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 TipsMore 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!

Next Blog: January 15
I’ll be out of town Dec. 15-27 for the US Open and then Christmas, and again Jan. 2-10 for the $36,600 Ping Pong World Cup in Mexico City (plus some sightseeing afterwards). So next blog will be Monday, Jan. 15. There will be a Tip of the Week on Monday, Dec. 18, and Monday Jan. 8. Have a great holiday season!

Tips of the Week
Dec. 11: Why Aren't You Pushing Heavy?
Dec. 18: Are You Too Backhand Oriented?

“Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers” Featured in Table Tennis England
Here’s the article. “If you are looking for a stocking filler for a table tennis fanatic, then a book on tactics by a leading coach may be right up their street.” (That’s Stanley Hsu I’m coaching in the picture they used.) Here’s where you can buy the book on Amazon – and note the 206 reviews and ratings! Get your order for that or any of my other books in today! (Makes a great Christmas present – I get almost as many sales in November and December as the rest of the year combined.) Meanwhile, I’ve finished writing the primary text for my next book, “Table Tennis Doubles for Champions.” I still have to arrange some photo sequences and graphics, which I’ll probably do in January, and then do writeups of those sequences.

Weekend Coaching and a Funny Conversation with an Eight-Year-Old on Looping
It was a slow weekend – I only coached in two group sessions. In the first, the focus was on attacking backspin. I fed multiball for 90 minutes. It’s always interesting to watch how kids pick things up differently. Many are natural mimics and have nice technique almost from the start. Others get into a bad groove and you spend most of your time trying to fix their technique up. I had a fascinating discussion on looping with an eight-year-old girl I hadn’t fed backspin to before.

  • Larry: “Do you know how to loop?”
  • Girl: “What’s a loop?”
  • Larry: It’s a way to attack against backspin.”
  • Girl: “What’s a backspin?”
  • Larry: “That’s when the ball moves like this.” (I demonstrated.)
  • Girl: “That’s a push spin.”
  • Larry: “A push is a backspin against backspin. Do you know how to topspin against a backspin?”
  • Girl: “You mean this?” (She shadow-practices a perfect forehand loop.)
  • Larry: “Exactly! Let’s try looping against backspin now.” (I feed her backspin balls and she loops every one of them perfectly. She’s been doing this for months with her coach but didn’t know what it was called.)

The next kid up didn’t want to move his feet or body, would just drop his arm without dropping his shoulder and, using just his arm, kept putting the ball into the net. I decided my project for the day was to fix up his loop. We went through many baskets of balls, rotating between him and two others – one on ball pickup, one practicing serves – but by the end of the session he was doing it pretty well.

In the other session I spent over an hour as a practice partner, putting them through numerous footwork drills. After the session was done, I went off to the side and practiced my doubles serves, in preparation for playing Over 60 Men’s Doubles at the US Open, and then a 30-minute practice session with Kosta Nikopoulos and his big two-winged looping game.

US Open
I leave for the US Open this Friday, Dec. 15. This will be my 39th US Open in a row – I’ve been to every US Open and Nationals starting in 1984, and several before that, going back to the 1976 US Open. (It would be 40 in a row except they skipped 2020 due to Covid.) In recent decades I’ve mostly coached and played hardbat events on the side, though I’m normally a sponge player. However, our local MDTTC juniors mostly go to the US Nationals in July and North American Teams in November, and we only have two of them at the US Open this year. Since MDTTC Wang Qingliang is also going and will be coaching them, I’ll mostly be just playing this year. I’m in five events:

  • Over 60 Men’s Doubles with Stephen Yeh. We’re seeded second. I was a little leery of playing this event as I’m a bit rusty when it comes to match play, especially when it comes to receive. But doubles serves are a bit simpler, and I practiced my flipping a bit to prepare, as well as practicing my doubles serves.
  • Hardbat Doubles with Bin Hai Chu. We’re the top seeds. I’ve won this event 14 times with four different partners, but it gets harder every year since I’m older. This is my first time playing with Bin. But hardbat is one of the few events where older players can sometimes compete a little more closely with younger players.
  • Over 40 Hardbat. I’m top seed and have won the event eight times.
  • Over 60 Hardbat. I’m second seed, which is ironic because I’m top seed in Over 40 Hardbat. But that’s because Jian Zhuang isn’t in Over 40 Hardbat. (He’s in lots of senior events with regular sponge.)
  • Hardbat Singles. I’m seeded seventh. I’ve won the event two times, but that was a while back when I was faster. But who knows – I can dream of winning again, right? When faced with the overwhelming power of my forehand, maybe my opponents will collapse in fear.

SafeSport
I just took the annual SafeSport refresher course, required of all USATT coaches and other officials or leaders. The course is called “SafeSport Trained - USA Table Tennis.” It says to allot 90 minutes. I’m a professional writer and read hours every day, and I am well above average in reading speed and comprehension. And yet it took me 2 hours 26 minutes to complete the course, or 146 minutes, which is a LOT more than 90 minutes. There were 107 segments (!), including 16 videos that take up close to 40 minutes by themselves. There are three tests, which I aced – 6/6, 6/6, and 7/7. Only one question had me scratching my head, but I figured it out. (It is open book, so I just Googled it.) I also think there was a lot of useless material. I learned that hitting, slapping, and kicking an athlete are physical abuse, and that calling players names is verbal abuse. Really? Lots of things like that. I wish they’d make it a lot shorter and simpler, with an emphasis on looking things up on their webpages when there’s a potential problem rather than memorizing all the problems. But we’re in a country where I’ve seen warning labels that say, “Do not eat this label.” But seriously, if the point was to educate coaches on when to take action when they suspect abuse, the course would be better if it were about 25% as long, with the focus almost entirely on recognizing possible abuse (which mostly comes under the category of “duh!”), and then looking up what to do.

Major League Table Tennis

Butterfly Training Tips

Mastering the Short Game in High Level Table Tennis
Here’s the article by Zheng Pu.

Patience, Placement and Pressure
Here’s the article by Tom Lodziak.

Short Pips vs Long Pips – What Are The Similarities and Differences, and Which Should I Play With?
Here’s the article at Racket Insight by Xinyu.

Talkin' Smash Podcast by JOOLA Ep6: The Atmosphere at Live Table Tennis Events with Ryan Willard
Here’s the video (36:30) from Matt Hetherington.

New from PongSpace

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

New from TT Crunch

Seth Pech vs Haase Konrad + Backhand Flip BONUS TIP
Here’s the video (11:36) from Seth Pech, with his usual comments and analysis.

Improve Topspin vs. Topspin
Here’s the video (2:38) from Pingispågarna.

The Unreturnable Table Tennis Serve
Here’s the video (7:27) from Nick Rudd Table Tennis.

Ma Long and Fan Zhendong Training
Here’s the video (70 sec) from Taco Backhand.

Ask the Coach
Here are the latest questions from PingSkills.

World Youth Championship’s Trip
Here’s the article by Sally Moyland

NCTT Top 25 List
Here’s the article from NCTTA.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from ITTF

Ping Pong Evolution Shirt
Isn’t it time you got one?

Banned Ping Pong Technique
Here’s the video (5 sec) – headhunting!

I Challenged a World #1 - Xu Xin
Here’s the video (12:23) from Adam Bobrow!

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Send us your own coaching news!

Tip of the Week
Fake-Outs.

USA Table Tennis Election
This is it, the final week for USATT members to vote – voting ends at 7PM Eastern time on Friday, Dec. 8. If you don’t vote, you cannot gripe about ANYTHING that USATT does for the rest of posterity. (Worse, you may be fined 100 rating points.) On Monday, Nov. 6, at 11AM eastern time, if you were a USATT member for at least the previous 60 days and are age 18 or over, you should have received the election email. Open it and VOTE!!!

I blogged about this on November 6, 2023 and November 13, 2023. There are five candidates running. While all may be excellent candidates, I strongly urge you to vote for Dennis Taylor. Here is his Campaign Flyer, which gives you his background and why he’s running. I’ve known and worked with him for 25 years. He’s a former board member, chaired the High Performance Committee, was on or advisor to eleven committees, was USATT secretary and took minutes for over one hundred USATT board meetings, and was the pro bono USATT lawyer for 18 years. He helped me run the Eastern Open one year and was a student in my adult training sessions for years at MDTTC. He is a rock of integrity and will bring that, experience, and vision to our sport. Some of the others running may be fine candidates as well, but none stand out for me as Dennis.

The election is being run by YesElections, which appears to be fair.

Weekend Coaching
I coached in three group junior sessions over the weekend, plus a one-hour session with Navin Kumar. With the juniors, this gets repetitive, but yes, the focus was on fundamentals, as well as on fundamentals, and we also worked on fundamentals when we weren’t working on fundamentals.

I worked with a number of them on recovering from wide-angle shots. It’s fundamental (though many players and even coaches forget this) to follow through back into position. That means if you play a forehand from the wide forehand, you don’t just finish there; you follow through back into position, i.e. to your left if you are a righty. If you play a forehand from the backhand side, you don’t just finish there; you follow through back into position, i.e. to your right if you are a righty. When players play a forehand from the backhand side and have trouble recovering against a block to the wide forehand, it’s rarely because they are too slow; it’s because of their poor recovery from the previous shot.

I did multiball one entire session, often two players at a time, with a third doing ball pickup and a fourth practicing serves, with the players rotating every two minutes. One of my favorite drills is alternate backspin and topspin, where player has to adjust to each, looping the first, and (depending on level and style) looping or smashing the second. For the two players, I had a range of drills, and it allowed to players to practice and move almost continuously. Two examples (all righties):

  • Player A stands on forehand side. I feed a forehand, a backhand, and a forehand in rapid succession as player moves to hit each shot. Player B starts on backhand side, a few feet back so Player A has room to hit backhand. As Player A moves to hit his third shot (a forehand), Player B moves in, and he gets backhand, forehand, backhand. Then he steps back, and we repeat with Player A’s forehand, backhand, forehand. When we rotate, Player A becomes Player B; Player B moves to ball pickup; Ball Pickup player moves to servers, and Server becomes Player A.
  • Player A and B line up on backhand side. Player A does the “2-1” drill – a backhand, a forehand from backhand side, then moves to play a forehand from the forehand side. Then Player A circles around as Player B does the drill. Then it’s Player A’s turn again.  

With Navin, we did a lot of work on forehand smash, and on attacking with his backhand long pips. There are two fundamental ways to attack with the long pips, mostly against backspin. (You can also attack against no-spin and topspin, but it’s trickier, especially since he plays with no sponge under the pips.) You can attack with a conventional backhand drive. Or you can do a quick, off-the-bounce “bump,” essentially a quick and aggressive block. We also did a bunch of down-the-line work. I also challenged him with my forehand attack (my strength) against his backhand block (his strength) drill, where I really went after him at full power. It was good practice for me as well!

CAS Arbitrator Confirms Table Tennis Athlete Kanak Jha Violated Provisional Suspension
I feel really bad about posting this one, but it is major news. I’ve known Kanak since he was a kid, have coached against him numerous times (always in friendly fashion), and even taught him my “blow the ball in the air” trick when he was about ten. Alas, they say he violated his suspension by taking part in an official TT activity way back on Dec. 14, 2022, and so his suspension, which was supposed to end on Dec. 1, 2023 (three days ago) has been extended to March 15, 2024. I am looking forward to seeing him back in action.

Major League Table Tennis

Butterfly Training Tips

5 Table Tennis MISTAKES and How to Fix Them - Important for ALL Players
Here’s the video (5:54) from Nick Rudd.

Incredible Serve Tactics!!
Here’s the video (3:34) from Pingispågarna.

World’s BEST Table Tennis Server vs TTD Team!
Here’s the video (5:29) from Table Tennis Daily.

How to Properly Chop Block
Here’s the video (2:48) from PongSpace. “Women's WR# 13 Yang Xiaoxin teaches you how to properly chop block with long pips on the backhand.”

New from Ti Long

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

Ask the Coach
Here are the latest questions from PingSkills.

Enjoy Gameplay of World Number One
Here’s the video (1.25) featuring Fan Zhendong from Taco Backhand.

The Best Rallies Of Tibor Klampar | Hungarian Legend
Here’s the video (9:53). In the mid-1970s, he was the first of the great close-to-table backhand topspinners and the first to use speed glue – a bicycle glue that made the sponge much bouncier and spinnier. He was two-time World Doubles Champion (with Jonyer), was one of the three Hungarians who won the 1979 World Team title over the Chinese (along with Jonyer and Gergely), and was generally ranked in the top five or so for a decade – I think he reached #2.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

From Their Illinois Basement to the World, Brothers Sid and Nandan Naresh Are Rising Stars in Table Tennis
Here’s the news item from Oct. 30 from TeamUSA, the Olympic news page. 

New from USATT

New from ITTF
Note the item on Henry Kissinger. I met and talked to him once at one of the Ping-Pong Diplomacy anniversaries. Like many, I have mixed feelings on him. His understanding of international situations and foreign leaders made him a valuable advisor, but his Realpolitic recommendations were often problematic. 

Scary Ping-Pong Balls
Here they are!

We All Know Someone Like This
Here’s the video (40 sec) of the typical Slow Server.

I Grew Up Playing Ping-Pong
Here’s the standup segment (60 sec) by comedian Jimmy O Yang!

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Tip of the Week
Forcing or Adjusting Your Game.

North American Teams
I just completed another North American Teams, my 47th in a row. (It would be 48 except they skipped 2020 because of Covid.) My first one was in 1976, where I played with Mike Shapiro and Jackie Heyman. I was a player for most of those years, then a player/coach, but in modern times I’ve only been coaching. Let’s see, 47 Teams, three days each, that’s 141 days at the Teams! (Almost five months.)

This year I think I set two records that will never be broken. Over those three days I coached 102 matches, going 61-41 in all. Has anyone every coached that many matches in a tournament? I coached 46 matches on Saturday, which has got to be a record for one day. On that day I coached from 8AM until 11:40PM, even eating meals while coaching. In several of them I coached two matches at the same time. (I normally only do that with lower-rated teams, where coaching is a bit simpler.) When one team finished a team match, I’d move to another. On Friday and Sunday I coached 28 matches each day.

There were 1096 players on 283 teams, with 166 tables. Here are complete results. As usual, I didn’t see any of the big matches as I was on the back tables coaching our junior teams. The great news was that all of the tables had rubberized flooring – no more playing on concrete. Playing on concrete hurts my knees, and will likely hurt yours as well if you do it a lot. Rubberized flooring also gives better footing, so the level of play is higher. As usual, a big thanks to the JOOLA crew and staff for running the event.

We had 47 players on 13 Maryland Table Tennis Center (MDTTC) junior teams, with seven coaches: me, Wang Qingliang, Cheng Yinghua, Jack Huang, Lidney Castro, Bruno Ventura Dos Anjos, and Wang Cheng. (Not all the coaches were available at all times, so we usually had 5-6 coaches at work.) Khaleel Asgarali from the Washington DC TTC also helped out with some of our teams. There was a time when I organized much of the MDTTC coaching, but I’m retired from that and so Coach Wang did the scheduling of coaches. We have an online spreadsheet we use, where the parents and team captains put in who they are playing as soon as the schedule comes up, and then Wang puts in the coaching assignments, rotating so each team gets a coach as often as possible. The kids did really well this year – I’ll go out on a limb and predict that they will average over 100 points each in rating gains.

Four MDTTC teams won medals in the 17 divisions:

  • MDTTC 3 (AJ Salatov, Justin Liu, Adam Fan) won Division 8.
  • MDTTC 10 (Michael Zhang, Leo Li, Michael Meng, and Aarush Sharma) won Division 15.
  • MDTTC 11 (Yani Morse-Achtenberg, Audrey Liu, Agastya Brahmandam, Batra Aarav) made the semifinals of Division 15, losing a close 5-4 battle, or it would have been an all MDTTC final.
  • MDTTC 2 (Feng Xue, Jonathan Cai, Stephanie Zhang, William Wu) made the semifinals of Division 4, also losing a close 5-4.

The funniest moments of the tournament:

  • A kid called a timeout so he could tie his shoes.
  • While coaching one team, after coaching continuously all morning, I mentioned that I could use a Dr Pepper. Within minutes various parents had given me five of them.
  • In game two of a match, my player got frustrated because nothing felt right, and his opponent also seemed to be having trouble – and then they realized they were using each other’s paddles.

Here are some of the best team names:

Here are some coaching highlights.

  • I think the theme of the tournament in the matches I coached was “Attack the elbow.” Taller players especially have trouble covering their middle – the midpoint between forehand and backhand, normally around the elbow. Shorter players have more trouble covering the corners. Since I was coaching kids and many of their opponents were adults or taller kids, that meant going after their elbows, sometime over and over, other times to move the opponent out of position as they cover the middle with forehand or backhand, thereby opening a corner to attack. The other benefit is that by going to the middle, it cuts off the angles the opponent can play, which means they couldn’t effectively go after the wide corners as they’d like to do when playing kids. This led to a number of wins. In one match, the kid I was coaching lost the first two games badly against a tall girl who was rated much higher. I told him to put an X on her playing elbow and just go after it relentlessly. He won the next three games and the match.
  • We won a lot of points with well-placed, heavy pushes, especially against opposing junior players. The key words are well-placed and heavy. Just pushing over and over to keep the ball in play is a bad habit, but if you do something with the push, such as placing it and pushing heavy, it becomes more effective while also developing a valuable weapon even at higher levels. (Yes, a well-placed heavy push works at higher levels as long as it’s not overdone.)
  • The kids had ongoing lessons on playing “the three spots” – often I’d quiz them on what the three spots were, and almost all knew it meant the wide corners and middle (playing elbow). They learned when to play all three, and when to mostly go over two of them.
  • Another common theme was to take out the opponent’s forehand by returning serves very wide to the backhand. They are learning that a well-placed, consistent receive is better than a more aggressive but less consistent or poorly placed one. It’s all about ball control.
  • Another thing I stressed with the kids is that if you have a game plan, then you are less likely to be nervous. Nervousness comes from uncertainty. If you know, for example, that you are going to go after the opponent’s elbow every chance, that simplifies things and takes out much of the uncertainty. (This will be a future Tip of the Week.)
  • Another issue I stressed was that the primary purpose of the serve is to set up your attack. That means that in most cases, unless the opponent does something to stop it, you should follow your serve with an attack 100% of the time.
  • Many of our players struggled against forehand tomahawk serves to the wide forehand. It became an in-tournament lesson on how to do so. Here’s my Tip on Returning the Tomahawk Serve and Lefty Pendulum Serve.
  • In the lower divisions, many of our younger players and opponents served illegally, mostly because the hand tossing the ball went under the table when they served. This is because the table is higher to them, and so trying to keep the ball above the table when throwing it up is tricky at first. They don’t really get any advantage directly from serving this way, but they do need to learn to serve legally.

USA Table Tennis Election
I blogged about this on November 6, 2023 and November 13, 2023. There are five candidates running. While all may be excellent candidates, I urge you to vote for Dennis Taylor. The election closes on Dec. 8, so it’s time to do your patriotic duty to USATT (if you are a USATT member) and VOTE!!!

Holiday Shopping – Buy My Books!
Now that Thanksgiving is over, it’s time to do some serious Christmas, Hanukkah, and other holidays gift-buying – time to buy my table tennis books! (But feel free to buy my science fiction ones as well.) Here’s a listing with descriptions of each. Below are direct links to the table tennis books. 

You can also buy a few from 5-time US Men’s Singles Champion Dan Seemiller!

World Youth Championships
Here’s the ITTF home page for the event taking place right now, Nov. 26 – Dec. 3, in Nova Gorica, Slovenia. Here’s where you can find Results. Here is TeamUSA in Early Action by Steve Hopkins.

Major League Table Tennis

Butterfly Training Tips

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich
22 new videos this past week!

New from Ti Long

New from PongSpace/International Referee Linda Leaf

Ask the Coach
Here are the latest questions from PingSkills.

Talkin' Smash Podcast by JOOLA Ep5: Overcoming Challenge in Serve Receive
Here’s the video (24:37) with Matt Hetherington and Lily Zhang.

Tahl Leibovitz, Jenson Van Emburgh, and Ian Seidenfeld Book Tickets to Paris Paralympics
Here’s the USATT article by Barbara Wei.

ITTF General News

ITTF Chengdu Previews (on the ITTF Mixed Team World Cup, Dec. 4-10 in Chengdu, CHN)

Mengel Surprise Winner in Portugal
Here’s the article by Steve Hopkins.

Coloradans with Neurodegenerative Diseases Turn to Pingpong for Rehabilitation
Here’s the article from the Denver Post. “Scientists are paying attention.” “NeuroPong program, led by founder and CEO Antonino Barbera, marries medicine with a love of table tennis.”

It’s Raining Ping-Pong Balls
Here’s the picture from Steve Rowe/Aerobic Table Tennis! (Here’s the non-Facebook version.)

Are You a Ping Pong Wizard?
Here’s where you can buy the shirt at Amazon! Here’s another version.

You’ve Seen Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, Now Watch These Other Great Science Saru Anime
Here’s the article – see segment on Ping Pong the Animation.

Retirement Gets Ping-Ponged
Here’s the cartoon!

FUNNIEST Way to Practise TABLE TENNIS!
Here’s the video (7:24) from Pingispågarna – Card Pong!

World's Smallest Ping Pong Table
Here’s the video (8:02) from Pongfinity!

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Tip of the Week
Are You Maximizing Your Angles?

Group Coaching and the Teams
This past week we had a tournament at our club so I only did one group training session, with our advanced group (about 1700 to 2500). You want to know the difference between coaching elite juniors versus the novice ones? At the novice level, we focus on fundamentals. At the elite level we focus on . . . fundamentals!!! Yes, it’s true for both, though the fundamentals are a bit more advanced at the elite level. For example, at the novice level we work on basic strokes and footwork. In the elite session this past week, I worked with several players on recovery – basically, following through back into position. (See Follow Through Back Into Position After Forehand Looping.)

We’re all preparing for the North American Teams this weekend, Fri-Sun Nov. 24-26, the day after Thanksgiving. Here’s the alphabetized player listing and player listing by rating. MDTTC has 47 junior players playing on 13 teams. I’ll be one of six coaches, so we’ll be jumping from one team to another. This will be my 47th consecutive Teams, starting the year I started playing in 1976. (It would be 48 except they skipped 2020 due to Covid.) There are 1060 players entered on 273 teams. That’s 3.88 per team. Each team has 3-5 players. Format is best of nine, three against three. Here’s an article on the Teams by Matt Hetherington, JOOLA Table Tennis Team Tournament Continues to Level Up for the Players.

USATT Election
Four of the five candidates running for the USATT board have posted notes and answered questions at the PongSpace forum. Here's your chance to ask the candidates questions. If you are a USATT member aged 18 or over, who was a member of USATT for at least 60 days before the election began on Nov. 6, then you received an email from USATT at 11AM on that day. (If you did not, then contact Mark Thompson at USATT. They may not have had your correct email address.) As I wrote about in my blogs on November 6 and November 13, I encourage you to vote for Dennis Taylor.

Holiday Shopping – Buy My Books!
Christmas, Hanukkah, and other holidays are coming up – time to buy my table tennis books! (But feel free to buy my science fiction ones as well.) Here’s a listing with descriptions of each. Below are direct links to the table tennis books. 

You can also buy a few from 5-time US Men’s Singles Champion Dan Seemiller!

Fastest Smash
I keep seeing this fastest smash meme about a new record being set. (Here’s the non-Facebook version.) And here’s where it’s listed in the International Book of Records. But here’s the problem – it says he smashed at 195 kilometers per hour (121 miles per hour). Is that realistic? For years there have been players trying to set records for fastest smash. According to the Guiness Book of World Records – which has been around a lot longer than the International Book of Records – the record for fastest smash is 116 kph (72 mph). So, they are claiming that the record went from 116 kph to 195 (72 mph to 121)!!! They do show video. For comparison, here’s Table Tennis Daily’s World’s Fastest Smash (2:32), with world #12 Dimitrij Ovtcharov (former world #1), who is known for his power. His maximum speed? 113 kph (70 mph), just short of the Guiness World Record. I don’t see any huge difference in the speeds they hit. So, I’m guessing either the 195 kph was a problem with the timing device, or they are measuring it differently. For example, one may be measuring it as the ball leaves the racket, the other as it hits the far side of the table (after slowing down from air resistance), or something like that.

So, what to believe? When I do a search for “table tennis” in Guiness, I get 263 different records. When I do the same for IBR, I get exactly two – fastest smash and “Most bounces of a table tennis ball using table tennis paddle against a wall in one minute” – and that record is by a six-year-old! (I’m fairly certain I could break that record, as could many of you.)

Major League Table Tennis

MDTTC Open
Here are the results of the tournament held at MDTTC this past weekend.

Parapan American Games and Pan American Veterans
Here are two events going on in Chile and Fort Lauderdale

Butterfly Training Tips

Serve & Sweat 30 Day Challenge
Here’s the info and signup page from Peak Performance and Kevin Finn.  “Elevate Your Serving Skills: Produce more spin, create more effects…push the boundaries of your serves to new levels. Adding 1 or 2 points to your game will give you the chance to develop more opportunities and beat more players. If you want to feel like a dominant and unstoppable force when serving, then make sure you join us!”

Destroy Your Opponents With This Serve
Here’s the video (5:31) from Table Tennis Daily, featuring Jan-Ove Waldner and his down-the-line ace serve. It’s one of my best serves too! And check out the no-look serve at 3:26! Alas, the serve, as shown there, isn't actually legal - the ball goes behind his head, and for a split second there's no way the opponent (whether righty or lefty) can see the ball, and since the ball must be visible to the receiver throughout the serve, it is illegal. However, many world-class players toss the ball behind their head and they are rarely called for it. 

How To Do the World’s FASTEST Table Tennis Serve
Here’s the video (6:43) from Nick Rudd. He has a lot of other videos, most of them instructional.

Practice Your Backhand Serve
Here’s the video (1:35) from Angela Guan/PongSpace. “Angela will help give you some tips and tricks to practice your backhand serve.”

VR Table Tennis/11 /Table Tennis
They have a lot of instructional videos. Here are some from the past week.

Don’t Neglect Your Defence
Here’s the article by Tom Lodziak. (In defense of this headline, in Europe they spell it “Defence.”)

New from Ti Long

Improve Your Footwork
Here’s the video (4:05) from Pingispågarna.

Ask the Coach
Here are the latest questions from PingSkills.

PingSunday/EmRatThich
About a zillion new videos there this past week.

Technical and Tactical Actions of the World’s Leading Male Table Tennis Players Between 1970 and 2021
Here’s the technical article by Jerzy Grycan, Małgorzata Kołodziej, Ziemowit Bańkosz, from the Journal of Sports Medicine and Science.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

USA Table Tennis Invited to ITTF Mixed Team World Cup 2023 in Chengdu
Here’s the USATT news item.

New from ITTF

Greatest Table Tennis Hits of All Time
World Table Tennis just came out with Volume 4. Here are all of them.

Table Tennis Hawaiian Shirt
Here it is at Amazon! I just weakened and bought it.

Astronaut Water Pong
Here’s the video (1:40)!

Ultimate Level Ping Pong
Here’s the video (9:32) from Pongfinity!

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Tip of the Week
Coaching Between Games for the Non-Coach.

2023 USA Table Tennis Election and USATT Problems
=>(Skip ahead if you have no interest in the morbid world of USATT politics.)
I blogged about the election last week. If you are a USATT member 18 and over, you should have received an email about the election at 11AM Eastern Time last Monday, Nov. 6. (I think you had to be a member for at least two months before that date.) Once again I am urging you to vote for Dennis Taylor. I know or know about the other four candidates, and I think most would be good officers, but Dennis is more proven.

One thing that often comes up when candidates are discussed are comments like, “He’s a nice guy.” That’s great if you want to have lunch with them--and Dennis is a nice guy. But what’s happened a LOT in USATT history is that the very people we think of as nice guys often just want to be nice guys, and so when elected to the board of directors, they just want to get along. Once elected, certain people treat them as gods, complimenting them every chance, and so the newly elected ones begin to feel “loyal” to the ones buttering them up. It’s intoxicating and leads to the infamous “Good Ol’ Boys” situation where everyone just falls into line. (The term often refers to Southerners, but it’s not just a southern thing.) And so they do not stand up to the abuses of power and policy problems that take place, ignoring them or accepting whatever rationalization they are given for it. They become enablers.

There’s a lot of abuse of power going on in USATT right now, as well as policy problems, with a number of enablers. I’ve blogged about some of these problems numerous times – for example, on Feb. 7, 2023, I pointed out and explained why the current chair of the board isn’t even legal, and other problems. (This is just one of many such issues. Sometime next year I’ll compile a more comprehensive list.) The facts are there, the board knows them, and yet a majority on the current board cannot stand up to those doing the abuse, even voting for a clearly illegal chair of the board. The irony is that one board member I discussed this with made the counter-argument that he thought Char was a “good chair,” and while he said he didn’t know if he was legal or not, he would support him regardless. He’d completely fallen under this “Good Ol’ Boys” spell even if it meant violating our own bylaws, and didn’t see that while most of the current board supports the current chair and administration, huge numbers of those outside the board do not. Another board member privately told me outright that he knew Char was not legal, and yet this board member voted to re-elect him for an illegal third two-year term. More on these issues next year. After three years of pointing out these problems to deaf ears, I’m not interested in these USATT people suddenly coming to me and, playing dumb, asking me what the problems are so they can now, with an election coming up, show newfound interest in belatedly fixing them. Where were they the past three years? If re-elected, would they disappear again for three years, only to re-emerge again when they once again face re-election? (Board members are generally elected to four-year terms.)

We need people who will stand up against such abuses and fix broken policies. I haven’t written much about these problems recently because, frankly, I’m sick of them since we can’t do anything about them with the current board. So, I’m instead waiting until the 2024 elections (one year from now), when most of the board will be up for election. I’ll be very vocal at that time. (There’s a chance I’ll run, but I really do not want to. I’ve had two different terms on the board, and both times I chose not to run for a second term. It simply isn’t fun.)

Weekend Coaching and Weekday Writing and Xu, Oh My!
I had three sessions this weekend. As noted previously, these days I mostly coach on weekends and at tournaments. (I was full-time for many years.) During the week I write about table tennis and write science fiction, one of my other major pastimes. Recently I’ve been writing up Tips of the Week, and have enough for every Monday now through February. But that, my science fiction writing, and several other projects meant that I’d put aside working on Table Tennis Doubles for Champions for a time. But I hope to get back to that soon. But the book won’t be out in time for the US Open, as I’d originally hoped.

In the training sessions I did a lot of emphasis on recovery. Players are often out of position for a shot and think they didn’t move fast enough when the reality is it’s a slow recovery from the previous shot that caused it. Here are two Tips of the Week on this: Recover from the Previous Shot and Follow Through Back Into Position After Forehand Looping.

We had the novice and beginning-intermediate players hit among themselves a lot this weekend. The key here is ball control. If they are hitting forehand to forehand, they need to go corner to corner. If one hits the ball toward the middle, it’ll throw off his partner, and the rally falls apart. So I kept harping on that, having them try to aim inside a one-foot area around the corner. The same for down-the-line shots, where I wanted them to keep the ball within a foot of the side of the table. (Higher-level players should keep it even closer.)

Some of you may remember Huazhang “Vincent” Xu. He was a former member of the Chinese National Team who lived, trained, and went to college in Maryland during the 1990s. His highest rating was 2777. When he went back to China, his rating had dropped to 2686 since he wasn’t training as hard at the end. He no longer plays but instead is a businessman in China. Last week he returned to the US for business, and we had a big dinner out. At the dinner was me, Xu and his wife, Cheng Yinghua, Jack Huang, Rocky Wang, his dad John Wang, and John’s wife. Todd Sweeris wanted to join us but was out of town – but we plan another one this week with Todd and Xu.

On a side note, I just did a count, and this is my 1,943rd table tennis blog (I used to do them daily, not just weekly), along with 627 Tips of the Week. Blog #2,000 will come around the end of 2024 or shortly after.

Butterfly Training Tips

Are You Making One of These Backhand Mistakes??
Here’s the video (23:21) from Seth Pech. “Fix Your Backhand from these 15 Common Mistakes.” Where was this when I started out 47 years ago??

How to Tomahawk Serve
Here’s the video (1:21) from Angela Guan/PongSpace.

Talkin' Smash by JOOLA Ep4: The Seriously Underrated Art of Service Practice
Here’s the video (46.38). “Former British International Craig Bryant joins host Matt Hetherington for this episode of Talkin' Smash on his specialist topic of the serve.”

How to Make Forehand Topspin Against Backspin Change Placement
Here’s the video (5:45) from Ti Long.

Blocking Exercises | Improve Reaction, Defense and Game Understanding
Here’s the video (2:38) from Pingispågarna.

Major League Table Tennis
Keep up to date with them from:

Lily Zhang Serves as US Flagbearer for 2023 Pan Am Games
Here’s the USATT news item by Barbara Wei.

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

Three Minutes of Timo Boll Destroying His Opponents
Here’s the video (3:18) from Taco Backhand.

Bowmar Sports Tournament Highlights

Liang Jingkun Wins in Taiyuan
Here’s the article by Steve Hopkins.

New from ITTF

Hamas Billionaires: Lifestyles of the Rich and Terrorists
Here’s the article from FOX News. Read it to learn about the rich Hamas leaders . . . or their table tennis. The thing of interest here is the picture of Khaled Mashaal playing table tennis. He’s the chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau and former head of the militant organization Hamas, and worth an estimated $4 billion. His racket is obscured by something hanging from the ceiling, but I bet he has an illegal racket. And note that he hit the last shot into the net!

Handicap’s Feat and “No Hands? No Problem!”
Here’s the article . . . and cartoon! “One-armed Bruna Alexandre is close to achieving her goal of competing in next year’s Paris Paralympics.” From the Daily Tribune.

Funny Table Tennis Graphics
Here’s the page from iStock/Getty Images. I like the first one, with sound effects!

Are You the Office Ping Pong Champion?
Then get the shirt to show it!

Beetle Bailey
Yesterday’s Beetle Bailey comic strip (Sunday’s) had a mention of table tennis, with Sarge holding a paddle and asking Beetle, “How about a little ping-pong?” (Beetle declines, they end up playing hopscotch.) Here’s a complete listing of all 32 Beetle Bailey Table Tennis Comics!

***
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Tip of the Week
Three Keys to Fast Reacting.

2023 USA Table Tennis Election
It’s time for another USATT election! This is a “special” one, to take up a spot on the board that was recently vacated. There are five candidates running for one position. Balloting starts today (Monday) at 11AM Eastern Time. Here is the election info page.

I strongly urge you to vote for Dennis Taylor. Here is his Campaign Flyer, which gives you his background and why he’s running. I’ve known and worked with him for 25 years. He’s a former board member, chaired the High Performance Committee, was on or advisor to eleven committees, was USATT secretary and took minutes for over one hundred USATT board meetings, and was the pro bono USATT lawyer for 18 years. He helped me run the Eastern Open one year and was a student in my adult training sessions for years at MDTTC. He is a rock of integrity and will bring that, experience, and vision to our sport.

The others running are Alex Figueroa, Dr. Tuan Le, Ludovic Gombos, and Derek May. Some of them are fine candidates as well, but none stand out for me as Dennis. He has more USATT experience than the other four combined by several levels – and in my humble opinion, he’s been on the “right” side of issues throughout.

Make sure to vote and ask your TT friends to vote as well! In fact, why not post links to Dennis’s campaign flyer and print them out for your club?

Weekend Coaching, White House, and Halloween
I was mostly a “walk-around coach” this weekend, meaning I mostly walked around and coached the players. (In many sessions I feed multiball or act as a one-on-one practice partner/coach, with the players rotating to me.) As usual, the focus was on fundamentals. In this case, I was (as usual) harping on active feet, keeping corner shots to the corners (or wider), and consistency.

Last Tuesday was a wild day. I’ve toured (and gotten souvenir magnets!) just about every possible landmark and museum in DC. The one I hadn’t done was the White House itself, since they are somewhat hard to get, and have to be arranged by your local congressperson way in advance. I finally got on one on Halloween Day at 11AM. I had a great time, visiting such historic areas as the East, Green, Blue, Red, Vermeil, and China Rooms, the State Dining Hall, Library, the East Colonnade (where Obama ran with Bo – I stood right where Obama was in the picture), and others. Afterwards I spent a few hours visiting the Washington and Lincoln Memorials and browsing the Smithsonian American History and Natural History Museums. (I practically grew up in the latter.) Then I took the subway home and it was time for Halloween. Alas, every year my area has less kids and fewer trick-or-treaters. When I moved here in 2001, we had hordes of them; this time we had only four. I’m now stuck with about three big bags of varied candy, mostly chocolate. I don’t know how much longer I can stare them down, so I’ll have to find a place to give them away.

Pan Am Games
Here’s the ITTF page for the event, though it doesn’t seem to have results. Here’s the official Pan Am Games page, and here’s where they have table tennis results. Here are USATT news items on USA results:

=>Articles by Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

$500,000 WTT Champions Frankfurt 2023
Here’s the home page for the event held Oct. 29-Nov. 5 in Frankfurt, GER. Here are the men’s and women’s finals:

=>Articles by Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

2024 US Nationals to Be Held in Huntsville, Alabama
Here's the USATT News item. Dates are July 3-7. 

Powerful Backhand Flick Tutorial - Learn the Professional Way
Here’s the video (5:24) from Rational Table Tennis Analysis. This is an excellent video, very clearly showing both the topspin backhand “banana” flip and the flatter “pancake” flip. Note the part about taking the ball a bit on the side against heavy backspin.

Butterfly Training Tips

New from Tony’s Table Tennis
Here are some excellent drill videos.

New from Ti Long

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

Drill to the Middle for Choppers
Here’s the video (1:46) from Angela Guan/PongSpace.

Major League Table Tennis
Keep up to date with them from:

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly
(See others under Pan Am Games and WTT Champions Frankfurt)

New from Jenson Van Emburgh

Ping Pong Serving Rules: The Definitive Guide
Here it is.

Incredible Point Between Frenchmen
Here’s the video (60 sec) of the point between Simon Gauzy (left, world #25) and 17-year-old Felix Lebrun (world #8).

Sebastian Anthony DeFrancesco (1953-2023)
Here’s the video (3:32) of the wheelchair star.

35 Losses / 1 Win – The Inspirational Tale of Uma
Here’s the article by Tom Lodziak.

New from ITTF

“I Want to Play with Long Pimples!”
Here’s the cartoon! (Here’s the non-Facebook version.)

“It’s Like Table Tennis Champion Playing Djokovic in the Wimbledon Final”
Here’s the cartoon – with a clever comeback!

Adam vs. India's Best Ever
Here’s the video (12:58) from Adam Bobrow, featuring Sharath Kamal Achanta!

New from Pongfinity

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Tip of the Week
Quicker Drives with the Forehand-Backhand Drill.

Weekend Coaching, a White House Halloween, and Humongous Technical Issues
I coached in five group junior training sessions over the weekend. I was scheduled for four, but when my appointment with a computer guru at the Geek Squad on Sunday was postponed (more on that below), and they needed me for a session at that time, I stepped in, mostly feeding multiball for 90 minutes with players in the session rotating in and out.

I showed several of our advanced players how to serve a short, spinny side-top serve that looks like backspin. How do you do it? With a forehand pendulum serve, you serve as if it’s a regular backspin serve, with a vigorous downward motion, open racket, and contact near the bottom of the ball. Should be backspin, right? But if you change the axis of rotation just before contact to the center of the racket (a little toward the handle), then you can rotate the tip of the racket downward vigorously, making it appear that the entire stroke was downward, but the inner part of the racket (near the handle) is now moving up – and that’s where you contact the ball. If you brush the ball finely, you get lots of side-top, and yet can still keep it short so that, if given the chance, it would bounce twice on the far side. Most players push this straight up when they first see it, and if not overused, do so repeatedly. Even when they read it better, they are usually tentative.

I was a practice partner for one session, where I worked one-on-one with players, who rotated to me every 10-15 minutes or so. One drill was a simple they serve backspin, I push, they loop, and play out point. Two players had trouble lifting against backspin, so I explained to them The "No Net" Rule Against Heavy Backspin, and it really helped. Another good drill was where I either served short to the forehand or long to the backhand, and the player had to flip or loop the serve, then we played out the point. I had a pretty good practice as well, as I got work on looping against the flip, and counterlooping against the loop.

Tomorrow is both Halloween and White House Tour Day. I’ve done tours of every major landmark and museum in Washington DC except the White House. Unlike the others, it’s a huge hassle to arrange one – you have to go through your local congressperson to do so, and I had to go back and forth for months before finding a date available. I’m all set for Tuesday at 11AM. Afterwards, I’ll probably walk around the mall, perhaps again visiting the Washington and Lincoln Memorials, and perhaps some of the Smithsonian museums that I’ve visited many times before. (I practically grew up in the Natural History Museum, where both of my parents worked.) Then I’ll get home in time for Halloween, with lots of candy to give out.

Now, about those technical issues. If I gave a blow-by-blow description, I’d be writing all day and you’d be reading all night. Here’s the short version of each problem I faced this past week. If not-interested in these non-TT issues, skip ahead.

  • Email Issues. Starting last Monday night, over the course of two days, I was barraged with over 14,000 emails. At one point, for several hours, they were coming in at twelve a minute, or one every five seconds. Fortunately, about 99% went into my “junk” folder. It turns out some really bad person or group did a massive spam emailing, using my email as the return address. All the emails I was receiving were, at first, bounce-back emails of various types. Then the spam emails were blocked and all of them bounced back – to me. Since the apparent source of the spam emails was my email address, my emails were blocked. Result? Since Tuesday afternoon I haven’t been able to send emails, which is my primary source of communication. Any I send are automatically sent to my “deleted” folder. (I still receive emails.) And so I’ve been responding to emails, when I can, with text messages, Facebook Messenger, or phone calls to let people know I can’t email back.
    But it gets worse. I spent over two hours on the phone with Godaddy and two different technicians, but they were unable to fix the problem. They figured out what had to be done to fix it, but all sorts of weird issues kept coming up that kept them from fixing it. A local friend and computer expert tried to fix the problem, running me through the procedure to fix it over the phone, but it didn't work. I then went to Best Buy. Their Geek Squad techie tried for half an hour and couldn’t figure it out, and so made a 1PM Saturday appointment for me with their email expert, who only comes in once a week. I came in at 1PM (between coaching sessions), but at the last minute, the email expert had to reschedule for 1PM Sunday. Another techie then spent an hour trying to fix the problem, couldn’t figure it out. And then, on Sunday, the email expert again couldn’t come in for reasons unknown. I’m now scheduled to see him today at 12:40 PM, so it’s a race to finish this blog and tip before I leave for that. So far five computer techies have been unable to fix it. I’ve also spent many hours on it. The gist of the problem is every “fix” seems to put us in an unending cycle that brings us right back where we started, plus it keeps giving password problems. I’ve changed my password on various accounts over twenty times this past week.
    =>UPDATE1 (Monday afternoon): For the third day in a row, the infamous email expert didn't show. Another techie helped out. We spent 90 minutes on it - much of it messaging back and forth with a Microsoft techie - and I'm told I'm now unblocked. But it will take 24-72 hours for it to take effect. 
    =>UPDATE 2 (Monday night) - I should have read the fine print closer. What it says is, "
    This process is normally completed within 24 to 72 hours from our end, but may take longer like 7-10 days as per Microsoft escalation and checking." So this could take TEN DAYS!!!
  • Phone. Out of the blue, for no apparent reason, people could no longer hear me on my phone. With some experimenting, I randomly discovered that if I put them on speaker, then they could hear me. But that doesn’t make sense – putting them on speaker should affect how I hear them, but not how they hear me. And yet it did. It’s not good to talk on the phone in a public place with the phone on speaker! I finally went to the T-Mobile I’d bought it from, half a mile away, only to find they’d closed. Using GPS, I found the closest T-Mobile, about two more miles away – only to find they’d been mislabeled, they were a phone store that was affiliated with T-Mobile, but couldn’t do anything about my phone. Using GPS, I found the next closest T-Mobile, another 2.5 miles away, so I’m now five miles from home. I go there, and they have no idea how to fix the problem, but tell me I need to call Samsung. So I go home, call Samsung, and they aren’t sure what’s causing it. Finally, not wanting to deal with the problem anymore, and knowing my current phone had some small cracks developing and was running short of storage, I bought a new phone from Samsung. It came in a few days later – and nothing worked. Using GPS, I found a T-Mobile about two miles from my house in the opposite direction. I went there, and they chided me on buying directly from Samsung, said I should have just come to them at the start and I’d have avoided all the hassle. (If I’d used GPS from my house at the start, they’d have been the first on the list.) Because I didn’t get the phone from them, it took an hour for them to set it up, and then another hour or so to migrate all my info to it. I later ran into more problems and had to visit them again, but I finally got it all sorted out. (Remember, I’m doing all this while dealing with the email issues and the below.)
  • Laptop. Somehow I’ve gotten some sort of grit under some of the keys on the laptop. When I press those keys, there’s a crunch sound, and it slows down my work. According to an online article, I can fix this by simply turning it off, prying the key off with a screwdriver, and cleaning it. So I pried off the backspace key – and it immediately broke off, leaving loose wires behind. So I had to take it to Best Buy to get fixed. I still have the grit, but may take it to Best Buy at some point to have it “professionally” cleaned.
  • Refrigerator. About once every six months or so, my freezer freezes over. I’ve always fixed this by simply turning it off, putting in a hair dryer for ten minutes to melt it, and then drain the water and pull out any remaining ice. (I actually bought the hair dryer for that purpose – I’ve never used one on my hair.) However, for the last month something’s gone wrong, and its freezing over within a few days. Each time this happens I have to spend about fifteen seconds prying the freezer door out of the ice, and then do the hair dryer thing. Worse, the inside of the freezer is even worse now, with everything covered in icy frost. I still haven’t fixed this, so when I need something from the freezer I have to pry the door free, pry the frozen food item out of the frost inside with a screwdriver, and then pry the ice off the package, again with the screwdriver again. I’ll deal with this after the email issue is fixed.

Bruno and the Change of Direction
Here’s a great shot and lesson. Go to 52:30 on this video (link should take you directly there), and watch Bruno Ventura dos Anjos’s receive in this Major League Table Tennis match this past weekend. (They have a unique format, and this match was best of three to 11.) Bruno’s receiving, up 10-9 match point. His opponent has been serving and stepping around a lot. So what does Bruno do? Watch closely – he aims crosscourt to the backhand again, but at the last instant, changes direction – instant ace receive! And so he wins the match on that shot. It’s an example of Last-Second Changes of Direction on Receive. (Bruno, rated about 2550, is a fellow coach at the Maryland TTC, where he coaches full-time. His prematurely white hair makes him look older, but he's actually only 38.)

New from Major Pong Head (covering Major League Table Tennis)

Butterfly Training Tips

Short Videos from Ti Long
Here they are – lots of training and technical examples.

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

Shadow Footwork for Choppers
Here’s the video (1:33) from Angela Guan/PongSpace.

Table Tennis Training Warm Up
Here’s the video (11:51) from Dr. Table Tennis.

Service Target Practice
Here’s the video (22 sec) from Tony’s Table Tennis.

Ask the Coach
Here are the latest questions from PingSkills.

New from Steve Hopkins

NCTTA Champion, Angela Guan Gives Back
Here’s the article by Michael Reff

2023 North Carolina State Table Tennis Championships at UNCC – Belk Gym
Here’s the USATT article (from the Charlotte TTC’s website.)

New from the ITTF

Upcoming ITTF Events

Ping Pong Whisperer
Here’s where you can buy the shirt at Amazon!

Adam vs. MKBHD
Here’s the video (14:05) from Adam Bobrow! MKBHD is Marques Brownlee, “the world’s top tech YouTuber.”

***
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Tip of the Week
POP Opponents with the Power Of Placement.

Weekend Coaching, Smashing, and Serve Practice Tips
Only had one group session this weekend. On Saturday we had the annual “Coconut Cup” team tournament, a non-sanctioned event that packed the club with lots of new players, including several teams from the Chinese Embassy – they were pretty good, with the best one around 2100 level. I went in and watched some of it. On Sunday I coached in the Novice Group, where the focus was (surprise!) fundamentals. Lots and lots of stroking and footwork drills, and serving practice. Kids usually pick up good technique pretty well if they are taught properly. One of the kids had picked up this bad habit of not turning his shoulders on forehands, just swinging across his body mostly from the shoulder, so I spent some time working with him on that. Not only is this awkward, it can lead to serious shoulder problems!

One common weakness for younger junior players (and often older players as well) is smashing high balls. Often they let the ball drop all the way down to eye level or below and try to hit it like a regular forehand, rather than hit it from a higher point, where you have much more table to aim at. Or they try raising the racket immediately in their backswing, leading to more of a backspin swat when they try smashing. The key to teaching this is drill into them that when you get a high ball, follow a three-step process: 1) Backswing low, just as you would for a regular ball; 2) Raise the racket as high as needed; and 3) Swing away!

On serving practice, one thing I stress is always have the entire swing and ball trajectory in mind before each serve. Visualize what the ball is supposed to do each time – where the contact point will be (including height), the feel of the contact, the speed of the ball, the ball’s curve as it moves through the air, where it hits on your side of the table, where and how high it crosses the net, where it bounces on the far side (including multiple bounces if short), and where it crosses the end-line.

Serving Tactics Lecture
On Feb. 19, 2023 I gave a 52-minute Serving Tactics Lecture at the Samson Dubina Elite Camp in Akron, OH. A shortened version of it (28:45) has been translated into French. Of course, if you really want to learn about tactics, you can spend a lifetime studying it – or you could buy my best-selling book, Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers!

Major League Table Tennis

$75,000 WTT Contender Antalya 2023
Here’s the home page for the event, held Oct. 16-22 in Antalya, Turkey, with results, news articles, and video.

Fethomania

Butterfly Training Tips

Talkin' Smash Podcasts with Matt Hetherington

New from Pingispågarna

New from Pongspace

New from Ti Long

PingSunday/EmRatThich
19 new videos this past week!

Ask the Coach
Here are the latest questions from PingSkills.

Pan American Games set to open in Chile with many athletes eyeing spots at the Paris Olympics
Here’s the article from the Clinton Herald. Best part is the picture of the mascot playing table tennis! Here’s the ITTF home page for the event, to be held in Santiago, Chile, Oct. 29-Nov. 5.

New from Steve Hopkins

USATT News

ITTF News

Backspin Lob Diving Tap Return
Here’s the video (13 sec)!

I Am the Legendary Ping-Pong Player You Never Heard Of!
Here’s where you can buy the shirt at Amazon!

Wild Pong!
Here’s their Kickstarter (funded already - $2260), apparently the newest version of table tennis. I just like the picture of the giraffe and alligator playing, and lower down, a rhino, shark, lizard, fox, elephant, and seahorse, and farther down, even more. I think it’s some sort of card game. “The most diverse creatures have gathered to demonstrate their skill with the racket. Everyone wants to become the next king of the animal world. Are you going to miss it?”

***
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Tips of the Week (two since I was away last week)

Huntsman World Senior Games and Sightseeing in Utah and Las Vegas
I had a great time at the Huntsman World Senior Games last week in St. George, Utah, Oct. 9-12, Mon-Thur. This was my first time there. The Games include 44 sports, with 11,000 athletes from 88 countries, and 3,000 volunteers. I was there just for table tennis, of course. There were 235 table tennis players, all age 50 or over. Here are complete results, care of Omnipong.

The tournament was well run by Director Jean Bulatao and Sanjoy Bhattacharya,  along with Craig Krum (from Omnipong), Joe Bulatao, and Eric Aki, with officials Hiro Moriyasu (Referee), Steve Lee (Deputy Referee), Helen Prusakov (Chief Umpire), volunteer officials Jon Redman, Mei Wang, Jerry Li, Ning Cheng and Irina Hellwig, and Neuropong Manager Antonio Barbera. (Hope I didn’t leave anyone out!) Jean, who was very helpful in some pre-event arrangements, even made 2023 Huntsman Table Tennis magnets, which is now on my refrigerator!

I retired from sponge tournaments years ago, and generally coach at tournaments and play hardbat events for fun and titles. This time I was just a player, and planned to play hardbat only. I was in four events – Hardbat Singles, Hardbat Doubles (with Lily Yip), Over 50 Men’s Doubles (with Joe Ryan – technically this was 50-54 Doubles, but they allow players to play in younger events, so I was in it despite being 63), and 60-64 Mixed Doubles (with Wendy Guo). By Tuesday afternoon I’d played all my matches except the Hardbat Doubles final, so they let us play that on Tuesday night, and so I was done after two days – meaning two days of sightseeing! (More on that below.)

I won Hardbat Singles and Doubles. I ran into two problems in Hardbat Singles, my first event, starting at 8:30AM on Monday. The starting time wasn’t a problem – I’m from Maryland, so that’s 10:30AM to me. I arrived around 7PM the night before, but the playing hall was closed, so couldn’t practice.(I’d flown to Las Vegas, rented a car, and drove the two hours to St. George.) The registration line (for all sports, all 11,000 of us) snaked around the hallways around the playing hall, and one of the volunteers who’d been there much of the day said it would take about two hours to get through the line. (I was entered, but you still had to register on site.) So I decided to register the following morning when they opened at 7:30AM. I got there early, and with only a few dozen ahead of me, was registered by 8AM. I warmed up with Scott Preiss for ten minutes, and then it was time to play – and that’s when problems arose.

The first problem was that St. George has an elevation of 2,700 feet, which means the air is thinner, and so the ball moves differently. Adjusting to this might take an hour, but I’d only had ten minutes. No problem, I was the top seed in the event, and my first two matches would be easy and would be a good warmup, right?

My second match was against Qingping Liu, rated 1694 in sponge (from four tournaments, all two or more years ago), with a 1751 hardbat rating. Another easy match for me, right? I turns out he’s been practicing regularly, including regular hardbat play, and both of those ratings were way, Way, WAY off. (He’s a lefty pips-out penholder, which means his games translates easily to hardbat.) Between that, and my problems with the air, I barely won the first, 21-19, lost the second 22-20, and found myself down 11-13 in the third. (Hardbat is best of three to 21.) I called a timeout, and played well the rest of the way, winning 21-17. The top two advanced to RR – and guess who I’d play again in the final? Yep, Qingping Liu. This time I won 21-15, 21-17. He should probably have a 2100 hardbat rating. (His regular hardbat practice partner is Mark Kraut, who I played in the semifinals – and after losing the first 21-18, I won the next two at 13 and 11. Hardbat is a lot easier when I play sponge players who aren’t used to playing hardbat!)

Lily Yip and I easy won Hardbat Doubles, 7,11 over Rudy Miranda/Jean Newby. There were six teams, but they decided to divide it into Over 3500 and Under 3500, so there were only two entries in Over 3500, so we only played one match. I actually didn't play well in this match, but with Lily on my team I didn't have to. (She would win four golds and one silver.) 

In Over 50 Men’s Doubles with Joe Ryan, I made three mistakes. First, I decided to play hardbat. While I rally better with sponge, my flip receive is better with hardbat, and except against a loop, I smash better with it. Plus I hadn't really played "competitive" sponge in a long time, and thought my sponge game would be rusty (especially receive), even though that's what I coach with. But I’d later play sponge in the mixed doubles (below), the receive was fine, and realized I should have used sponge in both doubles events. Second, after playing hardbat all morning, I thought I was warmed up and ready – except I was only warmed up and ready against hardbat. I should have warmed up more against sponge loops. And so I didn’t block or hit against loops as well as I should have. And so we ended up getting second. Joe would win 50-54 Men's Singles and 50-54 Mixed Doubles with Oana Tataru Hogrefe, so I ruined his "sweep." (Oana would also win 50-54 Women's Singles and get second in 50-54 Women's Doubles.) The third mistake? Remember how I said above I’d played hardbat all morning? Each time I’d reminded the umpire or scorekeeper that in hardbat, games are best of three to 21. This was my first “sponge” event, but out of habit I mistakenly told the umpire it was best of three to 21. Oops! He and the other players quickly corrected me.

In one of our matches here I literally brained myself. The ball went to my wide backhand, I stepped around to hit forehand, but was late. I leaned back, and made a nice shot – but followed through hard into my right eyebrow. The rally continued, and despite being dazed, I made a difficult but reflexive smash to win the point. But blood was now running down my face. I wiped it with a towel, and the umpire got a band-aid from the control desk, and I was able to continue. But I had a headache for the rest of the day, and a week later, there’s still a substantial scab and bump there. It’ll probably leave a permanent scar.

I played Mixed Doubles with Wendy Guo, who is unrated. After the Over 50 Men’s Doubles, I decided to switch to sponge, and I think I played better that way, even though I had minimal warmup with it. We had a chance get win or at least advance in second in our RR group of four, but lost two close ones, and came in third.

Here are some photos of me at the Huntsman Senior Games.

Afterward I did some sightseeing – always collecting a souvenir magnet for my refrigerator, of course! Actually, I now have three magnetic boards in addition to my refrigerator for all these magnets from all the places I’ve been – 239 USA, 132 international. I toured five places.

  • Rosenbruch World Wildlife Museum. This was right next door to the playing hall, so I was able to spend an hour there on Monday afternoon. It was a bit creepy, since the huge collection of animals were all taxidermy, i.e. skinned and stuff animals, and the place had a slight chemical or dead animal smell – not sure which. Very realistic.
  • St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site. I spent an hour or so there on Wednesday morning. Much of it was fossilized footprints from the dinosaur age. There was also a timeline exhibit outside where you walked in a big circle, with exhibits starting from Cambrian Period (about 500 million years ago) through the Cretaceous (ending 66 million years ago).
  • Zion National Park. It was an hour north of St. George. I drove up on Wednesday right after an early lunch. You could spend a week hiking the trails there. Incredible sights all over. I did the shuttle tour, with eight stops where you get off and look or hike about, and then catch the next shuttle when you’re done. I spent five hours there, seeing the Canyon Junction; Court of the Patriarchs (most spectacular view); Zion Lodge; The Grotto; Weeping Rock (second most spectacular sight); Big Bend; Temple of Sinawava; and the Zion Museum. Alas, I only saw three wildlife: a deer, a surprisingly large raven, and a large green caterpillar that I think will turn into monarch butterfly.
  • The Mob Museum. I drove down to Las Vegas on Thursday morning and spent two hours here. Most memorable part – the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre Wall. Also saw Al Capone’s pistol. Lots of gory pictures.
  • Titanic the Artifact Exhibit. I was there for over two hours going over these artifacts. Amazing that each of these items was not only on the Titanic, but then spent about a century 2.5 miles down at the bottom of the North Atlantic. Lots of pictures, such as the Goodwin family, none of whom survived. Sad way to end my trip.

And then it was off to the airport to return the rental car and catch my 10:47PM Thursday night flight from Las Vegas, with a six-hour stopover in Orlando, Florida, arriving at BWI Airport (Baltimore) at 2:43PM on Friday, and getting home about 5PM.

Weekend Coaching
I did five junior group sessions this weekend, including two hours with the top group. We have about 70 players in our junior program, divided into four groups. Group 1 (the top group) meets three times/week, on Sat, Sun, and Wed; group 4 (novice group) meets once a week on Sundays; the other two groups meet twice a week, on Sat & Sun. I had at least one session with each this weekend.

As usual, I did a lot of multiball training, especially with groups 3 and 4. I spent some of my time with group 2 as a practice partner. One interesting drill was as follows: I’d loop forehands from my backhand corner, two to the wide backhand, then two to the wide forehand. The player has to move side to side, blocking all of them to my wide backhand. (The tricky part for them is often the down-the-line forehand block, an under-utilized skill.) Then the player did it, with me doing the blocking. There are alternate versions of this, such as one shot to each side, instead of two, or two to one side, one to the other.

Another drill started with me either serving short to the forehand or long to the backhand. Player had to flip or backhand loop the serve to my backhand, and then it was random as I blocked the ball anywhere and they played to my backhand. Consistency and movement was the focus of this and most other drills.

One thing I jumped on a number of players, even in group 1, was a tendency to lean toward a shot before moving. This puts your weight on the foot in the direction you are moving, and makes it almost impossible to move in that direction, leading to reaching. Even in group 1 some of the players would do this when blocking, though not when attacking – they are too advanced for that.

News from All Over
Since I haven't blogged since Oct. 2 due to traveling, 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.

Ball Balancing Robot
Here’s the video (71 sec)! This is similar to what we have beginning kids do, both balancing the ball on their racket and ball bouncing, to develop their hand-eye coordination.

Ping-Pong! (Political Cartoon Creation + Analysis)
Here it is!

Table Tennis Cartoons from CartoonStock
Here they are! (I’ve linked to some on the past.)

World's Highest Ping Pong Table
Here’s the video (8:01) from Pongfinity!

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Send us your own coaching news!

Next Blog October 16
I’ll be out of town next week at the Huntsman World Senior Games (see segment below), so no blog next week. However, the Tip of the Week will go up on Monday, Oct. 9, as always.

Tip of the Week
Four Short Serve Scenarios.

MDTTC Open and Weekend Coaching
Here are the results of the MDTTC Open this past weekend. Because of the tournament, we only had one junior group session, the novice group. You probably know what the focus was – FUNDAMENTALS! But we also had fun toward the end, where I put targets on the table and had them do various footwork drills while aiming for the targets.

During break, I taught them how to play “Bounce.” Each player stands to the side of the table, both on one side of the net. (So you can have two games going on, one on each side of the net.) One player throws the ball so it bounces exactly one time on the table before crossing the other side. Other player catches it and has to throw it so it bounces exactly two times. Then three, four, and so on, alternating until one of them misses. One bounce is of course easy, and the kids quickly get pretty good at getting two or three bounces, but it gets progressively harder – rarely does it get past five or six.

One problem – Ty Hoff was in town this past week and we played some hardbat, but I had to stop early as my left knee is still somewhat injured. I had to default out of the Hardbat Nationals in August; hopefully I’ll be able to hobble my way through at the World Senior Games.

Huntsman World Senior Games
I’ll be competing next week at the Huntsman World Senior Games in St. George, Utah. There are 44 sports altogether. Here’s a listing of the 232 table tennis players. (You can sort by rating, name, state, club, or event.) Alas, I’m the only one from Maryland or my club, MDTTC. I’m competing in four events – Over 50 Men’s Doubles (with Joe Ryan – we’re top seed); Over 60 Mixed Doubles (with Wendy Guo); Over 60 Hardbat (I’m top seed); and Hardbat Doubles (with Lily Yip, we’re top seed). While I’m bringing my sponge racket, I think I’m going to play all hardbat this time, even in the two age doubles events. These days my level is about the same with sponge or hardbat, but my hardbat receive and hitting dominates doubles more than my sponge game. I’m actually flying into Las Vegas on Sunday afternoon, then renting a car to drive the two hours to St. Paul. I return on Thursday night.

Ping Pong Parkinson’s World Championships
The were held this past week in Wels, Austria. Here are complete results. Here’s a promotional video (3:04). It’s mostly in German, but USA’s Navin Kumar (who I coach, though I wasn’t in Austria) speaks three times, from 0.53-1:03, 2:02-2:12, and 2:37-3:00. Navin also got a bronze medal for Consolation Mixed Doubles, Class 1.

Major League Table Tennis
Here’s their upcoming schedule. Next up is Oct. 13-15 in Myrtle Beach Sports Center in South Carolina.

New from USATT

Butterfly Training Tips

Sports Psychology Blogs by Dora Kurimay
Here they are!

Explosive Strength in Table Tennis - Improve Your Footwork
Here’s the video (5:02) from Pingispågarna.

New from PongSpace

New from Ti Long

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

New from Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

Bowmar Sports Tournament Highlights

Jenson Van Emburgh: From Lima Silver to Pursuing Gold in 2023
Here’s the article by Vlad Farcas

Short Pips Legend Wins the Battle of the Swedes
Here’s the video (69 sec) of Mattias Falck (in green, with short pips on forehand, world #20) vs. Anton Kallberg (in red, world #22), from Taco Backhand. Falck won Silver in Men’s Singles at the 2019 Worlds in Budapest, and Gold in Men’s Doubles at the 2021 Worlds in Houston.

New from TT11TV

New from ITTF

Ping Pong Is My Therapy
Here’s where you can buy the shirt at Amazon!

French Table Tennis Cartoons
Here’s a whole page of them. Alas, they are in French, so I can’t read them, but they are funny-looking – and you can make up your own captions!

Lad's Amazing Circus Tricks
Here’s the video (3:09) of these ping-pong oriented tricks!

How People Serve in Ping Pong
Here’s the video (28 sec)!

Serving for the Head
Here’s the video (15 sec)!

Many Rackets Father and Son Pong
Here’s the video (48 sec)!

1 Day VS 10 Years Playing Ping Pong
Here’s the video (11 sec)!

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Send us your own coaching news!