May 4, 2026

Tip of the Week
Wait a Split Second Longer When Looping a Push, Then Change Directions.
(Unless your opponent is a Jedi, in which case he’ll just adjust and react to anything you do. It’s May the Fourth, so I had to get my Star Wars joke in there . . . and may the forehand be with you. And here’s Darth Vader playing table tennis with a Martian.)

Even Yet More Table Tennis Tips
It’s not out in both Print and Kindle versions. I blogged about it last week. (Meanwhile, I’m having semi-regular Zoom/Google Meet meetings with the illustrator as we go about finalizing the illustrations for the upcoming children’s picture book, “Ping-Pong Paddles Can’t Talk!” It should be out June 15.

LarryHodgesBooks.com and TableTennisBooks.com
I have both the LarryHodgesBooks.com and TableTennisBooks.com domains. This past week I linked both of them to my book listing here at TableTennisCoaching.com – see menu on left. I have tentative plans to eventually turn TableTennisBooks.com into a central listing with links to all table tennis books.

Play It Like the Pros by David Salomez
Play Like The Pros! just came out, 108 pages. It’s subtitled, “50 player profiles to inspire you and improve your table tennis game,” which pretty much tells you what it’s about. I wrote the Foreword (400 words), which starts out like this:

So, you want to play like the pros? Then you should go out there and spend many hours/days/weeks/months/years analyzing their techniques, tactics, and equipment. GO TO IT!!! Oh, wait—Someone already did this for you! You have in your hands or screen, from David Salomez, the very analysis you need—50 players, including 35 current and 15 legends. You just saved a lot of time.

Besides writing about table tennis, David is a translator. He’s translated four of my books into French:

Weekend Coaching
I worked a lot with beginning/intermediate players this past weekend in three 90-minute group sessions. The emphasis was on looping, both backhand and forehand, against backspin and topspin. The thing that I noticed is that every player seemed to have a different thing they had trouble with – there was no one thing. One had trouble lowering his racket and so his loops were, at first, just drives. (He might as well have used a hardbat for that!) Another didn’t drop her shoulder. Another always lifted the ball way too much – she could loop against heavy backspin, but anything else shot off the end. I worked with each of them on these issues and hopefully they’re getting better! In games, I worked with several players on attacking the middle, which most have trouble doing effectively.

MDTTC Elite Team League
After mostly staying off my feet for two months due to my knee injury, I had two practice sessions this past week. Then I played in the Elite Team League at MDTTC yesterday (Sunday). I played like I’d aged 15 years these past two months, and I mean that literally – I felt like I was tottering about on stilts. I could barely loop a push and the table seemed ten feet wide. My muscles were stiff as rocks. I returned serves as if I were blindfolded. In four singles matches, against players ranging from 2000 to 2200, I didn’t win a game. However, my teammate was Richik Ghosh, age 11, recently rated as high as 2243, and one of the very best in the country for his age. (Teams for the event were drawn by lot.) He won most of his singles matches. In the doubles, I didn’t really play well either, but I played good doubles tactics (I wrote the book!), and opponents had trouble with my serves – especially with Richik following up on them - and we won three out of four and somehow came in second overall.

Major League Table Tennis

New from the International Classic Table Tennis Federation
Note – “Classic” means hardbat, sandpaper, and wood.

New from Butterfly

How to STOP a Strong Backhand Banana (Make Them Flip Weak!)
Here’s the video (7:11) from Andrea Levenko. The backhand banana flip revolutionized table tennis, and yet many still don’t understand how to deal with it – but Andrea gives three very good tips here for doing so.

How to Forehand Flick
Here’s the video (3:37) with Milo de Boer from Acceleraq.

New from Olav Kosolosky

New from Biomechanics Applied to Table Tennis

Pros Use These 3 Spin Techniques YOU SHOULD TOO!
Here’s the video (7:46) from Seth Pech.

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich
Lots of new videos this past week!

The Hidden Serve Controversy and the Problem of Illegal Services in Professional Table Tennis
Here’s the article from PingSunday. This is a problem I’ve been pointing out for years.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from USATT

New from the ITTF

The Hero Appears! “Ping Pong” and the Asobi Spirit
Here’s the article about anime cartoon Ping Pong the Animation.

Let's Play Table Tennis: Rally
Here’s the video (59 sec) between a frog and a dinosaur . . . with a little sports psychology thrown in!

Bumblebee Pong
Here’s the video (28 sec)!

PingPongMaestros
See their daily humorous skill-shot videos!

Things I Do in My Spare Time
Here’s where you can buy the table tennis shirt!

Non-Table Tennis
I also sold a story last week, “Perfect Person” (3100 words) to the Independent Fantasy and Sci-Fi Magazine. When Sam dies he goes to Heaven – but it’s vacant and run-down because, after thousands of years, he’s the first person to ever qualify. He sets about fixing things up . . . but it’s rather lonely when it’s just you and an ancient, computerized Saint Peter.

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