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!

Tip of the Week
Stepping Versus Lunging.

Yet Still More Table Tennis Tips
My new book is out!!! It’s on sale at Amazon for only $14.95. It’s my 20th book and fourth in the Tips series:

Here’s the book description from Amazon:

Here are 150 Tips to help your table tennis game, by Larry Hodges - a member of the U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame and a National Coach. They compile in logical progression three years' worth of Tips of the Week (2020-2023) from TableTennisCoaching.com. They cover all aspects of the game: Serve, Receive, the Strokes, Grip and Stance, Footwork, Tactics, How to Improve, Sports Psychology, Equipment, and Tournaments. (This is a sequel to "Table Tennis Tips," which covered the 150 Tips from 2011-2013, "More Table Tennis Tips," which covered the 150 Tips from 2014-2016, and "Still More Table Tennis Tips," which covered the 150 Tips from 2017-2020.)

It's 162 pages with ten chapters:

  1. Serve
  2. Receive
  3. Strokes
  4. Footwork and Positioning
  5. Tactics
  6. Training and Strategic Development
  7. Sports Psychology
  8. Coaching
  9. Tournaments
  10. Miscellaneous

Sure, you could practice many long hours, but with this book . . . why hit when you can buy it? (Think you can come up with a better rhyme for “buy it”? No? Then quiet!)

MDTTC Open and Weekend Coaching
Here are the results of the MDTTC Open held this weekend at my club in Gaithersburg, MD, USA. Many of our junior players, after months of hard training, had breakout performances. Ratings are only an indicator of recent performance . . . but when the ratings come out (possibly today), there will be a large influx for them.

We only had one group junior session, the novice group, the last regular training session of the season. But our summer camps start today, June 19 to Aug. 25. I used to run these camps, but in recent years we have so many full-time coaches who need the hours that I’m only there part-time. (EDIT - shortly after writing this they asked if I could come in Tue morning and perhaps other days.) I’m semi-retired and so get to stay home more and write books! With the novice group, I did a lot of down-the-line practice. To help with this, I put one of the ball nets on the table so they only had about 18 inches of table to hit into. It’s not only good practice, but it’s another way to challenge the kids, which keeps things interesting for them.

Alas, I hurt my shoulder again. How did I do it? Technically, I can say I did it while coaching Todd Klinger, one of our players in group one, the top group. But it happened in the lounge. How did it happen?

I was watching Santiago Acosta play in our tournament against one of our top juniors and recognized a tactic he was using, one I used to use a lot and talk about in my book, Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers. I don’t know if he was doing it consciously or not, but it’s an effective tactic against a fast player. He was playing steady with his backhand, covering both the wide backhand and middle with it, but just waiting for the opponent to change directions and go to his forehand. Since he was waiting for it, it didn’t matter if the shot coming at him was a strong one – he jumped on it over and over. The key is that as soon as you see the opponent changing directions, you don’t wait – you practically jump to the wide forehand and counter-smack the ball. If the ball were to go into the middle forehand, you’re helpless since you are already covering the wide angle. But good players don’t go to the middle forehand when changing directions, and so you can anticipate it’s going wide. Result? He kept making spectacular forehand counter-attacks. The way to play against this strategy, of course, is to first, realize the opponent’s “middle” is now just to the right of the middle line of his forehand side; and second, mostly go after the middle and wide backhand, and don’t give into the temptation of going to the wide forehand if the opponent is waiting for it.

What does all this have to do with injuring my shoulder? I made the mistake of demonstrating this for Todd, shadow hitting a few steady backhands, and then the sudden move to the wide forehand and a quick forehand – and two seconds later yelled, “OW!!!” Yep, hurt it again. I injured it 2.5 months ago and still haven’t gotten over it, probably because I keep hurting it again while coaching even though I’m only hitting with beginning/intermediate players. Anyway, at this point I’m guessing it’s at most 50-50 if I’ll be able to play at the Nationals. I’m there mostly to coach, but I’m also entered in two hardbat events, Over 40 and over 60. (I’m the defending Over 40 champion, which I’ve won eight times.)

US Classic Nationals
The US Classic Nationals, for Hardbat and Sandpaper, are in Austin, TX, on Aug. 12, run by Steve Claflin. You can enter via Omnipong. I’ll be there, both playing and doing coverage – will you? Here’s the article I wrote about them and two other upcoming Classic tournaments.

WTT Contender Lagos 2023
Here’s the home page for the event that took place in Lagos, Nigeria, June 12-18. Here are the Men’s and Women’s finals.

How Pros Train Off The Table With Fitness Trainer Kevin Finn
Here’s the video (49:48) from Seth Pech. “Produce more explosive power in shots, Attain better stamina, increase overall strength without increase in size and weight.”

Butterfly Training Tips

How to Improve Your Reaction Time By Doing a Simple Random Topspin Attack to Backhand Drill
Here’s the video (2:23) from PongSpace featuring Damien Provost.

New from Samson Dubina

New from Ti Long

New from PingSunday/EmRathThich

Harmeet Desai Forehand Flick against Jang Woojin
Here’s the video (79 sec) from Drupe Pong.

Fan Zhendong Ma Long and Others Train at WTTC Durban 2023
Here’s the video (9:59) from the Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis

Interview with Bojan Besinger
Here’s the video (15:12) from Pingispågarna with the German coach who runs the coaching company High Performance Table Tennis.

Ask the Coach
Here are the latest questions from PingSkills.

New from Steve Hopkins

Tournament Highlights

A Thrilling Journey at the Silicon Valley Teams Championship: Battles, Challenges, and Unforgettable Moments
Here’s the article by Charles Shen.

2023 Maryland Senior Olympics
Here’s the video (7:10) and here are results for the event held June 3 at the Potomac Community Center in Potomac, MD. John Olsen/Kevin Walton, two players I used to coach regularly, won 55-59 Men’s Doubles. (They didn’t play singles. They will be competing at the National Senior Games in Pittsburgh, July 12-18, in both singles and doubles.)

New from ITTF

Washington and New Delhi Share Interests, Not Values
No table tennis in this article from Foreign Affairs, but a nice table tennis image! Yes, that’s USA and India vs. China ping-pong paddles.

Blondie – Table Tennis Moves
Here’s the Blondie cartoon from yesterday (6-18-23)!

Ping-Pong in the Stone Age
Here’s the table tennis cartoon from 1901, on sale at Ebay! (Here’s a larger version.)

Pongfinity 4,000,000 Table Tennis Match
Here’s the video (15:22) from Pongfinity!

YouTuber vs. 10 Pros
Here’s the video (12:24) from Adam Bobrow! “After beating the top player at a club in Bali, I got invited to play the PRO team!” (So, how many did he beat?)

Forehand, Backhand Bird
Here’s the video (58 sec) – this is hilarious! (It looks like a crow or raven, except its throat and top of the head are turquoise. Email me if you can identify what type of bird this is. I Googled but couldn’t find it.)
BREAKING NEWS - it's a Superb Bird of Paradise from Papua New Guinea (see the second picture, which looks like the one above), according to Lance Bode, who emailed me this morning. 

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Tip of the Week
Accelerate Through the Ball for Power.

Comeback “Ghost” Serves and a Serving Rule Proposal
Comeback or ghost serves are serves that have so much backspin that, given the chance, they bounce backwards toward the net. I demonstrate this type of serve all the time – it’s just a matter of hitting the ball with high racket acceleration while grazing the ball finely with backspin. Normally, the main feature of such a serve is the heavy backspin, which opponents often put in the net.

At their most extreme, they land short and bounce directly back into or over the net, so shorter players (and often taller ones) cannot reach them – which I always consider extremely unfair. I do this serve all the time in practice, for fun – I used to practice it as an exhibition trick and once did 14 serves in a row that bounced directly back over the net. Younger kids love trying to return them for fun – they have to run to the side of the table to do so. In tournaments, I’ve done it three times, but only in lopsided matches for fun.

I once coached Derek Nie, the US Under 10 Boys’ Singles Champion, against an opponent who did this every serve. I think Derek at the time was ten years old and rated about 2100. His opponent was only 1800, and under normal circumstances would have little chance against Derek. But by serving short so the ball bounced back into or even over the net, Derek was unable to reach the serve. He tried running to the side of the table to do so, but even then couldn’t reach most of them, and it left him out of the point on the next shot. Even though Derek completely dominated on his serve and in any real rallies, he lost, deuce in the fifth. It was a sham of a match.

We actually have a game we play at my club sometimes, the “Backspin Serve Game.” Typically, each player serves five times, with the following scoring system. If you can make it so your serve bounces directly back over the net and onto your side, and does so on one bounce without touching the net in either direction, you get three points. If you get it to do so but it takes more than once bounce or touches the net in either direction, two points. If you make the ball come back so it touches the net, you get one point.

Here's my rules proposal:

“Any serve that doesn’t bounce away from the net after the first bounce on the receiver’s side of the table shall be a let.”

Here are some videos of these serves.

Weekend Coaching
I coached in six group junior sessions over the weekend, ten hours in all, plus a one-hour private session and a 20-minute video session. However, it’s the last “official” session before the summer, other than the novice group meeting next Sunday. (We have the MDTTC Open next weekend, but will run the novice class on the back tables Sunday late afternoon.)

One big task was writing up player evaluations. We have four groups; I was assigned to write them up for the Intermediate group. So I wrote up 14 evaluations that covered mostly technique and attitude. (I have evaluations for many of the other players in my head, which I sometimes go over with the player.)  

One interesting note – there’s one kid who always complains he’s too tired and doesn’t always seem to try. There’s no way he knew we were about to do evaluations – and yet, this weekend he tried hard the whole session, and really showed what he could do when he was focused. And then I discovered why. It turned out he normally had basketball practice just before the table tennis session, which was why he was always tired – but for the first time, he hadn’t had basketball that morning, and so was “fresh.” And so the mystery was solved! I put a note about this in the evaluation – hopefully we can find a way to give more rest between the two.

Some topics that came up during this weekend’s sessions:

  • Stay closer to the table! At least two kids tend to wander back, making things easy for their opponents. Playing off the table when the opponent attacks is a valuable tool for an attacker, but only when the opponent forces you off. Some players just like backing up because it’s fun – and while that’s true, it’s also a quick way to develop a weaker game.
  • When moving to the ball, stepping, not leaning, should be the proper reflex.
  • I explained the purpose of physical training to a group of kids. Some hadn’t really made the connection between some of the side-to-side physical training drills we do and what they do in table tennis in a real game. I also explained how, at the higher levels, it takes great physical training to physically do what the top athletes make look so easy.
  • I had a video session with one of our top juniors, where we watched videos of two of his matches and focused on his receive. (Tip – if it’s on YouTube, you can use the left and right arrows to move five seconds forward or back so you don’t waste time waiting for the next rally. You can also use the period to move one frame forward at a time, and the comma to move one frame backward.)

US Table Tennis Hall of Fame Induction Dinner
Here’s the info page and here’s the Class of 2023. The dinner and induction banquet will take place during the US Nationals at the Fort Worth Convention Center on Wednesday, July 5, starting at 6PM. I’ll be there and hope to see you too! (I just finished the program booklet for the event.) This year’s inductees – Kenneth Brooks (athlete), Ashu Jain (athlete/contributor), Dennis Davis (contributor), and Willy Leparulo (contributor).

Robots M-ONE is the World's First Humanoid Table Tennis Robot
Here’s the video (3:33) from the Performance Biomechanics Academy. This is intriguing! I’ve always said the biggest weakness of training with a robot is you aren’t reacting to a ball coming off an actual table tennis racket as you would in a game. This means when you practice with a normal robot, you learn to react to the ball only after it is coming toward you, and to a spin that you didn’t actually see being made. In real table tennis, you should be reacting to the ball as the opponent is contacting the ball or just before, since you can see what he’s doing before the ball is actually coming at you. This doesn’t mean practicing with a regular robot doesn’t help, only that over-relying on it can hurt your game.

Garry Shandling’s “The Natural”
Here’s the video (24:22) of the 1988 episode that features table tennis! It’s a takeoff from the 1984 movie “The Natural” starring Robert Redford, where Redford is an almost supernaturally gifted baseball player – except in Garry Shandling’s episode, Garry is an almost supernaturally gifted table tennis player! You don’t want to miss this. (And you should see the original “The Natural” as well – one of the greatest sports movies ever, though many coaches don’t like it since it implies that great athletes are born with their natural talent, which is at most only partially true.)

New from USATT

New from Samson Dubina

  • Pushing the Limits (6:04)
  • Nervous vs Energized! (7:09)
  • Mental Strength (1:56)
  • Table Tennis News – it’s about tabletenniscoaching.com! “Over the last few years, one of the top supporters of our content is Larry Hodges and his website www.tabletenniscoaching.com. I would encourage all of you to check out Larry's weekly updates on his website.  Not only does he have amazing coaching articles but he also links to so much online content with news, coaching videos, coaching articles, and funny things that happen in the table tennis world!”

New from PongSpace
Here are two videos from French star Damien Provost.

The Match I Broke USATT 2500
Here’s the video (10:40) with lots of commentary from Seth Pech on his match with Senura Silva (2600) in the semifinals of the Motor City Open.

The Curse of the Strong Server
Here’s the article by Tom Lodziak.

Cognitive Neuroscience in Table Tennis
Here’s the article from PingSunday/EmRatThich.

New from Pingispågarna

New from Ti Long

Online Coaching by The TT Service Guy
Here’s the page for Craig Bryant’s online coaching, which seems to feature “Helping players develop Killer Serves.” I did segment on coaches who do online coaching on Aug. 3, 2020, so you can add this to that list. Some of those links are outdated, however.

I Played Vs World Champion Werner Schlager
Here’s the video (12:57) from Table Tennis Daily.

New from the Malong Fanmade Channel
Lots of videos here.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

Oscar’s Dream
Here’s the article by Oscar A. Birriel.

Jessie Xu Finishes 2nd in 2023 Pan Am Selections Canada
Here’s the article by Stephanie Sun

Manufacturing Process of Butterfly Rubbers
Here’s the video (2:58).

Gionis Panagiotis vs Kaii Yoshida | FINAL | Polish Super League 2023
Here’s the video (20:14) – chopper vs. attacker – and see the big celebration at the end.

New from Table Tennis Media

King of Ping Pong Shirts
Here’s what you get at Amazon when you search for King of Ping Pong Shirts. C’mon, you’re not a real table tennis player if you don’t have at least one of these! You can also search for Queen of Ping Pong shirts but the results aren’t quite as good, though there are a few.

No Horseplay
Here’s the cartoon!

Brain Pong
Here’s the cartoon!

These Ping Pong Challenges are HARD
Here’s the video (8:01) from Pongfinity!

Non-Table Tennis – Superhero Satire Sale
Just this morning I sold a fantasy superhero satire story, “Drip,” to Ahoy Comics for $200. (The story is only 1200 words.) What happens when the world is so full of non-stop action, with the main hero fighting off villains and saving the world almost non-stop, that everyone’s idea of a break is to watch a movie about a drop of paint slowly dribbling down a wall? (Here’s my SF and fantasy sales bibliography.)

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Tips of the Week
In case you missed it since I had no blog last week, I’m including last week’s Tip of the Week as well as this week’s.

So Much Going On!
See below for segments on three major Hardbat/Classic table tennis tournaments (including a Nationals, an Open, and a Worlds); the Hall of Fame Induction Dinner and Ceremony during the Nationals in July; George Brathwaite League; and my 20th book, Yet Still More Table Tennis Tips!

Weekend Coaching
I had a very busy coaching weekend, coaching in six junior group sessions (about ten hours), plus a 30-minute private session. I was tired going in after spending over a week sick with TCTWGA (The Cold That Wouldn’t Go Away), but it’s finally gone away, mostly. Alas, I’m still having serious shoulder problems, though I can still rally as a practice partner as long as I don’t go all-out or reach out with my arm. (I can’t extend my arm to my wide forehand or for short balls, or hit aggressive backhands.) Some highlights:

  • On Saturday, in one of the junior group sessions, I hit with the players, rotating them around, mostly doing footwork drills. One of the players in my group was Ryan Li, age seven, the youngest player in the session, with a rather out-of-date rating of 642. The drill was forehand-forehand footwork, where I alternated hitting to his wide forehand and middle, and he moved side to side, hitting all forehands. The goal was to get 50, and then 100. So, how many did he hit? Brace yourself – he did 1,000 in a row!!! When we reached about 500, I told him I’d catch the ball at 1,000. The other coaches took the others in my group so I could stay with Ryan. By the end, most of the kids and coaches had converged around the table to watch as I called out the number every ten shots. The kids even called out in unison the last shots in a countdown – 990, 991, 992, 993, 994, 995, 996, 997, 998, 999, and 1,000!!! This is something he’ll remember forever. As I explained to Ryan and others, once you have decent technique, the rest is mental. He seems to have a similar mentality to a similarly-named player who started out in my beginning junior classes about six years ago and last year won Under 13 Boys’ Singles at the US Nationals – Ryan Lin, now 13 and rated 2266 – who just happened to be practicing on another table as this was happening.
  • In Group 1 (most advanced group), one of the drills had one player serving short backspin, the receiver, drops it short, server quick pushes deep to backhand, receiver backhand loops to backhand, and then they continued with the 2-1 drill (backhand from backhand, forehand from backhand, forehand from wide forehand). Several of the players had trouble pushing short. They were trying to ease up on the push and just pat the ball back, hitting the ball almost straight on. I demonstrated the proper way, which is to take the ball quick off the bounce, while the ball is very low, and graze it finely. It’s the grazing that both deadens the ball and puts backspin on it so it both doesn’t bounce out and makes it harder to attack. (Surprisingly, you can also push short by taking the ball on the drop, as long as you take it low and aren’t too far back from the net.)
  • One player was blocking pretty consistently in a drill, but not moving his feet too much. So I was on him to have “active feet” – see my Tip on Blocking Footwork. The problem is a player can often be consistent in a drill without moving the feet too much since he knows roughly where the ball is going to be and so can just reach for it, as coaches often do when they block for players for many hours. But in a game situation, you can’t, and so active feet becomes a priority.
  • I had a 30-minute session with para junior star Sam Altshuler. Many of his opponents use long pips, as he does, and he needs practice against these surfaces. So I pulled out my long pips no-sponge blocking racket for him to practice against. With my style – big forehand attack, consistent backhand with little attack – I probably should just use long pips myself! It’s tempting. I also pulled out my racket with medium pips and let him practice against that.
  • On Saturday night, from 4-6PM, we had our semi-annual junior party, with about 50 kids. (We have over 60 in the program.) Lots of great food! I was informally in charge of games, and so brought out my five mini-rackets (with super-bouncy Tenergy), my two giant over-sized rackets, and a box of hardbats, plus the mini-table, and the kids went at it. But by far the most popular game was “Long Pong.” I pulled two tables together, lengthwise, and put a barrier between them, held up by chairs. Result? An 18-foot court!!! It was so popular we set up a second court, and then we had a third one, where we put the two tables together sideways, so (with a gap in the middle), it was 12 feet long, nine feet wide. Here’s a picture and video (37 sec). You don’t see it in the video, but some of the kids got really good at this, essentially counterlooping back and forth. Most of the time they played doubles or even triples.

Yet Still More Table Tennis Tips
The fourth book in the series will be out by the end of June – I’ll announce it here. It’ll be my 20th book. This follows the first three books:

US Table Tennis Hall of Fame Induction Dinner
Here’s the info page and here’s the Class of 2023. The dinner and induction banquet will take place during the US Nationals at the Fort Worth Convention Center on Wednesday, July 5, starting at 6PM. I’ll be there and hope to see you too! (I just finished the program booklet for the event.) This year’s inductees – Kenneth Brooks (athlete), Ashu Jain (athlete/contributor), Dennis Davis (contributor), and Willy Leparulo (contributor).

Hardbat, Sandpaper, and Wood, Oh My! Three Huge All-Classic Tournaments Coming Soon
Here’s the article I wrote about them. I will be at all three, both competing and doing coverage at the Nationals and World’s. (There are also lots of hardbat and sandpaper events at the regular US Nationals in July.)

Dual Championships! George Braithwaite Club League 2023 Spring Championship and AYTTO National Championship 2023
Here’s the article, pictures, and video. Wish I could have been there, but as usual I’m busy coaching on weekends. We had three players there.

How to Play With & Against Long Pips & Anti
Here’s the video (24:05) from Seth Pech. This seemed like a good one to highlight.

Table Tennis How To Teach Children
Here’s the video (8:27) from Dr. Table Tennis.

News from All Over
Since I haven't blogged in two weeks (due to being sick), rather than try to list every interesting article, for this blog I'll just link to some of the main news and coaching pages, and you can pick and choose.

USATT News

Lily Yip, 59: Ping Pong Champion Returns for Gold
Here’s the article from Ageist Magazine.

Manor Table Tennis Club
Here’s the video (2:19) from Fox 43 News.

Effect of Specialized Table Tennis Training Program on Speed, Agility and Reaction Time of Amateur Table Tennis Players
Here’s the journal article from Researchgate.

Table Tennis and Data: Exploring Ways to Enhance the Fan Experience
Here’s the survey page. It’s a survey for “conducting research on the potential of incorporating more statistics and data-driven stories into the sport of table tennis. The objective is to identify what kind of additional information can make following table tennis even more exciting and engaging for fans like you, whether it be during live streams, reading online, or even discussing with friends.”

Table Tennis - 1 in a Million Moments
Here’s the video (17 sec) – the ultimate chop lob and the ultimate drop shot?

Cartwheel Pong
Here’s the video (30 sec)! Doing the cartwheels is Jindrich Pansky, with his hitting partner Milan Orlowski, both from Czech Republic. The two were finalists in Men’s Doubles at the 1985 Worlds.

Today’s Forecast - 100% Chance of Ping Pong
Here’s the shirt from Amazon!

Little Dot #106 (1966) High-Grade NM- Killer Ping Pong Table Tennis Cover
Here’s where you can buy the comic - $33.

Picklepong?
Here’s the Tank McNamara cartoon from yesterday (June 4)! How Pickleball Players See Themselves . . . How Tennis Players See Pickleball. Wait, I think we've been insulted!!!

Fetch!
Here’s the cartoon!

Level 1 to 15: Bali Challenge
Here’s the video (14:51) from Adam Bobrow!

Pongfinity vs. Strangers: 8 Weird Ping Pong Challenges
Here’s the video (8:01) from Pongfinity!

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UPDATE - I'm still sick in bed and feeling like someone dropped a ping-pong table on my head, and I've decided I'm skipping this week's blog. (Don't worry, I tested for Covid, negative.) I'm going through Kleenex like multiball and coughing up stuff every few minutes. I don't think I've had a cold or flu like this in several years. I think I caught whatever I have last Wednesday, when I spent the day in DC touring Ford's Theater, and then a tour of all the major monuments - Washington (took the elevator to the top), Lincoln, Jefferson, MLK, FDR, WW1, WW2, Korean, Vietnam, and even the Einstein Memorial a few blocks away from the National Mall. I also walked around the White House and visited Lafayette Square, and then visited Spin DC Table Tennis, which was also just a few blocks away. So I was around crowds all day, and also on the jammed subway back and forth. I was supposed to spend Fri & Sat as a panelist at the Baltimore Science Fiction Convention, but had to drop out. I was feeling better Saturday night, and so coached two group sessions on Sunday - but near the end of the first one, I got weak and dizzy and had to stop about 15 minutes before the end of the session. (But I still came back for the second one.) Afterwards, whatever I have got worse. But I think it's just a bad cold, though I have some suspicions I might have had mild flu at the same time - had some stomach problems. 

But the Tip of the week is up, Solving Slow Starter Syndrome. And here are Results from the World Championships, which finished over the weekend. Linked below are the two all-Chinese singles finals, with time between points removed. (The men’s semifinals were all-Chinese, and the women’s semifinals were three Chinese and Hina Hayata of Japan, who lost to eventual winner Sun Yingsha in the semifinals, 4-1.) In the men’s final, Fan was up 10-5 championship point in the fifth, but lost six in a row before losing 13-11, but he won the sixth easily, 11-3. It’s Fan’s second straight Men’s Singles title at the Worlds (2021 and 2023), and third final – he lost deuce in the seventh to Ma Long in the 2017 final.

Here’s an interesting thought – after Ma Long won three straight men’s titles, 2015, 2017, and 2019, he was often called the Greatest of All Time. But if Fan had won that nail-bitingly close 2019 final, where he led 9-7 in the seventh, this would be his third title, to Ma Long’s two – would they be calling Fan Zhendong the GOAT, with Ma out of the running? (Ma Long, 34, lost in the semifinals here, to Wang Chuqin.) Of course, they’ve both won a bunch of other titles – and Ma Long has won five golds at the Olympics, including the last two in Men’s Singles, defeating Fan in the final in 2020, while Fan has just one Olympic Gold, for teams. (If you want their complete medal records, click on their names above, linked to Wikipedia, and click on “medals record” on right.)

Tip of the Week
Table Tennis Gems.

Weekend Coaching
I coached five group sessions this weekend. I only had one on Saturday, with the other four on Sunday – including three in a row without a break, totaling five hours. I used to coach five hours straight somewhat regularly, but not anymore – and these days, it’s pretty tiring! And yet, the reality is I wasn’t that tired during the sessions where I was focused, mostly afterwards, when I felt like a ping-pong ball that had been used in a smashing drill and then stomped on by an army of over-excited kids.

As usual, I’m constantly harping on “active feet.” As an amusing side, it means I know everyone’s shoes, and even asked a few of them why they chose those particular shoes. In the higher groups, one wore volleyball shoes, which work can for table tennis, but the rest had various TT shoes. I also stressed always doing something with each shot, don’t just blindly do them. Choose and place each shot for a reason – the more you do that, the more reflexive it becomes. For example, don’t just push the ball back – do it quick and fast, or super heavy, or short, or aim one way and go another, or use an extreme angle, or something.

A local 2000 player, Konstantyn “Stan” Salatov, emailed me about the problem of slow starters, as both he and his son, AJ (13, rated 1787) tend to be slow starters in tournaments. It’s a common thing which I also had problems with long ago. I wrote a rather long email about this, as well as a follow-up. I was going to put it here, but it’s more of a Tip of the Week – so I instead wrote it up as one, which will show up at some point, maybe next Monday. (I’ve already written enough Tips to go through July.) But the super-short version is there are two equally important aspects to solving this problem – physical and mental. To prepare physically for a tournament, you shouldn’t just warm up with a bunch of rote drills. You also need play points and do random drills, as these allow you to “play free” instead of just robotically, where you know where the incoming ball is going. You need to do this both before your first match, and also in the days before. To prepare mentally, you need to remember the best match you have ever played, and remember the mentality you had in that match – and go into your first match with that mentality.

I also did a player analysis of one of our top junior players, whose parents sent me video of him from a recent tournament. I won’t go into my analysis here, but it’s important to look at videos from tournaments and figure out from there what needs to be worked on – both things that need fixing, and things that can become overpowering strengths. In this case, I had four main things. One was about active feet on receive, which will likely become an upcoming Tip of the Week.

2023 World Championships
Here’s the ITTF home page for the event, with lots of World Championships news. It also links to the World Table Tennis page for the event, which has complete results. Here’s the Youtube video page. They are being held in Durban, South Africa, May 20-28. Here’s the SUATT news item, USA Draws for the 2023 World Championships in South Africa.  

Here’s more on the Worlds from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly.

Proof of Citizenship at the US Nationals
Last week I received the following email from USATT Tournament Operations about the upcoming US Nationals:

Please note that in order to participate in the Championship Events (event #1-31) and Doubles Events (event #32-66) in this Tournament, a participant must be a citizen of the United States. All participants in the 2023 US Nationals who are registered in a Championship Event (singles and/or doubles) must provide a copy of his or her US passport, an original U.S. birth certificate, a naturalization certificate, a certificate of citizenship, or some other document recognized as legally proving US citizenship, as well as a photo ID, at the registration desk in order to pick the participant's player package.

The key thing here is we have to bring a birth certificate, passport, or some other proof of citizenship and show it at the registration desk. This makes no sense except for new players or those who just received citizenship. USATT maintains a “citizens” list, and once you are on it, you should be set and no longer need to bring proof to every event. That’s how it’s been done for decades - I haven't shown citizenship in about 35 years. I'm the one who created and maintained it for USATT for several years during my first tenure with them in the late 1980s (a paper list back then!), and I believe it has been maintained since. The USATT rating page (which comes from the USATT database) has a “Citizens” category you can list by, so they still have that in their database. So why are they asking us to bring proof of something they already have??? Do we have to bring proof now at every Nationals and Open again? It is sort of funny that I’ve been a USATT member since 1976, have been to every US Nationals since 1984 and numerous Team Trials where citizenship was required, am listed in their database as a citizen after showing them my birth certificate several decades ago, and once again I would have to bring proof! I’m curious if they will ask last year’s Men’s and Women’s singles champions, Nikhil Kumar and Lily Zhang, for proof of citizenship, as well as others who played championships events last year, or Olympians, which also required citizenship to compete. 

Dan Reynolds Resigns
This morning Dan Reynolds resigned from the USATT Board of Directors, citing exhaustion. I could write volumes on various issues related to this, but frankly, I’m tired of USATT coverage for now. Sometimes I have to remind myself and others that this site is TableTennisCOACHING.com, not USATTCoverage.com. (Hmmm, that’s an idea for a web page.) And having said that...

USATT News

Coaching the Coach
Here’s the article by Massimo Costantini.

Butterfly Training Tips

New from Ti Long

Hitting a Drop Shot Off of High Balls
Here’s the video (1:49) by Damien Provost from PongSpace.

Don’t Panic! How to Learn from Your Serve Receive Errors
Here’s the article from Tom Lodziak. Nice cartoon picture!

Three Classic Mistakes with Backhand
Here’s the video (3:19) from Pingispågarna.

On Spin and Anticipation in Table Tennis
Here’s the video (6:45) from Drupe Pong.

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

Ask the Coach
Here are the latest questions from PingSkills.

NCTTA Collegiate Nationals
Here’s the article by Joanna Sung.

Tashiya Piyadasa Receives a Long Term Scholarship from OCTTA
Here’s the article by Tashiya.

Interview with Sathiyan Gnanasekaran – Winner of the 84th Indian Table Tennis Championships
Here’s the article.

What’s a Ping Pong Olympic Champion Home Like?
Here’s the video (7:21), featuring Zhang Jike. “We renovated an Olympic champion home.”

Today’s Forecast - 100% Chance of Ping Pong
Here’s where you can get the shirt at Amazon!

Sports at the Dinner Table
Here’s the cartoon!

The Most Satisfying Ping Pong Challenge
Here’s the video (8:01) from PongFinity! Also, I found another one from them that I don’t think I’ve ever linked to - Ping Pong Meets Trampoline Park (8:01)!

US Presidents Play Wii Sports Table Tennis
Here’s the video (8:10)! Hilarious. Features Obama, Biden, and Trump, with Bush Jr. appearing toward the end. Warning – lots of profanity.

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Tip of the Week
Are You Trying Too Hard?

US Table Tennis Hall of Fame
All mention and links to the US Table Tennis Hall of Fame are gone from the USATT web pages. If you want to visit it, you have to know to go to their new website since it no longer exists, as far as USATT is concerned. It’s just indescribable how the current USATT does these silly things that hurt our sport. I could do a VERY long blog on how many table tennis groups the current USATT has gone to war with, all to the detriment of the sport. 

The US Table Tennis Hall of Fame is an independent group, just as the Hall of Fames of most sports in the US, including baseball, basketball, football, tennis, and most others – that’s the best way to keep it from becoming overly politicized. Here's the current Hall of Fame Board of Directors, a "Who's Who" of US Table Tennis, and far less politicized than USATT. There’s a battle going on right now as many of the current leaders of USATT want to take over the Hall of Fame, which would be a terrible move. The main consequence of USATT running a Hall of Fame would be the politicization that comes from wanting to “reward” political friends and punish “opponents.” 

I wouldn’t be surprised if USATT tries to set up their own separate Hall of Fame, arguing that the Hall of Fame should only recognize those who contribute directly to USA Table Tennis, i.e. not those who mostly worked on related organizations, like National Collegiate Table Tennis Association. And yet, when you go to their own USATT mission statement, it says:

“THE MISSION OF USATT IS TO SUPPORT, DEVELOP, GROW AND INSPIRE THE TABLE TENNIS COMMUNITY; AND TO PROVIDE RESOURCES THAT ENABLE ATHLETES TO ACHIEVE SUSTAINED COMPETITIVE EXCELLENCE AND PURSUE OLYMPIC AND PARALYMPIC SUCCESS.”

So, the USATT mission is to “Support, Develop, Grow, and Inspire the Table Tennis Community.” Note it says Table Tennis Community, not USA Table Tennis. USATT (and that includes me, a life member, and many readers here who are USATT members) are supposed to be developing this sport IN THIS COUNTRY, period. I was on the board of directors when we created this mission statement – the “Support, Develop, Grow, and Inspire the Table Tennis Community” part were my words, and we really meant it – but not so much the current group. We’re supposed to work together, not turn everything into a political fight and, say, remove links to the Hall of Fame if you don’t get your way. Heck, I work with USATT, despite our disagreements – in recent years I’ve coached our junior teams overseas in Austria, Jordan, Ecuador, and Santo Domingo, chaired and/or was a member of the coaching committee, and edited the complicated entry forms for the US Open and Nationals, including the upcoming one.

Disclaimer - I do the program booklet for the annual US Table Tennis Hall of Fame Banquet and Induction Ceremony, which are linked from the Dinner page, if you page down. I’m also in the US Table Tennis Hall of Fame and was awarded the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award. But I’m only 63!!! Here’s a short History of the US Table Tennis Hall of Fame.

New USATT Webpage?
On Friday, a whole new USATT website went up. There was no advance notice or news item that I saw – it came out of the blue. It was a mess. I wrote an extensive blog this morning (Monday) about it for this week’s blog – but while I was doing so, after being public for three days, they reverted back to the old version. While that’s a good move, I have no idea why they are creating a new version, or why they put up one that’s not ready to go public for these three days. I’m sure some of them are happy about wasting my time – but they don’t look very good when they do such things – like taking out the Hall of Fame links (see above), it’s just silly. On a related note, there hasn’t been a single USATT news item in 17 days, not since Apr. 28. (They used to be much more common.) Ironically, the “new” version that’s disappeared had one from a few days ago about para table tennis, but it’s gone as well – and even then, just one in 17 days?
(Edit - the mysterious news item reappeared later on Monday, US Paralympic Medalists Looking to Have a Dominant Performance in Homecoming Appearance at the 2023 ITTF Para US Open.) 

Weekend Coaching
I did four group sessions over the weekend. I mostly did multiball or was a roving coach, so didn’t hit directly too much except for one session where I hit with alternating players for an hour. After two months, my shoulder is still injured and I probably need to rest it – I’m debating whether to see a doctor so he can say, “Yep, you have an injured shoulder and need to rest it.” But when I hit with beginning/intermediate kids, there’s usually not too much strain on the shoulder. (Once it’s a bit better, then I might start doing some easy exercises on it to build it back up, but it’s not ready for that yet.)

While coaching, I focused a lot on ball control this weekend. If you are hitting forehand to forehand or backhand to backhand, the ball should be going where you are aiming – and that’s the corners. As I explained at one point, “Top players don’t hit middle forehand to middle forehand.”

I also emphasized doing something with your push. You don’t just get it back – every push should be an adventure, where you put extra backspin on the ball, hit it quick or fast, place it, change directions, or something. Otherwise you make things easy for the opponent, like hitting with a predictable robot.

One thing that we’ve done a lot of recently toward the end of a session is have the kids line up, I put an empty basket on the table upside down, and I feed multiball as they try to knock it off. Typically I might feed three shots each, to wide backhand, middle, and wide forehand, and they play forehands. It takes a number of shots to knock the basket off – most hits nudge it maybe a quarter inch, though a hard, direct hit might send it two inches. We time and see how long it takes them to knock it off.

Here’s something to think about. In one session, the players were playing up-down tables, games to 11. For the very last game, for fun, I had everyone play one game to four points – opposite handed! So righties played lefty, lefties played righty. There were sixteen players, and fifteen players had fun. But one kid, surprisingly, took things so seriously that he was crying afterwards, almost inconsolable. Why? “I’m so bad left-handed!” he wailed. Yes, some kids take these things very seriously.

Forehand Topspin, Modern Versions
Here’s an example (33 sec) of a nice modern forehand – I think the player’s name is Azhara from the HATTA. Besides being a good example to copy, there’s something of historic interest here involving terminology. If you went back to the years I was developing (I started in 1976), and up until perhaps twenty or so years ago, this would have been called a close-to-table loop (or topspin in Europe). But now it’s just a standard forehand drive, which these days are taught to have this type of topspin. (It’s much easier and more natural with modern sponges.) It’s really a terminology thing – I watch it and see a close-to-table loop and remind myself that this is just a regular forehand, while a modern player just sees a regular forehand.

This isn’t the only change in modern forehands. Here’s video (8 sec) of Stanley Hsu (far side, about 2400) with Cheng Yinghua. Stanley blocks two, and then counterloops close to the table for a winning shot - and does so with his feet parallel to the incoming ball. In the past, players were taught to move the right foot back (for righties) for forehands, even in fast rallies, often taking a step back to do so. But now we teach up-and-coming juniors to keep the feet mostly parallel in faster rallies like this so they can play the ball more quickly and stay closer to the table. If he'd brought his right foot back, it would have slowed him down, making the shot more difficult and probably rushed, or he'd have had to step back some. One key issue - it takes a lot of physical training to do this type of body rotation at high speeds, so for most of us, old-style is probably better. I also wrote about this in my blog on May 1 – see third bullet point in Weekend Coaching. (There’ll be an upcoming Tip of the Week on this, currently scheduled for July 10 – I’ve written all the Tips of the Week through July.)

Improve Backhand Speed, Short Backhand Flips & More
Here’s the video (13:06) from Seth Pech – highly recommend this if you want to see these and other techniques from an elite point of view.

How to Topspin Any Serve Long to Your Backhand – Step-by-Step Guide
Here’s the video (5:08) from Rational Table Tennis.

How Using Your Body/Wrist Can Help to Increase Your Racket Speed
Here’s the video (4:59) from Drupe Pong.

Strategically Use of Half-Long Serves to Gain Advantage
Here’s the video (2:10) from Angela Guan/PongSpace.

Can Adult Players Change Technique
Here’s the article by Tom Lodziak.

Multiball Training is Fundamental to Early Success in Table Tennis
Here’s the article by Subham Kundu, a professional player and coach from India.

The Importance of a Coach in a Table Tennis Match
Here’s the article by Kasmono Monex.

Talking about Lower Back Pain (and Table Tennis)
Here’s the article by Dr. Alomar-Jimenez.

New from Ti Long

Ask the Coach
Here are the latest questions from PingSkills.

Daniel Gonzalez Joined Major League Table Tennis (MLTT)
Here’s the article by Stephanie Sun.

Samson Dubina Table Tennis Academy For Sale
The deadline for putting in bids is Wednesday, May 17, in two days. Here’s their Business Plan and new video Successful Academy (2:07).

Alexis Lebrun and Power of Serve
Here’s the video (35 sec).

Waldner’s Successor
Here’s the video (2:20) from Taco Backhand, featuring Truls Moregard of Sweden.

Truls Moregardh vs Koji Uezu | FINAL | Swedish League 2023
Here’s the video (5:51).

Timo Boll Withdraws from 2023 World Championships
Here’s the video (2:20) from TT11TV. He is still recovering from a shoulder injury.

TT Insider 'The reunion: Liam & Zak' mental health discussion
Here’s the video (4:31) with Liam Pitchford and Zak Abel.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from EmRatThich/PingSunday

New from ITTF

2Pong, SmashNet, Teqball and Headis - Has the World Gone Mad?
C’mon, table tennis is the REAL racket sport, and nobody’s going to play these newfangled things like these or pickleball!

King Pong Shirts
Here’s what you get when you go to Amazon and put in “King Pong Shirts” – there are so many to choose from! You can also do this with socks, hats, and with other animals – there’s a jungle of such ping-pong stuff out there just waiting to get bought.

I Don’t Remember What We Do Here
Here’s the cartoon!

Pongfinity Shorts
Here’s 43 hilarious short videos from Pongfinity! I link to their usually weekly longer videos, but these are shorter classics.

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Tip of the Week
Five Tips to Increase Forehand Looping Power.

Weekend Coaching
Five group sessions, two private sessions, nine hours total, and yes, I’m exhausted, as I always am on Mondays after coaching on the weekend. (Yet, the other coaches at MDTTC do far more hours, as I did when I was younger before I semi-retired.) I spent much of the sessions either feeding multiball or (in two sessions) as a practice partner with rotating players. There was a lot of work looping backspin and in general on consistency. We did a lot of box-bashing, where I put on the table one of the plastic boxes or bowls we use for serving practice, perhaps a foot from the end-line, and the player has to knock it off as I feed multiball – it takes a bunch of hits to do so. Often I do this two at a time, with each player typically doing three shots – perhaps a forehand from the backhand corner, middle, and forehand corner, then rotating around while partner does three. Or they do the backhand-forehand-forehand drill – backhand from backhand side, forehand from backhand side, forehand from forehand side, then rotate around. I time it each time to see how long it takes them to knock it off, so they compete on this – and so they have fun while developing their footwork, strokes, consistency, power, and accuracy.

I had two private sessions, both with para players. The first was with Navin Kumar, where the focus was on smashing. We also did a lot of random drills. I’m also working with him on being more aggressive with his backhand long pips (no sponge) against backspin – you can’t just pat it back. We’re also working on flipping his racket so he can use the inverted side sometimes on the backhand to attack. I gave him an assignment – watch lots of TV, but hold your racket as you do so and twirl it until you can do it in your sleep (as well as while watching TV or playing TT). Here’s video (62 sec) Navin took of the session.

I also had a session with Sam Altshuler, a para junior star, ranked #39 in Para Men’s Class 6. (That’s against men, and he’s a junior player.) He also has long pips on the backhand, but with sponge and so is more aggressive – both on that side and with his forehand. His normal coach is Lidney Castro, but USATT para coach Jasna Rather asked if I could work with him on playing against long pips, since he faces that so often in para tournaments where long pips is far more common. The irony is that the other junior players at MDTTC get regular practice against long pips by playing Sam, but he doesn’t since he can’t play himself. So for this session I got out my racket with long pips, no sponge, and let him go after it for 30 minutes. (I keep in my playing bag a variety of rackets, many of which I pull out in tournaments for student to warm up against if they are about to play someone with that surface. All of them have Tenergy 05 on one side, with the other side being long pips no sponge (for blocking); long pips thin sponge (for chopping); medium long pips; short pips; antispin; and hardbat. Sam has endless energy and enthusiasm - when I said it was time to rest so we could be ready for the upcoming 90-minute group session, he didn't want to stop!!!

Dan Reynolds and USATT
On February 7, I blogged about various USATT shenanigans and bylaw violations, including how the current chair of the board isn’t even eligible to be chair, and how the board member who was planning to run against him – Dan Reynolds – was suddenly accused (anonymously) of misconduct, and so “Temporarily” suspended by SafeSport. Well, he's been reinstated and is now off the suspended list. But he wasn’t allowed to attend USATT events for over four months, including tournaments (he’s a national referee), and of course USATT board meetings, including the one where the ineligible board chair was re-elected chair, while Reynolds was suspended and so unable to run or vote. While I can see why a person accused of misconduct with, say, a minor would be suspended from events with minors, there’s little justification for suspending such a person from other activities when all we have is an anonymous accusation that has nothing to do with board activities. I’m not going into details here, but this makes three times in the last couple of years or so where a USATT member was “conveniently” suspended and so not able to participate in important issues or events. Two were reinstated, including Reynolds; the other is ongoing. (NOTE added on Wednesday - I initially said the third case would "likely" be the same, but I took that out since that's purely speculative.) Guess what could happen to me if I were to, say, run for the USATT board next year? No, I don’t plan to (but haven’t ruled it out), but the fact that all a political “opponent” or any crank who doesn’t like you has to do to derail an opponent these days is make an anonymous accusation to SafeSport at the right time . . . is chilling.

Tournament Software
I have a pet peeve. This is the year 2023, and some tournaments are still using software that doesn’t put the results online. There’s nothing wrong with using older software if it’s updated so it can do what most modern tournament softwares can do, including putting the results online. There are free softwares that do that – in particular, Omnipong, which probably runs the majority of USATT tournaments these days (and is the software USATT uses for their major tournaments), as well as TTlive, which a number of other tournaments use.

For tournaments that don’t put complete results online, we have to wait for the results to be processed for USATT ratings - and they don’t show the actual draws and so you can’t really see what happened, just a listing of wins and losses for individual players, by event and round. It’s like wanting to see the box score for a baseball game, but all you can do is wait up to a week, and then look up each player’s disconnected results for that game, one by one.

There were ten USATT tournaments last weekend, but none were processed until Friday. So we had to wait 5-6 days to see those results, and then only one player at a time, rather than seeing the draws themselves. In essence, since the draws for those tournaments aren’t online, they are lost to posterity. For comparison, here are the results for the Cary Cup in North Carolina, which was a four-day tournament, Thu-Sun, that used Omnipong. We had about ten players from my club there, and I was able to check the results for them every night. You can look up the full results and draws of every tournament ever run on Omnipong, so those results are up for posterity. We had two players in another tournament that I won’t name, and I couldn’t see their results until the following Friday, and those draws are essentially lost to posterity. One problem – tournament directors who don’t put the full results online rarely hear from the numerous people who are irritated at this, and so when someone like me does complain, they think it’s an isolated case that nobody cares about.

Samson Dubina Table Tennis Academy For Sale
Here’s the notice for those interested in buying. Here’s the video (4:18) from a couple of weeks ago. There are other updates on their News page that I linked to last week.

Thomas Hu Interview
Here’s the video (3:25) with the CEO of AYTTO and USATT board member. “October 26, 2020, a beloved legend in the US table tennis passed away. In honor of his immense contribution to the table tennis community and world peace, NCTTA and AYTTO teamed together to honor him with the Annual George Braithwaite Community Service Award for those high school seniors demonstrating a consistent and positive contribution to the AYTTO community.”

The Importance of Communications on Doubles
Here’s the video (2:52) from PongSpace by Angela Guan.

New from Ti Long

New from the Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis

Basic Guide for Table Tennis Forehand Topspin
Here’s the video (79 sec) from the Aspire TTC.

Ask the Coach
Here are the latest questions from PingSkills.

Enjoying WTT Youth Star Contender 2023
Here’s the article by Patryk Zyworonek

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

China’s Biggest Threat Right Now
Here’s the video (2:23) featuring world #7 Truls Moregard of Sweden, from Tacobackhand. (Truls and world #4 Tomokazu Harimoto of Japan do seem to be the biggest threats.)

The Greatest GIANT In Table Tennis History
Here’s the video (3:25) featuring Zoran Kalinic.

New from ITTF

Mini-Pong Forehands
Here’s the video (22 sec)!

I Feel Like I Play Better on Clay
Here’s the cartoon!

The INDONESIA Challenge
Here’s the video (16:18) from Adam Bobrow!

World's Most Ridiculous Ping Pong Serves
Here’s the video (4:04) from Pongfinity – I’m going to learn some of these!!!

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Tip of the Week
Tactics at the End of a Close Game.

Weekend Coaching
Note to self: Never let kids you are practicing with know that you are recovering from a shoulder injury and can’t extend your arm to cover the wide forehand. If you do, guess where they’ll put every ball while gleefully laughing?

I coached in four group junior sessions over the weekend. Here are some of the things that came up.

  • Random drills placement. In the drill where one player plays backhand randomly anywhere while the other player keeps it to his backhand, the focus for the backhand player should be placement. (The drill can also be done to the forehand.) Specifically, every shot should go to one of three spots – wide forehand, wide backhand, or elbow (midway between forehand and backhand). But it’s not just randomly playing the three spots – this drill allows players to learn what combinations work. For example, when you go at the middle, it forces the opponent to move out of position to play forehand or backhand – and so one of the corners open up. Sometimes the player overreacts to cover the open corner, and so the other corner is the one that opens up. This drill allows the backhand player to learn how best to maneuver the opponent around. It allows the other player to learn how to recover from the three placements. (This might become a future Tip of the Week.)
  • Rally at a speed you are consistent at. One of the toughest things is convincing up-and-coming players to slow down for consistency. Too often they want to play at a rat-a-tat superspeed, and so end up practicing just spraying the ball everywhere and developing erratic shots. Instead, find the pace that you can rally at consistently, so you can actually develop that consistency. As you improve, you can increase the pace.
  • Back foot placement on forehands. Generally you play forehands with the right foot slightly back (for righties), but not always. In fast rallies near the table you don’t have time to do that, and so many players at higher levels learn to play these shots with their feet parallel. In general, if the ball is coming at you slow or if you are off the table and so have more time, bring the foot back. If you are closer to the table or rushed, keep the feet more parallel. In a specific case that came up during one session, one player – a fairly high-level one – was forehand blocking with his back foot way, way back, almost turning sideways for the shot. So we worked on blocking with the feet more parallel to the table. When moving to the wide forehand to block, you can bring the right foot back some, but not too much.
  • Five-minute rule. Few players become really good unless they hate losing, and to tell a kid who’s just lost to smile, no big deal, doesn’t work. One player had a practice match where he led 9-7 in the fifth, missed both his serves, and lost 11-9 in the fifth. He was almost inconsolable, even though he’d mostly played well and it was a practice match. So I explained the five-minute rule. It’s simple – after a “bad” loss, you have to recover from it and be ready to play with a clear mind in five minutes.
  • Doubles. We introduced some of the novice players to doubles. Some had played it before, but they didn’t really understand it that well. The funny part was how often they kept mistakenly serving from the backhand court (left-hand since they were righties)! They also struggled with the order of play. But they gradually figured it out.
  • Challenge the Player and Use Targets. It’s easy for a coach to just have players drill and Drill and DRILL like they are little machines that get better if forced to do non-stop repetition. But it rarely works that way. Instead, it’s better to constantly challenge the player. Often that means something like seeing how many shots they can do in a row – do this, and watch how focused they become. In multiball, it’s even more important as multiball drills can get rather boring. So I often put targets on the table – and the results are amazing. Three things happen when I have them aim for targets: 1) They become more focused and so improve faster; 2) They learn accuracy instead of scattering shots all over and so improve faster; and 3) They like doing it and so want o play more and so improve faster. Do you notice the consistent theme here?

The target might be my water bottle, where I’ll either say, “It takes skill to hit such a small target, and you’re just not good enough!” – and of course, they know that’s a challenge. Or I tell them the bottle is full of dog saliva, and if they hit it, I have to drink it – another challenge. (When they do, I make faces and tell them, “Friends don’t make friends drink dog saliva. You’re not my friend.” Then I make faces and drink it.) Or I just say, “Don’t you DARE hit it!” – and of course, that’s another challenge. Or I’ll put my water bottle upside down and put a ball that’s different on it, say it’s a rare ball worth a million dollars so please don’t knock it off the bottle and damage it. Yep, another challenge. Notice the consistent theme here?

Major League Table Tennis (MLTT) Inks Three Star Players
Here’s the news release. And here’s more news about this new Professional Table Tennis League in the US!

Samson Dubina TTC For Sale – Lots of Updates

New from Ti Long

New from the Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis

What is a Long Serve and the strategy of It
Here’s the video (3:19) by Angela Guan.

4 Tactics Alexis Lebrun used in Defeating World #1 Fan Zhendong
Here’s the video (3 min) from Pingpong Africa.

Combination Exercises | training improving focus & footwork
Here’s the video (2:04) from Pingispågarna.

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

Ask the Coach
Here are the latest questions from PingSkills.

Athlete Matt Hetherington on Winning with Autoimmune Issues
Here’s the article, which you can also listen to (5:34).

NCTTA's "Best of the Best" for 2023
Here’s the article by NCTTA President Willy Leparulo.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from USATT

New from ITTF

Shakahola Blame Game
Here’s the cartoon. Here’s an article about what the cartoon’s about: Dozens dead, hundreds missing in Kenya starvation cult case

Ping-Pong Apartment
Here’s the cartoon!

News Story - International National Ping Pong Table Tennis Tournament
Here’s the video (2:57) from FNN (Fake News Network)!

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Tip of the Week
Dumb Ways to Lose.

Weekend Coaching
It was a servey weekend with lots of serve practice. In group sessions, I worked one-on-one with a number of players on their serves – how to generate more spin, serve lower, control the depth, create deception, and so on. Since serving (along with receive and tactics) are my favorite topics, it was a lot of fun. Also did a lot of random ball drills, often with multiball. For these, I emphasize three things: 1) good ready position; 2) react, don’t guess; and 3) move to the ball. I did five group sessions, including one where we had an odd number of players, so I acted as a practice partner. Not easy as my shoulder and neck are still hurting!

For the Novice Class (about twelve players, ages 6-8), I’ve spent the last two weeks convincing them I’m not Coach Larry. Last week I told them I was Coach Barry, Larry’s twin, and that I’d locked up Larry in the trunk of my car, and oops, I forgot to put in airholes. I pretended not to know anything about table tennis except what they showed me, and so I got them to teach me some technique – a good way to get them thinking about it. Then, yesterday, I told them I was Coach Harry, and that we were actually triplets, and that Coach Larry was in the hospital after Coach Barry locked him in the trunk, and that Coach Barry was in jail for doing that, and that I was now the coach, and again they had to teach me how to play. Next week I guess I’ll be Coach Darry!

Celebrities I’ve Met
Because of my table tennis and science fiction travels, I've met a LOT of celebrities. I had major discussions with most of the below. Here are celebrities I’ve met.

TABLE TENNIS: All of the top US and most top World players in the last 40 years, though not as many in the last ten years. If I listed them all, it’d be a LONG list. World Singles Champions I’ve met include:

  • World Men's Singles Champions: Jan-Ove Waldner, Jean-Philippe Gatien, Jorgen Persson, Seiji Ono, Wang Liqin, Werner Schlager, Liu Guoliang, Istvan Jonyer, Stellan Bengtsson, Ichiro Ogimura.
  • World Women's Singles Champions: Zhang Yining, Wang Nan, Deng Yaping, Qiao Hong, Tong Ling, Angelica Rozeanu.

ATHLETES: Jim Palmer (Orioles Hall of Fame pitcher), David Robinson (basketball player, played poker with him and others on the 1988 US Olympic basketball team), Andre the Giant (Pro Wrestler), Jeanette "Black Widow" Lee (#1 women's billiards player in the 1990s, gave her a lesson), Ted St. Martin (world record holder for 5221 consecutive free throws, gave him a lesson), Errict Rhett (football player, hit with him in an exhibition), Audrey Weisiger (famed USA Olympic figure skating coach, coached her), and the entire Baltimore Orioles Baseball team and staff in 2013 when I did a demo for them in their clubhouse (along with four of our local junior stars), including Manny Machado, Chris Davis, Nick Markakis, Adam Jones, Brian Roberts, JJ Hardy (coached him at MDTTC), Chris Wieters, Chris Tillman, Darren O'Day (about ten one-hour lessons at MDTTC), Brady Anderson (coached him at MDTTC), Manager Buck Showalter, and many more. Also met most members of the USA Tae Kwon Do, Judo, and Archery Olympic teams in the late 1980s when I lived in the dorms at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs for four years, but don't remember their names.

ACTORS/ACTRESSES: Susan Sarandon, Julia Dreyfus, Frank Caliendo (played doubles with him), Adoni Maropis (played and practice with him a number of times), Judah Friedlander (coached him), Walter Koenig, Leonard Nimoy, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones), Tony Hale.

LEADERS: Henry Kissinger, Jack Markell (governor of Delaware, coached him), Anthony Williams (mayor of Washington DC), Oscar Goodman (mayor of Las Vegas), James McClure (senator from Illinois).

SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS: George R.R. Martin, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Mike Resnick, Robert J. Sawyer, John Scalzi, Orson Scott Card, Alan Dean Foster, Larry Niven, Piers Anthony, David Gerrold, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Joe Haldeman, Connie Willis, Frederick Pohl, Ray Silverberg, Walter Jon Williams, Terry Brooks, Stephen Donaldson, Harry Turtledove, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Allen Steele, Jack McDevitt, James Morrow, Gregory Benford, Robert Asprin, Jerry Pournelle, Michael Swanwick, Charles Stross, Carry Vaughn, Nancy Kress, David Louis Edelman, Cory Doctorow, Karl Schroeder, James Maxwell, Lawrence Schoen, and MANY more - apologies to those left out.

SCIENCE FICTION EDITORS: Stanley Schmidt, Sheila Williams, George Scithers, Gardner Dozois, Gordon Van Gelder, Ellen Datlow, Shawna McCarthy, Eric Flint, Scott Andrews, Jeanne Cavelos, Mike Resnick, C.C. Finlay, Trevor Quachri, Mike Resnick, Lezli Robyn.

OTHERS: Will Shortz (puzzlist and owner of Westchester TTC), Craig Newmark (founder and owner of craigslist.com), Tom McEvoy (world poker champion), Julian Waters (famous calligrapher), Sol Snyder (famous neurologist - my uncle!)

Samson Dubina Table Tennis Academy . . . FOR SALE
Alas, they were not able to get enough players and the rent went up. So now they are hoping to stay open by bringing in a buyer, with the coaches (Samson Dubina, Chance Friend, and Jeff Yamada) staying on. Below are the two news items Samson posted on this. I've been there numerous times for tournaments and camp, and hope they manage to continue. So . . . wanna buy a nice, large, well-established, fully-equipped club with three professional coaches? It's a big opportunity!

Three Blog Posts from RevSpin
I ran into these recently, three postings I did a while back that were featured at RevSpin. Here they are!

9 Expert Ping Pong Tips For Beginners From The World’s Best Creators
Here’s the article. The first tip is by me on Daily Shadow Practice.

WTT Champions Macao
Here’s the home page for the vent held Apr. 17-23 in Macao, China, with results, news, and video. The big upset of the tournament was Alexis Lebrun (world #22, #1 player from France) over world #1 Fan Zhendong of China in the quarterfinals, 7,-8,5,-5,9, the last point an edge ball. Lebrun lost to all-time great Ma Long (but now #4 in the world in the semifinals, 8,-7,5,8,8. Ma Long lost in the final to world #2 Wang Chuqin in the all-Chinese final. Here are videos of those three matches and three articles on the tournament by Steve Hopkins/Butterfly.

Butterfly Training Tips
Six new ones this week! They sure make it look easy – and with practice, it is.

How to Level Up With A Robot!
Here’s the video (20:35) from Seth Pech.

How to Chop Block
Here’s the video (2:16) from Pingispågarna.

Chinese Team – How They Train to Be the Best
Here’s the video (3:10) from the Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis

New from PongSpace

New from Drupe Pong

New from Ti Long

New from EmRatThich/PingSunday

Ask the Coach
Here are the latest questions from PingSkills.

Interview with Adriana Diaz “Just enjoy the process!”
Here’s the video (19:34) by Stephanie Sun with the world #14 from Puerto Rico.

New from NCTTA
This includes the final article on the National Collegiate Table Tennis Championships held last weekend. Page down on the page to see the other articles, which I linked to last week.

New from USATT

New from ITTF

Reaction Time Training with FastPong
Here’s the video (51 sec), and here’s the product.

Robot with a Racket
Here’s the video (12 sec) – not how instead of shooting balls at you, like most robots, it hits them at you with a racket, which is much more realistic. That’s always been my concern with most robots, that you aren’t learning to react to a racket, which is what you have to do in a real game.

I Challenged a Table Tennis Pro in Virtual Reality
Here’s the video (7 min) from Table Tennis Daily, where they took on world #6 Truls Moregard of Sweden.

Doorway Double-Paddle String Pong
Here’s the video (35 sec)! I believe she is using a RYGRZJ Indoor Hanging Table Tennis set.

Net-Edge Return with Backspin Return
Here’s the video (10 sec) – an “unreturnable” shot is returned unreturnably!

Up and Down, Up and Down...
Here’s the table tennis gif! Here’s where you can find lots more.

Impossible 0.0001% Odds
Here’s the video (8:01) from Pongfinity! “We’re going to attempt the 20 candle extinguishing shot, team up with the best trampoliners, and more.”

Quit Spying on Us! No, You Quit Spying on Us!
Here’s the US-China cartoon!

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Tip of the Week
Blocking Footwork.

Weekend Coaching
Coaching this past weekend was a painful experience. Why? While my shoulder injury from a month ago continues to hurt – it doesn’t want to heal and I still can’t extend my arm – I had more problems with my neck. I must have slept on it wrong, but when I woke up Saturday morning, I couldn’t lift my head off the pillow – it took a few minutes of rolling about and trying to hold my head up with my hands before I was able to get up. Once up I discovered I couldn’t turn my head to the right. I almost cancelled my coaching, but decided I would just have to manage. I ended up doing five group junior sessions and one private session. Anytime a ball went to my wide forehand, I both couldn’t turn my head to see it, and couldn’t extend my arm to reach it! Fortunately, I’ve played long enough so I don’t really have to turn my head to hit the ball on my forehand, plus it didn’t affect my feeding multiball since for that my head is normally turned to the left. I also had some sessions where I was just a walk-around coach – but even that was tricky as I couldn’t turn my head to the right to watch players, and so had to turn my entire body. I’m guessing the neck problem will go away in a day or so, but as I’m writing this Monday morning, it hasn’t gotten any better – probably because I kept aggravating it all weekend. I might have to see a doctor about the shoulder as it’s not getting better.

As usual, there were lots of footwork drills. I emphasized keeping the feet moving, telling several kids, “If I can read the brand name on your shoes, you aren’t moving your feet.” There were also some serve practice sessions, where I had players focus on where the ball bounces on both sides of the table. Many players, even advanced ones, aren’t really aware of where the ball bounces on their side of the table, and so have trouble controlling the depth of their serve. For the depth of any given serve, there’s a specific place (distance from your endline) where you want the first bounce to be.

One interesting moment came up when one of the kids was struggling to block the opponent’s spinny loop. I pretty much recited “Blocking Spinny Loops”! And it paid off with some great blocking afterwards.

Oldest Living World Champion?
On Friday, the ITTF put up the news item Diane Schöler Celebrates 90th Birthday, the Oldest Living World Champion. Happy birthday and congrats to her! Only . . . well, I’m probably not too popular right now with the ITTF or the English TTA. When they posted it on Facebook, I responded by writing, “Congrats to Diane! However . . . I believe Thelma “Tybie” Thall Sommer (USA) is still alive at age 99. She was born on March 12, 1924. She won Mixed Doubles at the 1948 Worlds (with Dick Miles) and Women’s Teams at the 1949 Worlds (along with bronze in Women’s Singles).” Here’s Tybie’s Wikipedia entry and her US Table Tennis Hall of Fame writeup by Tim Boggan. I’ve met her a number of times as she used to be a regular at the Nationals into her 90s, always wearing that 1948 Mixed Doubles medal!

Ryan Lin’s Blog
Here it is! Since December, he’s put up eleven entries, about one a week, giving his insightful thoughts on various issues both table tennis and others. Alas, he still hasn’t filled in the “About” link, so you probably don’t know he’s the reigning 2022 US Under 13 National Boys’ Singles Champion, with a 2249 rating (2268 before his last tournament). Now 13, he’s at my club (MDTTC), and while I don’t work with him as much as before, I got to work with him a lot in 2021-2022 in camps and tournaments in Austria, Jordan, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, and a number of US Opens, Nationals, and other tournaments. (We also share a common interest in brain teasers.) Why not hit the Follow button and see his entries as they come up? (He's also on Facebook.)

National Collegiate Table Tennis Championships
They were held this past weekend in Round Rock, TX. Here’s the home page, including results and video. Here are news articles this past week from NCTTA from the Championships – they’ve been writing up a storm!

Ping Pong Diplomacy Podcast
Here’s the new podcast (35:32) on 1971’s US-China Ping Pong Diplomacy, from the History Channel, with “Special thanks to our guests: professional table tennis athletes Judy Hoarfrost, Olga Soltesz, and Connie Sweeris; Yafeng Xia, senior professor of social science at Long Island University Brooklyn, and author of Negotiating with the Enemy: U.S.-China Talks during the Cold War, 1949-1972; and Nicholas Griffin, author of Ping Pong Diplomacy: The Secret History Behind the Game That Changed the World.”

WTT Champions Xinxiang 2023
Here’s the page for the event held in Xinxiang, China, Apr. 9-15, with complete results, video, and news articles. (You might have to choose “WTT Champions Xinxiang 2023” from the dropdown menu.) Here are some videos.

=>Coverage by Steve Hopkins

New from Samson Dubina

New from Ti Long

How to Do the Tomahawk Serve
Here’s the video (2:31) from Pingispågarna

New from the Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

New from Drupe Pong

Ask the Coach
Here are the latest questions from PingSkills.

Ahad Sarand Wins Bronze Medal At The 2023 ITTF Para Costa Brava Spanish Open
Here’s the article by Vlad Farcas.

USATT News

ITTF News

New from the Malong Fanmade Channel
Lots of videos here.

Husband, Dad, Ping Pong Legend
Here’s where you can buy the shirt from Tee Shirt Palace! (Alas, I don’t see one for Wife, Mom.)

I’d Rather Be Playing Table Tennis Throw Pillow
Here’s where you can buy it at Amazon!

Many Rackets Pong
Here’s the video (15 sec)!

Big Paddle Rules
Here’s the cartoon!

Matrix Table Tennis
Here’s the video (1:46) – it’s an oldie that I linked to long ago, but thought I’d share it with a new generation!

Adam vs. Mexican Champion
Here’s the video (11:43) from Adam Bobrow!

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