitter from the 1980s and 1990s who was sometimes rated over 2300. When he was fearless in his hitting his level skyrocketed. But when he fell behind he tended to play safer, and then he'd fall further behind. So my goal against him was always to build up a lead early. This not only meant serving first, but it meant throwing every trick serve I could right from the start rather than holding back on anything for later. I did the same thing against Lim Ming Chui, another pips-out hitter.

Knee Update

I gave a 1.5 hour coaching session yesterday, but could only hobble around, and ended up doing multiball or serve practice for over half the session. As I blogged on Monday, I injured the right knee on Saturday. So I've had to cancel all my coaching tonight - three hours. (Every other week I have four hours on Wednesday nights, but this was an "off" Wednesday.) Coach Raghu is subbing for one of the hours, while the other two are taking the week off. (One is having arm problems and could use the rest.)

Coaching is one of those professions where you HAVE to stay healthy or you run into serious problems. Some remember all the back problems I had in 2011; I overcame that with a lot of stretching and specialized weight training. Then, other than a cold or two, I was healthy for two years. A few weeks ago I had to take most of a week off with arm problems. And now this.

For most of our 21 years, MDTTC had cement floors. This has no give, and so led to knee problems for me (and others) during the late 90s and early 2000s. Then, about 6-7 years ago, we went to the soft red flooring that's so popular at professional clubs and major tournaments. Since then I've had no knee problems until now. This injury wasn't because of the floor, however; I just put weight on it wrong.

Lefties at the 2013 LIEBHERR Men's World Cup

My Upcoming Novel and Ping-Pong

Yes, the two are connected. Table tennis or ping-pong is mentioned 19 times in 11 different scenes in the novel. Why? Because the 13-year-old protagonist (Neil, alias Armstrong though his last name is never mentioned in the novel) is a sorcerer's apprentice and wannabe ping-pong star who has to leave behind this childhood ambition to save the world in this humorous parody of the 1960s space race. Included in the scenes are mentions of several real players, the Florida State Finals between Brian "Speed Race" Pace and "Tricky Dicky" Fleisher, and two flying carpets that Neil names after Marty Reisman and Tim Boggan.

I'm going to list all the table tennis mentions below, but first, two news items. First, it's been retitled "Sorcerers in Space." (Previous title was the boring "The Giant Face in the Sky.") And second, the really horrible cover that I linked to a week ago has been replaced by a very nice cover. (I really like this one!!!) The novel comes out Nov. 15.

Here's the blurb on the back of the book - no table tennis mention, sorry. The novel is described as Hitchhiker's Guide meets the Space Race.

It is 1969, at the height of tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Neil, 13, badly wants to be someone. Instead he's stuck as a sorcerer's apprentice for Gus, the "meanest sorcerer in the world." Gus creates a magical talisman to spy on the Soviets, but instead it spies on them and sends text into space. A Giant Face in the Sky shows up, reading the text.

Since whoever gets to the Face will have the world at their mercy, the Race to the Face begins. The Soviets invade the U.S. in their attempts to kill Neil, who is prophesied to defeat them. A floating, talking meteor assassin named Buzz becomes Neil's companion--but in one week, Buzz must kill Neil.

Tip of the Week

Should you Choose Serve, Receive, or Side at the Start of a Match?

Knee Problems

Yes, just a couple weeks after getting over about ten days of arm problems (where I had to cancel or get substitutes for a lot of coaching sessions), now it's my right knee that's acting up. I hurt it on Saturday at the very end of my last session, with John Olsen and Kevin Walton. We normally do nearly 90 minutes of multiball each session (they take turns), then do live drills or games the last 30 minutes or so. I was playing John a game, and he returned my serve to my wide backhand. I stepped around to loop a forehand, and as I put weight on my back (right) leg, I felt something go in the knee. I made the shot, and the rally continued, with me hobbling about fishing to keep the ball in play. Then he went to my wide forehand, and I tottered over for the shot, again putting weight on the knee and aggravating it. We stopped play after the shot.

I did a lot of group session on Sunday, where I limped about. I did one private coaching session where I staggered around in live drills, but fortunately did a lot of multiball so I wouldn't have to shamble around the court running down balls. (Okay, I think I've finally run out of acronyms for "hobble.")

I'm resting it today (my day off), and have only one session tomorrow (Tuesday). But then things get busy again on Wed and Thur. I'll sort of get Fri-Sun off, as I'll be coaching at the South Shore Open in Indiana where hopefully I won't leap to my feet to celebrate some victory and hurt the knee again. Because then I'd be forced to stumble about next week.

How I Taught Serves in Class Yesterday

Jim's Forehand

About two months ago I started coaching Jim. He's a lefty in his early 60s, perhaps 1000-1200 level, and very tall. He had a pretty good backhand but very awkward forehand. When he'd hit forehands he'd lean over and down, tilting his head sideways, and sort of lunge at the ball. During his forward swing his head would move about three feet sideways as his whole body went off to the side, throwing him off balance and killing his timing. I wasn't sure whether we should fix the stroke, rush it to the nearest hospital, or just bury it in the local cemetery.

We decided to fix the stroke. And lo and behold, it worked! We made this the focus of over half of our sessions, using Saturation Training. Now he stays balanced throughout the stroke, and his head stays straight and only moves perhaps six inches sideways. He now has precision, and we now have vicious rallies, his forehand to my backhand. He has a very nice smash now, in practice.

However, he's not out of the woods yet. For example, when he smashes to my backhand and I block it back, he still has trouble with the second shot, and usually hits it soft. He doesn't yet have the deep-down confidence to just let the shot go over and over. It also means it's not quite ready for matches yet.

I explained to him Larry's Six-Month Law and its corollary, Larry's Six-Month Law for Strokes. The latter means that when you develop a shot until it's proficient in practice, it'll take about six months of practice before you can use it consistently and effectively in matches. He's now on that path.

Random Drills

One of the best ways to improve is through multiball training, and one of the best drills you can do there (besides an intense stroke workout) are random drills. When you play a match, you don't know where your opponent is going to put the ball, so you have to be ready to cover the whole table. When you do simple rote drills like forehand to forehand or backhand to backhand, or side-to-side footwork, you get practice, but you are not getting the practice needed to prepare you for the randomness of actual match play. For that you need to do random drills.

The problem with random drills is that you can't really do them very well live (i.e. with a practice partner) until both players are relatively advanced. And so players avoid doing them until they are somewhat proficient - and then they practically have to start from scratch doing random drills that they should have been doing early on. Once you can hit a decent forehand or backhand you should be doing some sort of random drills as well. Few do so.

So get a coach, or a practice partner you can take turns with, and do random multiball drills. At first have them feed the ball randomly to two spots - middle forehand and middle backhand. Make sure your first move is the right one; you have more time than you think, so don't rush. When you are comfortable at doing this at rally speeds, then go random the whole table. Learn to cover all five spots - wide forehand, middle forehand, middle, middle backhand, and wide backhand.

Let me emphasize - the key is that the first move must be the right move. No moving to the forehand and then changing when you see the ball going to the backhand, or vice versa.

RGIII Response Video

We're up to 689 views (as of 10AM EST) on the RGIII Response Video (1:15). Let's make it go viral!!! (I blogged about this yesterday.)

Last night I posted it two Washington Redskins forums, The Hogs forum and Extreme Redskins forum. I also posted it several times on Facebook, on my page and on the pages of the four players, with requests for others to repost, and it's been reposted by a number of people. (So should you.) It's also on the USATT web page and on the USOC web page. Today I plan to send it to some local media.

Video Review Before Tournaments

On Oct. 26-27 I'll be coaching at the 4-star South Shore Butterfly Open in Indiana. This means lots of practice for the players going there over the next ten days. For me, it means video review. I'll be coaching three top players, so I'm spending more and more time watching them in practice so I'm ready to coach them. More importantly, I'm about to hit the video screen soon to study video of their recent tournament matches. This is where you really learn a lot about a player. You can learn a lot by watching them play locals, but they are used to playing those locals, and so it's not the same thing. To properly prepare to coach someone in a tournament you need to see what they do against players they are not used to playing.