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!

January 22, 2024

Tip of the Week
Court Tricks.

Weekend Coaching
Only did one group session this past weekend – other coaches needed the hours more than I did! I did multiball for about an hour and thirty minutes as a practice partner. (There were 18 in the group. We have over 70 in our junior program, so have to have different groups based on level.) The multiball focus was lots and Lots and LOTS of fundamentals, focusing on topspin drills and footwork. While one player does multiball, another shadow-strokes behind him, matching his shots and imagining hitting the ball each time. Another player does serves, while another does ball pickup. As a practice partner, we again did lots of footwork drills. We also did a rather intensive shadow-practice session at the start, going through lots of stroking and footwork drills without the ball. I spent much of the time yelling, “Turn your shoulders!” as many kids get lazy and go for rapid-fire but poor arm strokes – but not on my watch!!!

University of Maryland Table Tennis Club Needs Your Support!
Here’s their GoFundMe page – hope you can help out. I got my bachelor’s and master’s degrees there – I couldn’t leave the area since I was running many of the local table tennis activities back then! There’s an interesting history of the University of Maryland Table Tennis Club. I founded it back in 1981. I began coaching another student, Larry Johnson. He went from 1500 to 1800 that first year – a shakehand inverted player, not his namesake with long pips who used to play in New Jersey. To promote the new table tennis club, we decided to do an exhibition every week at a different building on campus. And so, every week for a semester I’d arrange it with a different campus building, we’d put out flyers, and then we’d roll the table to the new location and to the exhibition! Lots of people attended them, both students and professors. Result? It became the busiest club in the US for a year or two, with 16 tables, seven days/week, and jammed every night to the point that I stopped going – there weren’t any open tables!!! The table we used was normally set up in my dormitory, and that’s where I practiced with Larry Johnson almost every day, plus the Northern Virginia TTC on Tue, Fri, and Sun nights, where I’d practice with Sean O’Neill, Dave Sakai, Ron Lilly, and others. For a time I was president of both the University of Maryland TTC and the Northern Virginia TTC, and for a short time, also the Beltsville TTC (but it lost its place to play after only a month or two).

The Ping Pong Player and the Professor by Richard Sosis
The Ping Pong Player and the Professor was one of the best table tennis books I’ve read. Others agree – it’s got a perfect rating at Amazon. It’s about the ups and downs of an anthropology professor and player, i.e., a “Ping Pong Pop” (Rich Sosis) raising and coaching an up-and-coming table tennis star, Eliel (pronounced L-E-L).

A lot of the book philosophizes on table tennis and how it relates to Judaism, anthropology, tennis, over-educated parents, and the definition of sport – and it’s all pretty fascinating. To quote Steve Brunskill in the book: “It has the smallest court, the smallest ball, the smallest bat, the quickest reaction time, the most spin . . . and you have to learn to cope with different styles of opponents.”

There were lots and lots of fascinating characters and devoted volunteers in the book. Some, like "Mozart," I'd never heard of. In some cases, when telling stories, he used real names, but sometimes he used fake names to protect the identity of the person, but table tennis aficionados will recognize most of them – in fact, identifying them was one of the fun parts of the book. You’ll learn about the battle with the hotel refrigerator; the infamous huge bag; reading shoes; and lots of other anecdotes. Oh, and can you figure out why 51505 73173 is Eliel Sosis’s favorite number? My club, MDTTC, is mentioned a lot as Rich and Eliel often came down for weeks at a time to train there. I’ve known Rich for decades – I coached him in at least one training camp back when he was an up-and-coming junior star. (Sorry, after all these years, I can’t think of him as “Richard”!)

The book comes in print, kindle, and audio versions. (It says print version is 312 pages, but it’s actually 278; if you don’t read the acknowledgements and end notes, it’s a solid 235 pages.) Here's the Amazon description:

"Most Americans view ping pong as either a basement recreation or the focus of a fraternity-party drinking game. Yet table tennis is an Olympic sport and one of the most popular athletic activities in the world. The Ping Pong Player and the Professor is a quirky memoir about the adventures of a Jewish anthropologist and his son, an elite player, in the colorful subculture of this extraordinary sport. The tale of their exploits in this hidden world is peppered with anthropological wisdom--the professor can't help himself--on a range of topics, including ethnicity, religion, sport, family, and how humans create and discover meaning in life. At its core The Ping Pong Player and the Professor is a heartwarming love story about the relationship between a father and son, two introverts who share a common bond over a nine-foot by five-foot table."

Campaign 2100: Game of Scorpions
My best science fiction novel, Campaign 2100: Game of Scorpions, just got republished! It has a number of table tennis scenes – here’s where I blogged about that. (One of the main characters is a professional table tennis player who – SPOILER ALERT! - walks off the court during the final of the Nationals to join the campaign and meet the visiting alien.) It’s a drama-satire that covers the election for president of Earth in the year 2100, where the world has adopted the American two-party electoral system, with a moderate third-party challenge to the conservative and liberal parties. (Yikes!) Also along for the ride is an alien who makes first contact near the start and joins the third party as an observer – we learn about Earth’s political system and history (our future) through her eyes. Check out the quotes and reviews of the book at Amazon. On sale at $11.95, $5.99 kindle.

Major League Table Tennis

Table Tennis History Magazine
The second (Jan 2024) issue is out! Lots of great stuff if you’re a history buff or just want to learn about our sports history.

Table Tennis Evolution 1930-2023
Here’s the video (22:51) from Table Tennis Central.

Butterfly Training Tips

World Champion Mattias Falck is Unstoppable for Two Minutes Straight
Here’s the video (2 min) from Taco Backhand. Mattias Falk (SWE) was the 2021 World Men’s Doubles Champion. Note how he controls play with his close-to-table backhand topspins, and ends it with pips-out forehand (a rarity in modern table tennis).

How to Add a New Shot to Your Game
Here’s the article by Tom Lodziak.

3 KILLER Serves for ALL Players
Here’s the video (6:04) from Nick Rudd TT.

New from Ti Long

New from Pingispågarna

Forehand Topspin Secrets Revealed | Step-by-Step Guide for Explosive Shots!
Here’s the video (9:11) from Rational Table Tennis Analysis.

New from PongSpace/Angela Guan

Ma Long Maintains Stroke Integrity Under Pressure
Here’s the video (1:16) from Drupe Pong.

New from PingSkills

New from EmRatThich/PingSunday

New from Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis

An Eventful 2023 U.S Open
Here’s the article by US Team Member Joanna Sung

Colorado Doctor Prescribes Ping Pong Treatment for Neurodegenerative Disorders
Here’s the article.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from USATT

New from ITTF

TT11TV
Lots of new table tennis videos here.

Mind Bending Net Recoveries in Table Tennis! Xu Xin, Fan Zhendong, Wang Hao, Timo Boll, etc.
Here’s the video (8:17) from Street TT.

Table Tennis Coloring Pages
This might be good for kids!

8 Best Ping Pong Movies You Need to Check Out
Here’s the article from Ping Pong Ruler.

Table Tennis Hearts Shirt
Here’s where you can get yours!

Bullfight Pong
Here’s the cartoon!

When Ping Pong Goes Too Far
Here’s the video (30 sec)!

Adam/Slander vs. Anastasiia/KSHMR
Here’s the video (16:11) from Adam Bobrow!

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January 16, 2024

Tips of the Week

2023 US Open
The 2023 US Open seems ages ago – it was held Dec. 15-22 in Ontario, California, near LA. But since I’ve been traveling almost non-stop this is my first blog since then. (I’m back to blogging every Monday, except when sick or out of town.) Here are a few tidbits – with more in the next segment about USATT. I had more to write about, but since it’s been a month, I’ll keep the segment short.

  • Here are Complete results, Historical results, and Photos.
  • Normally I’d be mostly coaching at big events like this. However, due to school, only a few of our junior players from MDTTC were playing, and we already had other coaches, so I mostly just played some hardbat events and did some sightseeing. I’ve been to every US Open and Nationals starting in 1984, but probably was the least busy in this one out of all of them. But things will get busier at the US Nationals in July, where we always have a big group. (I’ll also likely be coaching at the upcoming US Junior Team Trials, March 26-30 in West Monroe, Louisiana.)
  • In Over 60 Hardbat, I started out playing very poorly, missing smash after smash. But I came around and made the final. In the final against Jian Zhuang, I played decently except my forehand flip was non-existent. If I get that going, I could do well the rest of the way. It used to be a big strength. I was also in the Over 40 final against Ali Ammar, best of five to 21. I lost the first two badly and was down 12-18 in the third – and with my forehand flip and forehand finally coming alive, I came back to win, 21-19. I won the fourth rather easily. In the fifth . . . let’s just say the net and edges of the table were in league against me and I lost, deuce in the fifth. (Up 9-6 in the fifth, I lost four in a row on nets and edges! I also came back from 18-20 match point to deuce it.) I’ve won Over 40 Hardbat eight times, but not this time.
  • Saw a crazy shot. A boy popped the ball up against a girl. The girl went around the side of the table and took a huge swing as the boy backed up to lob. The girl went for an all-out smash, but her racket’s edge barely nicked the ball, resulting in an inadvertent drop shot that bounced on the table at least 5-6 times.
  • I had waffles for breakfast every morning. Whoever invented the automatic waffle maker for hotels should get the Nobel prize. The Nobel prize for what, you ask? Why . . . all of them.

USATT Issues at the US Open
Not interested in USATT politics or problems at the US Open? Then skip this section.

  • USATT Assembly – it’s required by the USATT bylaws that the board hold this open meeting, where they give reports and members can ask questions and bring up issues. However, these days it’s just for show. For the third year in a row, there was no board meeting held in conjunction with it, as required by the bylaws (Section 15.2, “The annual USATT Assembly shall be held in conjunction with a Board meeting”), where board members are supposed to discuss the issues raised by the membership. I’ve brought this up the last two years, and each time was promised they’d follow the bylaws next year – but for the third straight year they didn’t. (The first year I was told the elite players didn’t want to hold a meeting during the Open, but they told me that was not true – all they needed was a simple Zoom meeting at the end or the day after.) The USATT board is the policy maker for USATT but the majority have no interest in our input. Someone needs to remind them regularly that the bylaws are not something you follow when it’s convenient; they are the laws governing our sport. Knowingly ignoring them as they regularly do is just plain arrogance.

    I thought of showing up to point out that they were violating the bylaws by refusing to hold a board meeting in conjunction with the USATT assembly, to once again point out that the current chair is illegal, and other issues (there’s a lot of them), but what’s the point? As a group, they aren’t listening. (Many or most are simply enablers, who just want to get along and so go along with these shenanigans. There are a few good ones, but they are in the minority.) The irony would be if, after years of this, some of them suddenly get conscientious about it in 2024, with most of the board up for reelection this Fall. Sorry, too late. We needed them to do their jobs throughout their tenure, not just at the end of their term when there’s an election coming up. I’ve been in the sport since 1976, and very active with USATT since the early 1980s, and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen USATT leadership as arrogant as they are now. I’d write more, but what’s the point? We can’t do anything about most of this until the elections this Fall. (However, there is at least one big USATT issue that I will be getting involved in by mid-February. More on that when the time comes. There’s a reason I want to wait a few more weeks on this one, as I’ll explain at the time.)

  • Tables 2-4 were feature tables, with lots of big matches. But they were against the wall, so spectators could only watch from one side. That side was a corridor between tables, with another line of tables on the other side, so the corridor was always completely jammed. Not nearly enough room for spectators. I hope they fix this problem next time.
  • Summer Xia got a 1051 rating from playing one tournament, 13 months before the US Open, where he played just three matches. At the US Open, in the adult rating events, he won U1200, U1300, U1400, U1500, and U1600. He came out rated 2279. Isn’t it time they fix this problem and require a of minimum number of tournament matches to be eligible, and maximum time without playing tournaments to stay eligible? He came out with an inflated rating of 2279. He played 46 matches (!), and his best win was deuce in the fifth against a 2090 player; his next best win was against a player rated 1771. He lost to players rated 1787, 1945, and 2023. Based on that, he probably should be rated around 1950 or so. (Perhaps over 2000, since he probably played some matches exhausted!) But the ratings shot him up way too much. Again, shouldn’t they fix this problem? It’s just a matter of adjusting the algorithm.
  • There’s also the case of Kyle Lam, who in the junior events won U1000, 1200, 1400, and 1600 juniors, and U3100 Doubles. He’d played eleven tournaments before the Open, so that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the US Open used early cutoffs for rating events, and so his official rating for the tournament coming in was 917. But on Nov. 11, he played a tournament and went from 917 to 1571, and on Dec. 2-3, he played a tournament where he went from 1571 to 1711. (After the Open he was 1701.) And so a 1700+ player was playing in Under 1000 and above events! He probably was rated 917 when he entered the tournament, and so his entry was understandable – but with such rating gains before the tournament, there should be an automatic move to higher rating events, to make things fair for others. At the very least, it should be looked at to see what can be done.

    This reminds me of my first year, when I played the Philadelphia Open in fall of 1976, coming in with a rating of 1080. I entered in rating events every 100 points from U1100 to U2000. After seeing me beat several 1500 players with ease – my level after a summer of practice was around 1700 – the tournament director, Herb Vichnin, decided to assign me an adjusted rating of 1500, and took me out of U1100, U1200, U1300, U1400, and U1500. I was very angry – but still managed to win I think U1600 and U1700, as well as Handicap Singles, where you spot points based on your rating – and I not only won with the 1500 rating, I beat 1900+ Vichnin in the event!

$36,600 Ping Pong World Cup
The Ping Pong World Cup (Sponsored by Mecano Sports, presented by Caliente.mx, sanctioned by ICTTF, directed by Steve Claflin.) was held Jan. 4-6 in Mexico City. This is for Classic events – hardbat, sandpaper, and woodbat. I was there to do coverage (17 articles!), and so only played one event, over 55 Hardbat. (Didn’t play well, perhaps because of the thin air at 7,300+ altitude that I never got used to, or perhaps from spending way too much time doing coverage and writing. Lost in quarterfinals.) I wrote a preview article (see below), and sent it to USATT, but they chose not to put it in their news section. Complete results are both at the Ping Pong World Cup home page and at Omnipong. If you go to the “More” section on the home page, and click on either Thu, Fri, or Sat Event, you’ll get a link for streaming. Here are all 17 articles I wrote about the 2024 Ping Pong World Cup.

  1. $36,000 Mecano Sports Ping Pong World Cup – PREVIEW
  2. Mike Babuin and the US Classic Association
  3. Micky “Miky” Huidobro – Rocking with Pong
  4. ICTTF and the Internationalization of Ping Pong
  5. Sandpaper Women at the Ping Pong World Cup
  6. Sandpaper Seniors at the Ping Pong World Cup
  7. Sandpaper Students at the Ping Pong World Cup
  8. Sandpaper Singles to the Semifinals at the Ping Pong World Cup
  9. Hardbat Women at the Ping Pong World Cup
  10. Hardbat Seniors at the Ping Pong World Cup
  11. Hardbat Students at the Ping Pong World Cup
  12. Hardbat Singles to the Semifinals at the Ping Pong World Cup
  13. Player’s Choice Singles at the Ping Pong World Cup
  14. Hardbat Singles at the Ping Pong World Cup
  15. Sandpaper Singles at the Ping Pong World Cup
  16. Bare Wood Singles at the Ping Pong World Cup
  17. Interview with Under 23 Sandpaper Champion Ethan Walsh

Afterwards I did three days of sightseeing. (Uber and GPS both work perfectly there.) I’d already done a two-week tour of Mexico in August, 2022, including four days in Mexico City, so I’d already seen most of the major sites. This time around I visited:

  • Museo del Templo Mayor and Zócalo (which I also visited in 2022)
  • Monument to the Revolution
  • National Museum of the Revolution
  • National Museum of San Carlos
  • Mercado De Artesanias La Ciudadela, a huge and famous Flea Market (I bought up a storm)
  • Angel of Independence
  • Tour of the Chapultepec Castle & Anthropology Museum
  • Mexico City Zoo in Chapultepec

While visiting the Angel of Independence, I came upon a huge protest about Palestinian rights and Gaza. I estimated over 2,000 people, most Mexican, with speeches and large numbers of Palestinian flags. They were in front of some government building, and someone had splashed red paint on the doorways and windows. Then they marched down the street.

Finally, here’s the Ping Pong Song (3:53), by the famous Mexican rock star Micky “Miky” Huidobro (see profile above, third article), who is a sandpaper player (1755 sandpaper rating) and helped set up and run the tournament. The song is in Spanish – but you can hear the bouncing ball and the words, “Ping Pong.”

US World Team Trials
They were held Jan. 12-14 in Corpus Christi, TX. Here are complete results, care of Stadium TT. Congrats to the top five men and women who made the team! (Strangely, a number of top players did not take part, especially top women, such as  Lily Zhang, Amy Wang, Sally Moyland, and Rachel Sung.)

Men

  1. Nikhil Kumar
  2. Nandan Naresh
  3. Sid Naresh
  4. Jishan Liang
  5. Kai Zhang

Women

  1. Tiffany Ke
  2. Jessica Reyes-Lai
  3. Kayla Goodwin
  4. Emily Tan
  5. Sarah Jalli

Here are USATT news items on the World Team Trials.

WTT Feeder Corpus Christi 2024
The event started yesterday, Jan. 15-18 in Corpus Christi, TX. Here’s the WTT home page for the event.

Major League Table Tennis
Follow the action on their home page. See their latest news item, Major League Table Tennis Announces Opening Date for 2024-25 Draft Registration. On a side note, there is usually good coverage at Major Pong Head, but their first item right now is an obvious joke (2.5 months too early for April Fool’s Day), about a Swedish woman in the league, Matilda Ekholm, who they claim just signed a three-year contract with the Florida Marlins as a flame-throwing reliever.

Books I Read in 2023
I read about a book a week. I used to read even more! Here are the Books I Read in 2023. I plan to do a review next week of “The Ping Pong Player and the Professor,” by Richard Sosis, which was really good.

PingSkills
Here are all of their free Tutorials.

Table Tennis Skills Slow-Motion Analysis
Here’s an entire thread with numerous links at the My Table Tennis forum.

How To Move for ALL 3rd & 4th Ball Attacks
Here’s the video (16:16) from Seth Pech.

Talkin Smash by JOOLA Ep7: The Physical and Mental Comeback from Injury | Sophia Klee
Here’s the video (34:50) from Matt Hetherington.

Racket Insight's Quiz of the Year 2023
Here’s the quiz from Racket Insight!

Never-Ending Rally
Here’s the video (19 sec)!

News from All Over
Since I haven't blogged since Dec. 11 due to traveling (US Open near LA, Christmas in SF, and nine days in Mexico City), 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.

There’s No Crying in Table Tennis
Here’s where you can buy the shirt at Amazon. This is a takeoff of the famous Tom Hanks line from “A Game of Your Own,” where after he berates a woman player, he says, “There’s no crying in baseball!” Ironically, I have an ongoing joke with the younger kids in our table tennis classes where I’ll tell them, “There’s no smiling in table tennis!”, which of course leads to the opposite. “C’mon, let me see grim faces!” I’ll call out, to no avail. (We have a few kids in our club who I might buy this shirt for!)

61 Ping Pong Jokes & Memes to Impress Your Friends
Here they are, from Ping Pong Ruler.

Elephant Triple-Paddle Pong
Here’s the cartoon! (Here’s the non-Facebook version.) The “Herzlichen Glückwunsch!” is just German for Congratulations!

New from Adam Bobrow!

New from Pongfinity!

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December 11, 2023

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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December 4, 2023

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!

***
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November 28, 2023

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!

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November 20, 2023

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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November 13, 2023

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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November 6, 2023

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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October 30, 2023

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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October 23, 2023

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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