Blogs

Larry Hodges' Blog and Tip of the Week will normally go up on Mondays by 2:00 PM USA Eastern time. Larry is a member of the U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame, a USATT Certified National Coach, a professional coach at the Maryland Table Tennis Center (USA), and author of ten books and over 2100 articles on table tennis, plus over 1900 blogs and over 600 tips. Here is his bio. (Larry was awarded the USATT Lifetime Achievement Award in July, 2018.)

Make sure to order your copy of Larry's best-selling book, Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers!
Finally, a tactics book on this most tactical of sports!!!

Also out - Table Tennis Tips, More Table Tennis Tips, Still More Table Tennis Tips, and Yet Still More Table Tennis Tips, which cover, in logical progression, his Tips of the Week from 2011-2023, with 150 Tips in each!

Or, for a combination of Tales of our sport and Technique articles, try Table Tennis Tales & Techniques. If you are in the mood for inspirational fiction, The Spirit of Pong is also out - a fantasy story about an American who goes to China to learn the secrets of table tennis, trains with the spirits of past champions, and faces betrayal and great peril as he battles for glory but faces utter defeat. Read the First Two Chapters for free!

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!

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

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

New from Ti Long

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

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!

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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. 

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

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

New from PongSpace

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!

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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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.

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.

$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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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.

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.

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.

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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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):

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

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

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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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!

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

Butterfly Training Tips

New from Ti Long

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.)

***
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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:

“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.]

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!

Butterfly Training Tips

New from PongSpace

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

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

New from NCTTA

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

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.)

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!

***
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April 15, 2024

Tip of the Week
How to Play Doubles with a Much Stronger or Weaker Player.
(Excerpt from Table Tennis Doubles for Champions by Larry Hodges. April is Doubles Month!)

Weekend Coaching
Had an interesting experience with two of our junior players, both about ten and still relative beginners. They were struggling to even hit three forehands in a row together – their shots just flew all over the table. So I hit with them, taking turns. Immediately they both were able to hit 50 or more in a row, mostly keeping the ball to my forehand corner, no problem. After a time I put them together again, and again they struggled. The problem was their feet weren’t “active,” and so whenever the ball wasn’t exactly where they were standing, they’d reach or lunge after it. So, yes, we spent a bunch of time working on getting their feet more active, including pointing out the obvious, “We do all these footwork drills so you can learn to move to the ball!”

I continued my tradition of having a new name every weekend. This week when they asked my name (since “Coach Larry” is in prison for cheating), I said it was Isserbad. At first they couldn’t figure out what that meant – until I had them call me Coach Isserbad. Say it out loud!

I also had a private session with Navin Kumar. A lot of the focus was on really deadening the ball when blocking against loops, as this allows you to keep the ball on the table over and over. Sometimes he blocks the ball too straight on with the long pips, and so it’s like he’s just hitting with wood – so we’re working on chopping down on the ball, i.e., chop-blocking with the long pips (no sponge). We also worked a lot on smashing. Here are two videos he took:

The Next Hodges Book: Table Tennis Doubles for Champions
My newest book is featured at Butterfly! It also includes links to all ten of my books that Butterfly sells. Their inventory is running low – make them order more! Here are the books of mine that they sell:

  • Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers
  • Table Tennis Doubles for Champions
  • Table Tennis Tips
  • More Table Tennis Tips
  • Still More Table Tennis Tips
  • Yet Still More Table Tennis Tips
  • First Galactic Table Tennis Championships
  • Professional Coaches Table Tennis Handbook
  • The Spirit of Pong
  • Table Tennis Tales and Techniques

National Collegiate Table Tennis Championships
They were held this past weekend, Apr. 12-14, in Eua Claire, Wisconsin. Go to the NCTTA page for lots of coverage!

Kanak Jha
He’s back and he’s winning! Here are some links:

Dan Seemiller’s Top Twelve Table Tennis Moments
Here they are, from Eastern Kentucky Table Tennis.

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action!

Butterfly Training Tips

New from Pong Space

Talkin' Smash by JOOLA Ep11: The Difficult Task of Handling Pressure in Matches | Vitor Ishiy
Here’s the video (31:17) from Matt Hetherington.

About Rubbers and Why I Don't Talk About my Equipment
Here’s the video (16:48) from Olav Kosolosky, former finalist in Men’s Singles at the Belgium Nationals.

Ma Long and Fan Zhendong and Other Elite Table Tennis Players: Decoding the First Two Balls
Here’s the video (3:35) from Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis.

Motivation to Break Guiness World Records
Here’s the video (8:23) from Ti Long.

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

New from Street TT

A Sabbatical of “Anything Besides Table Tennis” Lifted Amy Wang From Her Lowest Point to the Paris Games
Here’s the article from Team USA.

World Ranking Table Tennis
Here’s the new page where they update the world rankings every day.

New from Steve Hopkins

New from USATT

New from ITTF

Tables Tennis?
Here’s the video (16 sec) as they take a lunch break.

Tenis de Mesa from Sevilla
Here’s their Facebook page, which has lots of good table tennis stuff. But what jumped out to me are a series of nice table tennis artworks they’ve been posting. (I’m guessing some is created with AI.) Here are some – if there’s a number in parenthesis, click on images to see others! (When I post to images in Facebook, I normally also link to the non-Facebook version, which you get by right-clicking and releasing on “Open image in new tab.” But there are too many here, so you’ll just have to get a Facebook account! It’s easy and free.)

When the Cat is Away...
Here’s the table tennis cartoon!

Adam vs. Enzo Angles
Here’s the video (13 min) from Adam Bobrow, where takes on the best player from Major League Table Tennis!

***
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April 8, 2024

Tip of the Week
Top Ten Things to Remember in Doubles.
(Excerpt from Table Tennis Doubles for Champions by Larry Hodges. April is Doubles Month!)

Weekend Coaching and My Short Stint as Head Tactical Coach for the Chinese National Team
I only coached one group junior session this past weekend (Beginning-Intermediate group) – our other coaches need the hours more than I do! I fed multiball for most of the session, then hit live with players the last 15 minutes or so. At the start we did a group shadow-practicing session, which is a good warmup, where we put the players through a series of stroking and footwork drills. Key things to remind players when they do this:

  • Lively feet;
  • Cover the wide corners when moving side to side;
  • Take a full stroke, with full shoulder turn on forehand;
  • Imagine you are hitting a real ball.

As always, footwork is key to all drills. Active feet are a must. As I said to one player during the session, “Your feet should move like rabbits, not dead hamsters!” Meanwhile, I continued our weekly “What’s your name, Coach?” joke. This weekend I explained that my name was Esargrate, and even spelled it for them. I told them to call me Coach Esargrate. (Say it out loud. They figured it out quickly.)

On a side note, remember how in last week’s April 1 blog I announced that China had hired me as the Head Tactics Coach for the Chinese National Team? Alas, when they picked me up at the airport I explained to them how I planned to convert the entire Chinese Team to the Seemiller grip. I was joking! But they have no sense of humor, and I never made it out of the airport. They put me on the next flight back home, alas. (If you look at the first letter of each line in last week’s blog, what it spells out is purely coincidental.)

Now go and enjoy the eclipse – and see my Butterfly Eclipse cartoon at the end below!

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action! They have two events left this season, a West Division event in Wichita, KS, Apr. 5-7, and the Championship Weekend at Loyola University, Chicago, IL, Apr. 27-28.

Butterfly Training Tips

New from Pingispågarna

New from Ti Long

New from PongSpace

New from Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis

The Dark Arts of Serving
Here’s the article by Tom Lodziak.

Roadmap to Learning Forehand Counter from Scratch
Here’s the video (20:43) from Drupe Table Tennis.

New from Ping Sunday/EmRatThich

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

New from National Collegiate Table Tennis Association
All articles by Michael Reff.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

Post Olympic Trials: A Thank You Note
Here’s the article by Rachel Sung.

Navigating The Role Of An Olympic Alternate
Here’s the article by Sally Moyland.

Coach Mingwei Ju: Shaping Young Talents and Building Community
Here’s the USATT article from Table Tennis America.

New from Table Tennis Media

New from ITTF

Frog Pong

Hypnotizing Ricocheting Ball
Here’s the video (15 sec)!

Someone Said Table Tennis is an Easy Sport
This is what happened to them! (Here’s the non-Facebook version.)

Table Tennis Daily Takes on the Butterfly Legends
Here’s the video (28:09) as they play (with a 3-0 spot) against Michael Maze, Kalinikos Kreanga, Werner Schlager, and Zoran Primorac.

Butterfly Eclipse
Here it is! I didn’t know they made ping-pong balls that big.

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April 1, 2024

Tip of the Week
What Makes a Great Doubles Partnership?
(Excerpt from Table Tennis Doubles for Champions by Larry Hodges. April is Doubles Month!)

=>BREAKING NEWS - I’ve Been Hired as Head Tactical Coach for the Chinese National Team
After 48 years coaching in the US, next week I start my new job coaching the top Chinese
professional players as the new Head Tactical Coach for the Chinese National Team. I’ve
reviewed videos of their players for months, and after weeks of emailing back and forth,
I wrote up a detailed report with my tactical analysis last week to China’s head coach,
Liu Guoliang. He read my book, Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers, and says he’s its biggest
fan. I look forward to working with Ma Long, Fan Zhendong, Wang Chuqin, and the
others. I fly to Beijing on April 8 – I’m already packed. So, to all my fellow coaches and
other US friends, when you next see me, I’ll be coaching China. They’ll use my tactics against
Lily Zhang, Amy Wang, Kanak Jha, Nikhil Kumar, the Naresh brothers, and other US players.
Sorry! (The whole Chinese team is now required to read Table Tennis Doubles for Champions!)

Table Tennis Doubles for Champions
What, you mean you still haven’t bought my new book!!!??? I’ve been patient with you, but if you don’t buy it today, tomorrow you will be docked 100 rating points.
=>SPECIAL NOTE – if you have a table tennis site and would like to feature or review the book, let me know and I can send you a free copy (print or pdf).

US Junior Trials – Part 1
I flew down to West Monroe, Louisiana, March 24-30, for the first of the two US Junior Team Trials. (Part 2 is at the 888 Club in Burlingame, CA, May 24-27 – I expect to be there.) Here are complete results of Part 1. The tournament ran well, run by Vlad Farcas with referee Linda Leaf. They even provided me with a chair when I explained that (when spectating and not coaching) I couldn’t sit in the bleachers for more than five minutes without straining my back, since they had no back support. The hotel was a seven-minute walk away. The playing facility was excellent, with good lighting and flooring, and extra tables for practice. On the down side, getting to West Monroe is tricky – not a lot of flights going there.

Here are two USATT articles:

I ran into difficulties prepping our players before the Trials. Why? Let’s see, first I injured my neck while chopping to a player (to prepare him for a chopper at the Trials), and wore a neck brace for four days, until four days before we left for the Trials. Then, the day before leaving for the Trials, while stepping a barrier, I put my foot down wrong and sprained my right ankle. I hobbled around for the rest of the session, then went straight to Walgreens, where I bought an ankle brace that I would wear throughout the Trials. It worked – I was able to play, though I had to wear running shoes for the extra support, which felt like playing on stilts. While the ankle problem made movement and forehand shots tricky, it didn’t affect my backhand blocking, and so I ended up doing lots of that – my backhand blocking in a drill is still a wall. Another problem is that since I was favoring my right ankle, it put pressure on my knees and back, which also began to hurt. But I survived.

We had six players from MDTTC competing – Stanley Hsu, Mu Du, Ryan Lin, Winston Wu, Richik Ghosh, and Carmen Yu. I coached all but Ryan and Carmen in some matches, along with fellow MDTTC coaches Cheng Yinghua and Wang Qingliang. Coach Lai from Taiwan coached Ryan. (Ryan spent much of the last year training in Taiwan.) Carmen was coached by her dad, Thomas Yu. As usual, there were many ups and downs. It was jaw-dropping watching some of them pull off great wins and then lose to seemingly weaker players – playing in a Trials isn’t easy! Lots of pressure. Stanley (15) won the Under 17 Boys’ Trials and finished sixth in Under 19. Mu Du (15) finished sixth in Under 17 Boys. Carmen finished third in Under 15 Girls and sixth in Under 17.

As usual, I spent a bunch of time watching videos of opponents and taking notes. I also brought my giant racket case, the one with six rackets of different surfaces. All but the hardbat racket have regular inverted (Tenergy) on the reverse side. I used two of the rackets to prepare players for opponents, the long pips chopping racket and the short pips racket. The six rackets had:

  1. Long pips with thin sponge (chopping blade)
  2. Long pips with no sponge (push-blocking blade)
  3. Medium long pips
  4. Short pips
  5. Antispin
  6. Hardbat

As usual, lots of tactical issues came up. Here are a few.

  • One opponent ate up any serve that went the least bit long, even ripping serves that were half-long, where the second bounce was right over the white line – he had enough power to right over the table. So we had to go to shorter serves. Fortunately, the opponent didn’t have a good short game, and so returned the short serves long, which gave my player the attack. Many of the short serves were no-spin and were popped up. He started leaning in over the table as my player served, so a few sudden deep serves paid off.
  • One bad loss came about for one simple reason – the opponent would serve backspin, my player would push long to the backhand, and the opponent would backhand down the line. The backhand loop itself wasn’t that strong, but my player felt uncomfortable against it and missed it over and over, leading to a close loss.
  • One of Stanley’s opponents had short pips on the forehand. Before the match I pulled out my short-pips racket and warmed him up with it for 20 minutes. It paid off.
  • There was a lot of focus on ball placement, both for rallies and serves.
  • Heavy pushes to the backhand were effective in a surprising number of matches, but not always. Against short serves, it’s almost always best to mix in short and long pushes, and flips, and adjust the percentages based on the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, and their serves.

US Olympic Trials
Here are the results. Here are some links. (I wasn’t there.)

Ping Pong Leadership: 18 Principles to Succeed at Any Table in Business, Sports, and Life
Here’s the new book by Justin Bookey, 293 pages. I’m in the book, where I told Justin about a match I once played where I used all sorts of theatrics, faking difficulties and missing on purpose, to convince the opponent to keep chopping (which I was very good against) rather than attacking (where he might have challenged me). The section is titled, “When Deception is Fair Play.” Here’s the book’s description from Amazon:

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.

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.

In the 1970s, the leaders of the US and China famously used friendly table tennis matches as a first step in thawing decades of icy relations—an effort dubbed Ping Pong Diplomacy. Ping Pong Leadership takes the next step, showing leaders of all types how to envision and create meaningful change, from small business to the Fortune 500 and broader communities.

Along with exclusive insights from leaders in commerce, culture, and technology, this book distills lessons from the world’s most-played sport into 18 actionable and unforgettable “Pong Principles.”

For leaders, entrepreneurs, and competitors of all kinds, Ping Pong Leadership is a powerful guide to success at any table.

Dana Hanson RIP
The long-time table tennis aficionado left us two days ago. Here's In Memory of Dana Hanson by the Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina Table Tennis Community. Here’s what USTT Hall of Famer Sean O’Neill wrote of him on Facebook:

The entire table tennis community lost one of our greatest supporters and lover of the game with the passing of Dana Hanson this evening. Dana played out of the Richmond Table Tennis club, but was a regular at the US Open, US Nationals and United States Table Tennis Hall of Fame annual dinners. Dana loved to play singles and doubles. Condolences go out to the members of RTTC, Moni Rot, and David + Donna Sakai who were close friends of Dana. Our sports brings together players of all kinds, young and old, big and small, and kind and generous. Dana possessed all of the best attributes of our game and he will be sorely missed by all that had the pleasure to hid the ball and play a match against him.

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action! They have two events left this season, a West Division event in Wichita, KS, Apr. 5-7, and the Championship Weekend at Loyola University, Chicago, IL, Apr. 27-28.

News from All Over
Since I’ve been away two weeks (coaching at US Junior Trials), as I often do when I’m away for more than a week, 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.

Chop Block in Table Tennis: How-To & When To Use It
Here’s the article by Alex Horscroft at PingPongRuler.

Fan Zhendong Slammed
Here’s the article from the South China Morning Post (in English). The full title is, “Champion China table tennis player slammed for losing crucial Singapore game after ‘joyfully singing’ at Taylor Swift gig.”

Chess at Light Speed
Here’s the article from the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, WA. The full title is, “Ping-pong players from all skill levels, ages and countries of origin flock to play ‘chess at light speed’ in weekly club gathering.”

The Talent Has Arrived
Here’s where you can buy this table tennis shirt at Amazon!

Crowd Pong
Here’s the cartoon!

It’s Safe to Say I’m Winning: Rwanda Ping-Pong
Here’s the cartoon! (Here’s the non-Facebook version.)

Beat Me, Win $100 [China]
Here’s the video (15:20) from Adam Bobrow!

Tennis Stereotypes
Here’s the video (9:08) from Pongfinity!

Non-Table Tennis -  Confederate Cavalry on a Plane
My humorous science fiction story, “Confederate Cavalry on a Plane” was published at Metastellar on March 20. A physics professor and his student on a passenger plane argue about the possibility of infinite alternate universes, while being robbed blind by a bratty kid. The professor bets the student that even the most unlikely event possible must happen, leading to three very confused Confederate Cavalry charging down the aisle of the plane.

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