Tips of the Week

• December 06, 2021 - Bring Proper Equipment and Supplies
• December 13, 2021 - Attacking the Middle is Different and Often Better Than Attacking the Corners
• December 20, 2021 - If You Play to Not Lose, You Are Playing to Lose
• December 27, 2021 - Equally Comfortable Attacking or Defending

2021 US Open . . . a Fiasco
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, this year's US Open, held in Las Vegas, Dec. 17-22, was a fiasco, wrapped in disaster, inside a calamity. It was the third consecutive poorly run US Open or Nationals since USATT CEO Virginia Sung took over as tournament director at the 2019 US Open, which ran many hours behind, though not as much as this year's. After a break in 2020 due to Covid, it was followed by the 2021 US Nationals in July, the worst-run Nationals in USATT history. And now we have the worst-run US Open in history. (More on that below, and why it was worse than the infamous 1990 US Open.)

Plus, with the total lack of mask enforcement, it's turned into a "super-spreader," just as I predicted on Facebook on the first day. As of now, there are 34 confirmed positive tests, including US Open Women's Singles Champion Lily Zhang. (There obviously are many more - most don't announce on Facebook or even get tested.) See the segment below on this, where I list the positive tests so far. 

One piece of breaking news - last night this went up: USATT Announces Formation of Five-Star Tournament Task Force. More on this in the following segment. Also note that this morning I sent an email to Virginia with four questions. She responded that she was driving, and "Will not get back until late afternoon." When/if she does, I may put in an Update.

Before we go further, here are complete results. (I'm not sure why the Men's and Women's Singles are listed as "Prelim Rounds," but if you click on them, you get the full results.) There were 745 players in the tournament, with 83 events played on 78 tables. (Many past Opens and Nationals had far more players and events.) Since I spent most of the tournament waiting for, playing, or coaching matches, I didn't see any of the top matches, so no coverage of those.

Here are other USATT news items on the Open:

• US Open Review by Steve Hopkins
• 2021 US Open Day Four: Zhang Goes Back to Back, Lei Kou Dominates
• 2021 US Open Day Three
• US Open Recap: "It's good to be back"

Throughout the tournament people would come up to me to exchange complaints about it, and each time it would involve a long litany of problems. I finally began to simply call it a fiasco to save time. At one point, someone came over and asked me what I thought of the tournament, and I responded the same way, "It's a fiasco." Then I looked over and saw it was Craig Krum, the hard-working but completely gob-smacked Operations Director, who admitted he was running the Open as "the largest 2-star tournament in history." Well, perhaps I wouldn't have been so blunt if I'd known it was him first, but bluntness is what was needed in such a case. Buttering it up doesn't get the message across of just how bad the tournament was. There are certain minimal expectations for a tournament such as this, and they were not met. I'm sure the USATT board will look into these problems - but only one of the nine board members was present at the tournament. As to Craig, he was highly apologetic, admitting he simply hadn't realized what he was getting into when he went from running four-star tournaments (with perhaps 200 players on maybe 20-25 tables) to five-star ones (745 players on 78) - the complexity goes up exponentially. He said he would be writing a letter of apology - see below from the U.S. Open Tournament Committee.

Writing about this tournament is among the most difficult things I've ever had to write - it makes me sick to my stomach just thinking about it. Trying to find the balance between politeness and saying it like it is isn't easy. It would be a lot easier to do what many do, and just smile and say all's well. But all is not well. And I'm not the only one writing about it. Here are two threads on Facebook (there are many more) where lots of people chimed in on their experiences - and they are pretty scathing, including notes from numerous professional coaches, top players, and hall of famers.

• Thread started by me (62 comments)
• Thread started by Dan Seemiller Jr. (124 comments)

USATT posted two news items on the problems with the tournament:

• 2021 US OPEN LETTER By U.S. Open Tournament Committee
• USATT 2021 US Open Table Tennis Championships Thank You Note from the CEO

The latter states, "active efforts to enforce the mandatory mask rules of Clark County, Nevada." I strongly disagree with this statement. See the Covid section below.

Personally, I was at the tournament to coach and play in two events - Hardbat Singles (where I got second for the third time - I've won it twice) and Hardbat Doubles (which I won for the 14th time at the Open or Nationals, this time with Estee Ackerman). I'm normally a sponge player but play hardbat on the side. Alas, I and my players had to play most of our matches "cold" since they fell so far behind that we never knew when we'd play. I didn't even get to see the men's or women's finals or semifinals - I was at the desk both times, waiting for matches.

There will always be some problems at tournaments. However, it is the responsibility of the tournament director to have a checklist to go through to make sure everything has been taken care of and done properly before the tournament begins. This is tournament 101, and it didn't happen. On the other hand, I'll give Virginia and Craig credit - they literally lived at the control desk most of the tournament, with Craig at the computer and Virginia often looking over his shoulder as they tried to keep the tournament running in some fashion. The tournament staff also did an incredible job in a nearly impossible situation.

Below is a rundown of what we faced as participants in the tournament. I was pretty nice in my writeups for the last two major tournaments USATT ran (2019 Open and 2021 Nationals, both poorly run), and each got progressively worse. So this time I'm putting together a literal checklist of problems, both for USATT and for participants. I debated which aspect to start with but will start with Covid.

=>Covid. The rules were very clear - everyone must wear a mask unless they were playing, eating, or drinking. But there was no enforcement. Nor was there any social distancing. When I walked in on the first day, I saw all the unmasked people. I did a quick count of the first table area - only 6 of 22 were wearing masks. I checked the arena - only 13 of 29 wore masks. None of the four coaches coaching on the two tables wore masks. Here is a picture of the Men's Final, taken from USATT's own news item on day four. I've circled 22 people in the stands who are not wearing masks or have the masks pulled down. Here is another USATT news item - note the two people prominently not wearing masks. On the second day I did another count of people in the arena at around 6PM. Of those not playing, eating, or drinking, 18 of 43 were not wearing masks.

I checked about this at the registration desk, control desk, and officials area, and all said that mask enforcement was up to the tournament director, which was Virginia. I asked her who was in charge of enforcing the rule, but she wouldn't answer, only saying, over and over, "Everyone must wear a mask." So, there was no enforcement of the rule. After the fact, there have been claims by USATT that there was enforcement, but that's simply not true. (One umpire did take it upon herself to try to enforce the rule and managed to get most of those in the first table area to put on their masks. But she had other duties and stopped after a short time.) Simple reality - if you say everyone must wear a mask but do not enforce it then the mask rule is not being enforced.

There was no serious social distancing. For much of the tournament there was a "mob" at the control desk as huge numbers of players tried to find out about their matches as the tournament fell many hours behind. The people at the control desk were also close together with no social distancing.

USATT did provide free Covid testing onsite, which was a good thing. I took the test and was negative. But it's likely that only a small minority of the huge number of people at the Open took the free test.

I wrote a Facebook posting about this the very first night, which starts off, "I'm worried that the US Open Table Tennis Championships here in Las Vegas is going to turn into a super-spreader event for Covid." I was right to be concerned. I know of at least 13 15 21 24 26 27 29 30 31 34 people so far who have tested positive. The number is obviously much higher, as these are just the ones who posted on Facebook or otherwise let others know, plus most people didn't get tested. Each of them exposed large numbers of others to Covid, further spreading the disease. This is the definition of a "superspreader." Here are the ones I know of (so far) who have tested positive.

• The Spartan TTC in San Jose, CA, posted, "At least three of our students have tested COVID-19 positive after the US Open." (They also had to cancel their training camp.)
• Matt Hetherington from Maryland.
• Max Nasab from Washington state.
• Alireza Hejazi posted that a friend who attended the US Open with him tested positive.
• Two adults who wish to remain anonymous.
• Two junior players who must stay anonymous.
• I was told "several" from the Houston International TT Academy have tested positive. So at least three.
• Bahram Panahi and his wife tested positive.
• Vicky Na informs me that at least six people at the Open from North Carolina and three from Atlanta tested positive.
• At least one junior player from Boston tested positive. 
• US Open Women's Singles Champion Lily Zhang has tested positive!!! 
• Paul David tested positive.
• I'm told two more people from Atlanta tested positive. 
• A junior from the Lily Yip club tested positive
• Another from Atlanta tested positive
• Three from a CA club, but they don't want to be named

=>Scheduling. Just as with the Nationals in July and the last US Open in 2019, they fell way, Way, WAY behind. Each day (especially the first three) quickly became a madhouse as players were forced to wait around the control desk often for 3-4 hours, waiting for their matches. There were no schedules in the player packets; they were not given out until the morning the tournament began - and then it turned out the match slips hadn't even been printed out! So there were delays right from the start, and they only got worse.

I had a relatively slow first day, didn't have to coach until 5:30 PM. I warmed up my player, and we went to the control desk at 5:30 PM to check in for his round robin event, little knowing what we were in for - over and Over and OVER throughout the tournament. As of 5:30 PM, they were just sending out 2:30 PM matches, so they were three hours behind. Worse, they had no idea when the 5:30 PM matches would go out, and so told us to just "wait around." They were now calling matches one by one over the loudspeaker system, as if it were a two-star tournament. (Many of us, including me, had great difficulty making out what was being said.) Lots of tables were open, but there didn't seem a way for the desk to keep track or to get match slips ready in a reasonable time. The match I coached was finally called at 8:15PM, but of course my player was now stiff as a rock. I had planned on coaching his 5:30 RR and then having a leisurely dinner. We didn't get out until after 10PM. It would be the first of three straight nights where I wouldn't get dinner until after 10PM. Little did we know that day two would be worse, and day three worse still. (Day three started out well, then everything fell apart in the early afternoon.) The following days they also fell behind, but it wasn't quite as bad - I think they had more matches scheduled the first three days.

Imagine warming up for your matches, over and over, and each time you are forced to wait at the control desk for 3-4 hours - and then, when you are suddenly and out of the blue called, you have to play cold, other than the two-minute warmup. This simply doesn't meet even minimally minimal standards. But I wasn't alone in this - the mobs at the control desk were all in the same situation. I could write books about this. Suffice to say this Open was more behind than any US Open or Nationals since or before the infamous 1990 US Open.

One interesting note - I had an argument with Virginia over the software used. I pointed out that there was nothing currently in Omnipong, or any procedure at the control desk, to deal with the cascading effect in large tournaments, where if one event falls behind, it cascades into other events, leading to the entire tournament falling further and further behind - exactly what happened here each day. When I first mentioned this, I got blank stares from Virginia (and later, by others at the control desk) - they didn't know anything about this. Then Virginia insisted they did have a system for this. We argued, and it finally came out that she was referring to conflict resolution, i.e. when a player has two matches at the same time and one has to be rescheduled. That is how you deal with individual conflicts, but not the cascading effect. Alas, at this point in time, the ones running our tournaments were basically oblivious to this problem. For the twenty years before they took over the Opens and Nationals ran on time because NATT, the ones running it (as well as others before them) knew about this problem and how to deal with it - and so, even if one event fell behind, it wouldn't drag the rest of the tournament with it. Omnipong is great for most tournaments - I've run many dozens on it - but for larger ones like the US Open, it might need some upgrading.

I don't know the specifics of how past directors stopped the cascading effect, but I believe the concept is simple. (I was involved in the scheduling of two past US Opens, but it was long ago, plus I've run over 200 USATT sanctioned tournaments.) When an event falls behind, they do two things. First, when there's a conflict, they favor playing the events that are still on time, so other events don't also fall behind, which causes the cascading effect. Second, they quickly reschedule the matches in the specific event that's falling behind, often on tables set aside for this. (This is subtly different from normal conflict resolution, where they reschedule individual matches, as opposed to rescheduling the entire event.) Without this, players can spend hours at the desk waiting for their match to be rescheduled (as at the 2021 US Nationals and US Open) never knowing when they'll be called. With this method, the match might not be played right away, but they are given a specific time when it will be played, and so they know when to warm up and be ready to play. Result - other events do not fall behind, and in the event that does falls behind, matches are quickly rescheduled, and everyone's happy. Note that players accept that an event can fall behind and their matches rescheduled. What they can't accept is an entire tournament falling behind, and having to wait around for hours not knowing when they'll play.

=>Loss of Experienced Volunteers. One of the reasons they had such difficulty once they fell behind was the inexperience of many of the volunteers. This was the first time in decades where I didn't recognize most of the volunteers, and most of the volunteers didn't recognize me. Normally it's an experienced crew, but this time Virginia decided that there would be no hotel or flight reimbursements for volunteers. Because of this, several regular volunteers told me they decided not to volunteer this year. I told Virginia this, and she exploded, saying that all volunteers got hotel and flight reimbursements, and anyone who said otherwise is lying - and she wanted to know who was saying this. The problem is the Volunteer Form says exactly what the missing volunteers said - "There is No Hotel or Flight Reimbursement."

However, when problems arise, sometimes a hero emerges. In this case, it was experienced volunteer Marguerite Cheung at the control desk. Many of the volunteers at the control desk were inexperienced, and when things fell behind, they weren't sure what to do. Marguerite is an experienced tournament director, and when things fell behind, she was the one who basically started getting matches out, calling them individually on the loudspeaker. I watched, and she was doing the work of about five others. I told her that, if not for her, instead of four hours behind it would have been eight! (This is not to disparage others, who also worked hard, including some experienced ones. But Marguerite was like Wonder Woman this tournament.)

=>CEO/Director Illegally Overrules Referee on Rules Question. This should be a no-brainer - the referee of a tournament is the FINAL authority on rules questions. From the USATT Tournament Guide, 4.4.5a, the referee "Is the final authority on interpretation of the rules and regulations as they apply to the tournament." The ITTF Handbook concurs, saying, "The referee shall be responsible for: 3.3.1.2.10 deciding any question of interpretation of Laws or Regulations, including the acceptability of clothing, playing equipment and playing conditions."

In my 46 years in the sport, I've disagreed with referees, but never thought I could overrule them - and, until now, I've never seen one illegally overruled! I was told about this by a number of witnesses, most of them umpires, and spoke to tournament referee Joe Yick, who verified what happened, as did several umpires and other witnesses.

He had ruled that a junior player was using an illegal surface. (There were equipment booths where the player could get a legal replacement, though not of the same surface.) CEO/Tournament Director Virginia overruled him, saying the player could use that surface. When the player went out to play, the umpire said the racket was illegal. So the Virginia ordered that there would be no umpires for this player's matches for the rest of the tournament. The player made the final of an event - and again, no umpire was allowed! (The player's mom actually became the scorekeeper for the match. I don't even know who the player is - I intentionally didn't want to know.) I'm sure Virginia (and perhaps the player or her parents) could argue for why they thought the surface should be allowed, though I can't think of an argument for it. But that's a side issue - the issue is that Virginia believed that she, as CEO/Tournament Director, could overrule the referee on a rules question. This is blatantly wrong. The referee said he will be filing a report to the chair of the Umpires & Referees committee. I hope they will make this report public.

=>Top Seeds Mistakenly Taken Out of Rating Events. Incredibly, about 24 of the top seeds in rating events were defaulted out of their events by mistake!!! For rating events, there are two ratings used: a "qualification" rating (as of Oct. 17) and a "seeding" rating (as of Dec. 1). The qualification rating determines if one is eligible for the event; the seeding rating is used to seed the player in the event, even if the new rating is over the cutoff. This is so players know in advance which events they are eligible for. They used to use just one cutoff, but it always ran into problems, and so years ago they switched to this system, which has worked fine - until now. So, what happened? The tournament director ordered that those over the cutoff in the seeding list were to be defaulted, even though this contradicts the actual rules on the entry form, and how it's been done for the last decade or more. Why have a "qualification" rating if the "seeding" rating is going to be used for qualification? It makes no sense. And so 24 players, all among the top seeds in their rating events, were mistakenly defaulted out of their primary rating event. Lots of very unhappy players. Oops!!!

=>Men's Quarterfinals (and others?). When I went out to play the semifinals of Hardbat Doubles on table 45, we noticed that Men's #2 seed Eugene Wang (rated 2735) of Canada was playing #7 seed Ju Mingwei (rated 2665) on the adjacent table 44. It was the Men's Quarterfinal - and there was no umpire, no scorekeeper, played on a back table with about five people watching! Wow. There were plenty of open tables, so we moved to another one so as not to interfere. How can a match like that not be highlighted and played on a feature table with an umpire and scorekeeper??? I never did find out about the other quarterfinal matches for men or women, but presumably some or all of them were similarly played - but I don't really know. So unprofessional. Email me if you know anything about this. Is it any wonder we no longer get top international players? Anyone in the top 20 in the men's world rankings could have come here and gotten an "easy" $8000, and yet they don't.
UPDATE 1: I'm told the two players decided to play this match on their own, on an empty table they found, rather than continue waiting to be called. By the end, about 20 people had found out about it and were watching. 
UPDATE 2: I was just shown the schedule for #5 seed Nikhil Kumar. He was scheduled to play the Men's Quarterfinals on table 37!!! They later changed it to table 1, where he won to make the semifinals. 

=>Wrong Times on Draw Sheets. The tournament software, Omnipong, automatically put in time scheduling on the draw sheets. However, this didn't always match up with the actual schedule. For example, I was scheduled to play the semifinals and finals of Hardbat Doubles at 6:30 PM and 7:30 PM on Sunday night, Dec. 19. We waited around for hours, and finally was able to play the semifinals at 9:45 PM. We won, and got back to the desk at 10:15 PM, only to find that they still hadn't sent out the other 6:30 PM semifinal, and that they had just told those two teams that they would play the semifinal the next day, at 8:30 AM on Monday. The players hadn't left yet, so we argued to play their semifinal and then the final that night, while we were all available and warmed up.

Tournament Director Virginia, who had made the decision to continue the next day, came out and told me that I had the schedule wrong, that the semifinals and final were scheduled for 10:30 and 11:30 AM the following day, and the final at Noon - and showed me the Hardbat Doubles Draw from Omnipong. Note how it shows my semifinal match on table 5 at 11:30 AM on 12/20/2021, and the other semifinal on table 3 at 10:30 AM on 12/20/2021? But here's my schedule, showing my semifinal on table 17 at 6:30 PM on 12/19/2021! The draw shows the final on table 1 at 12:00 on 12/20/2021, while my schedule shows it on table 4 at 7:30 PM on 12/19-2021!

I had to explain to her that that the table numbers, times, and days on the draw sheet weren't the actual schedule, and we had to show her our schedules to show that the semis and final had actually been scheduled for that night, at 6:30 PM and 7:30 PM. Alas, she still wanted to play them the next day, since it was getting late. But think about it - if the tournament director is misreading the schedule, imagine the 745 players trying to figure things out!!!

When the doubles teams arrived the next day and warmed up, they found out one of them had a conflict - and instead of playing the doubles semifinal at 8:30 AM as they'd been told, they sent one of the players out to play singles. (Another amateur mistake - when there's a conflict, you almost always play doubles, both so you inconvenience fewer people, and since it's much harder to later get four players together than two.) The team that had come in at 7:45 AM to warm up and was ready to play at 8:30 AM had to wait several more hours before they got to play - they weren't happy. We finally played our 7:30 PM Sunday final at about 2PM on Monday. (From down match point, we won!!!)

=>Water. This was an athletic event with 745 players, plus about an equal number of family members, coaches, officials, staff, and so on. And NO WATER??? Before Covid, there would have been water fountains or equivalent. Covid, of course, makes that problematic. And the food court, a quarter mile away (so a half mile round-trip journey), obviously would prefer no water be provided so people would have to trek over to them to buy overpriced water at $4.95/bottle. (Multiply that by about eight per day for an active player over six days.) USATT should have insisted that they be allowed to supply water in the venue, and then simply brought in many cases, and sold the water at perhaps $1/bottle, or more if necessary. Let people know in advance it's cash only to keep it simple. As it was, kids were refilling their water bottles in the bathrooms - not sure how safe that is.

=>Chair Shortage. I complained (and blogged) about the chair shortage at the US Nationals, but once again they had only about half as many as needed. People were forced to stand up or battle for the few available chairs. I spent half my tournament at the control desk waiting for matches, and half roving around the playing hall looking for chairs. Perhaps the worst part was there weren't chairs by the control desk to sit in during the hours waiting for our matches.

=>Missing Medals. There were 22 doubles events and 6 team events. Amazingly, they only ordered one medal for each team!!! I won Hardbat Doubles, but there was only one medal for my team. I let Estee take it. When we came in to pick up our awards, they took our addresses and will send us the medals later. (It took me 52 minutes to go through this line and get my other medal, second in hardbat singles.)

=>Loudspeaker. Because the tournament ran so far behind and they had no real backup plan to catch up, the control desk resorted to calling individual matches on the loudspeaker system. (They had little choice at that point.) Two problems. First, many, including me, had difficulty making out their names when called on the loudspeaker system. Second, it was very loud and often almost nonstop, and so was a constant interference with matches, where in the middle of points there'd suddenly be these loud calls for players to come to the desk.  

=>Event Finishing Day. The entry form says, "Events are not guaranteed to be completed on the same day that they begin." The problem is that if a player enters only events on, say, the first day, does that mean he/she has to stay the entire six days of the tournament? Many past Opens and Nationals had a note that events would finish within two days of the starting day, with exceptions sometimes made for major events such as Men's and Women's Singles.

=>Tournament Balls. Nittaku was the tournament ball, but they were not sold by any of the vendors, and the control desk couldn't lend them out since they weren't sure if they had enough. So players often had to warm up with a different ball. 

=>Links on US Open Home Page. Here is the US Open Home page, with six major links. You would think that this would be an important page to maintain, but three of the links are bad - the Results page (!), FAQ page, and Event Format page. All simply take you back to the US Open home page. Unless one just happens to know to go to Omnipong, viewers will get pretty frustrated trying to find those results!

=>Erratically Sized Courts. There were 78 total courts. Of these, 14 were 35' (too short, six on cement), 41 were 42', and 23 were 56'. Why in the world are there 56-foot courts? That's way too long - even international courts are about 40 feet. It meant long walks to pick up the ball after nearly every point. With a little geometry, perhaps they could have shortened the 56-foot courts, and had rubberized flooring for the six cement courts.

=>Erratic Table Numbers. Normally, if you have rows of tables at a major tournament, you number them in order. That seems obvious. But not here! They decided to "alternate" the numbers between the rows, leading to confusion. So, for example, one row had table 31, then the adjacent row was 32 and 33, then back to the first row for 34 and 35, then back to the other one. The result is a row that was not in obvious order, where the table numbers were, for example, 31, 34, 35, 38, 39, 42, and so on. Here's the table map that was taped to one of the posterboards where they had results.

=>Table Numbers Only on One Side. It's standard, especially when there are a lot of tables, to label them on both sides since people approach from different sides. But they only had the numbers on one side. This, combined with the erratic table numbering (see above) led to headaches as players tried to find their table.

=>The Mysterious Tables 77-78. On the first day I had to coach on table 77. I found table 76 on the far side of the hall from the control desk, but the row ended there! Where was table 77? We couldn't find it. There was no table map anywhere we could find. (I think that went up on the second day, and it was just a small piece of paper buried in among all the draws.) We finally had to go all the way back to the control desk to ask where it was. It turned out tables 77 and 78 were across the hall from table 76, so another long walk. (Tables 76, 77, and the control desk roughly were the three vertexes of a very large triangle.) There should have been a note on the wall next to table 76 saying where tables 77-78 were. (Better still, number them in actual sequence - tables 77-78 should have been tables 55-56, with the row ending with tables 77-78.) At some point in the tournament, the small table map was added to one of the posterboards where they put up the draws, but few noticed it. Normally this would be much larger and more prominent, or in the player packets.

=>Draws on Posterboards. The draws and results were posted on a number of posterboards near the control desk. But they were posted out of order. If you went to the area for rating events, rather than progressing from high to low, or low to high, they were just posted in the order they were played, leaving players to search all over to find specific draws - tricky to do when there are crowds of other people also looking through the draws. There's a simple way to keep it professional looking and user-friendly. In advance, space out where each draw should be, from high to low. For example, for rating events, start with 2600, then 2400, and so on. Put the RR draw on top, the SE group below (or to the side if more space is needed).

=>USATT Assembly. It was scheduled for 7:30 PM on Sunday night, day three. This is where USATT leaders and officials meet with members as required by the USATT bylaws, giving reports and answering questions. I'm sure many would have many questions about the poor running of the tournament. However, there was no notice about this in the player packets, as was the case in the past. There was no notice about this until a few hours before. Few knew about the meeting. I asked the lone member of the USATT board of directors who was present about it, and he didn't know about it - he had to ask Virginia about it. I had to coach a 6:30 PM match and would then be able to attend. Of course the match was delayed - it went out at 10:15PM. So I spent an hour before the meeting, the two hours of the meeting, and 45 minutes after the meeting at the control desk with my player, waiting for his match. If I'd known this, could have attended the meeting and easily gotten back in time to coach the match. Instead, I have no idea what happened at the meeting. If people had been able to attend, I'm guessing there would have been a lot of unhappy ones with pointed questions, both about the tournament and other USATT issues.

=>Equipment Vendors Facing Wrong Way. The equipment vendors told me they had been told that there would be a walkway that players would have to walk past to get to the playing hall, and to face their booths in that direction. However, it turned out the entrance opened into the playing area, and so players did not have to walk by the booths. This meant that the booths were facing the wrong way! The booths were rather elaborate and difficult to take down and put up again, so they just kept it that way. Here is what we saw from the playing area of the Butterfly and JOOLA booths! Imagine how many more sales they would have made if they were open to where the players were.

=>USATT Tournament Committee. They represent a huge amount of tournament experience - that's why they were appointed to this committee, right? But one of them contacted me during the tournament, saying they had never been consulted about the tournament. Imagine how many problems might have been avoided if the relatively inexperienced ones running the Open had consulted with them.

=>Seemingly Large Number of Controversial Defaults. There were so many problems this tournament, and I was so busy trying to figure out when my next match would be (as player or coach) that I never got to investigate this. But over and over players complained about seemingly unfair defaults. I'd go more into this but I didn't take notes.

=>US Open Shirts. There's some confusion on this, and I'm still not sure what's going on. I didn't see any, and others said there were none. One person told me there were US Open shirts. Volunteers were told they would all get free US Open shirts if they worked five shifts or more, but several told me that there were no shirts available. Email me if you know anything about this.
UPDATE: I'm told there were no US Open shirts, and that the volunteers who were promised them never got them. This would be the first time we've had a US Open or Nationals since I started in 1976 that didn't have a tournament shirt. 

=>Slanted Surfaces. On the first day I noticed that several tables were slanted, with a "hill" in the middle - if you put a ball on it, it quickly rolled to the end-line. I pointed this out to the officials, who were pretty busy at the time. But eventually they sent someone out to fix it. Things like this should be checked in advance.

=>Refund Policy. About two months before the entry deadline I entered three events - Hardbat Singles, Hardbat Doubles, and Sandpaper Singles. Cost was $80 each, so $240. About two hours after entering I realized that I probably couldn't play Sandpaper Singles due to coaching obligations. So I withdrew from the event the very day I entered it - again, two months before the deadline. But USATT has a policy of no refunds, and so they refused to refund the $80. I'm sure others faced the same problem.

* * * * *

So, there you have it, my "checklist" of problems at this US Open. While the 1990 US Open fell behind two days (!), they didn't have all these other problems, plus they were running the Open in conjunction with the World Veterans Championships, and so had about 2000 entries. This year's US Open had so many problems that I think I can safely say it was the worst-run US Open in history.

The frustrating thing is some will think, "All we have to do is address these specific problems, and all will be great!" And the answer to that is - NO!!! If I were hired as a car mechanic and made twenty mistakes because I'm not an experienced car mechanic, the answer wouldn't be to correct those twenty mistakes - it would be to bring in an experienced car mechanic. USATT badly needs to bring in someone with the type of big-tournament experience so that the problems of this Open, and the many similar and different problems from the Nationals, can be resolved, rather than a constant learn-on-the-job while the participants suffer. (Note that they have partially addressed this, with the "Five-Star Tournament Task Force" - see below.)

Will there be accountability and repercussions for what happened at this tournament? Or will USATT "circle the wagons"? We'll see. But whether they mostly stick with the same people running these tournaments or bring in new people, they need to completely revamp how these tournaments are run. 

I'll have more to write about next week. I had three (yes, three) confrontations with Virginia, both on the problems with the US Open and other issues. There was also a controversial election for chair of the USATT board, which I'll also write about.

USATT Announces Formation of Five-Star Tournament Task Force
Here's the news item. Finally, some good news! Well, sort of.

But - and I'm writing this through gritted teeth - why did it take three tournament fiascos in a row before they realized they needed help? At this point, it's happening because the outcry is too loud for the USATT board of directors to ignore. Of course, the simplest solution would be to simply bring back the ones who ran it successfully for 20 years - NATT - but I'm guessing that's not even on the table - and that itself is a serious problem. Contacting them and seeing if a deal can be made should have been the first thing they did.

I'm suspicious about the effectiveness of a committee made up of 14 people. (See below.) Also, can the USATT CEO give up control to these others? From what I've seen, that's iffy. (Personally, I'd prefer a CEO that stayed out of most issues and focused on the big picture and on raising money.)

Rather than a humongously large committee, perhaps it would be better to bring in an experienced person to oversee things. Committees are great for fairness issues, not so great at getting things done. For that, you need a qualified, energized person with vision. A committee will likely come up with a checklist of things to fix - much like I've already done. That's the easy part.

There does seem to be a possible math problem with the news item on this. (Math-phobes, look away now.) The news item lists eight members by name, plus an unnamed USATT staff person. That's nine members before you get to the athlete reps. USOPC requires 33% athlete representation on all committees, and I believe that includes task forces. (Otherwise, we could just call all our committees "task forces" to get around the rule.) The news item says, "A minimum of three Ten-Year and/or Ten-Plus Year Athletes will also be appointed to the Task Force." If you add three athlete reps, then you end up with a committee of twelve, with only 3/12 = 25% athlete reps. If you add four athlete reps, then you end up with a committee of thirteen, with only 4/13 = 30.8% athlete representation. So you'll need to add five athlete reps to get to a committee of fourteen, with 5/14 = 35.7% athlete representation. So that "minimum of three athlete reps" should be a minimum of five. (They also list Will Shortz as one of the "At-Large Directors," but he's actually the Club Representative.)

USA at the ITTF Hopes in Jordan: Three in Top Eight!
Here's the USATT news item I wrote. I was one of the three USA coaches there in Amman, Jordan, Dec. 8-14 for the ITTF Hopes Camp and Tournament, along with Wei Qi and Thilina Piyadasa, and players Ryan Lin, Mandy Yu, and Tashiya Piyadasa. (Here are some video and photos on Facebook.) It was part of a rather harried schedule for me - I flew to Jordan on Dec. 6, returned on Dec. 15, flew to Las Vegas for the US Open on Dec. 16, flew to San Francisco for Christmas with family on Dec. 22, and flew home to Maryland on Dec. 26, arriving home at 2AM on Dec. 27.

Ryan Lin wrote an article about his experience at the Dead Sea, with pictures. (Here's the non-Facebook version.) I brought home a hunk of salt and Dead Sea water in a bottle!

More USATT News

• 2022 USATT National Team Selection Procedures HPC Meeting Minutes, for their meeting on Dec. 26, 2021.
• USATT Announces Dates and Locations for 2022 US National Youth Team Trials

December News
Since I've been away a month, rather than link to every news item while I was gone, here are links to the news pages of major sites.

• ITTF News
• Steve Hopkins and Butterfly
• Samson Dubina
• Edges and Nets
• Ti Long
• Coach Jon
• PingSunday/EmRatThich Page
• PingSunday/EmRatThich Video
• Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis
• Looeelooee (Louis Levene)
• PingSkills Ask the Coach
• Adam Bobrow

Stop Losing Doubles after This Guide
Here's the video (15:05) from Coach Lin.

Film. Analyze. Win!
Here's the video (73 sec) from Betterplay ai. "You can use our AI service to automatically edit your Table Tennis Videos."

Bob Chen Table Tennis
Here's his new video site - lots of coaching videos. He's been rated as high as 2768.

PongNews
Here's the latest newsletter from PingPongGives.

Unparallel Forehand - The Chinese Are Crazy Again! Xu Xin, Fan Zhendong, Wang Chuqin, Fang Bo
Here's the video (8:10).

Footwork Drill on Cutoff Table
Here's the video (15 sec)!

Table Tennis Trio Aims to Bring Ping-Pong to Every Neighborhood
Here's the article from Spectrum News NY1, featuring Ernesto Ebuen, David Silberman, and Max Kogler from PingPod.

China Dominates Table Tennis Titles, Earns Points on Diplomacy
Here's the article from China Daily. "The Chinese team dominated the 2021 World Table Tennis Championships, which concluded on Monday in Houston, Texas, but the event is just as likely to be remembered for China and the United States' gesture of unity."

Lily Zhang - Richard Bergmann Fair Play Trophy
Here's the video (31 sec) of the presentation at the Worlds.

Houston Table Tennis is Aiming for the National Spotlight After Hosting the Historic World Championships
Here's the article from Title Press.

Jimmy Butler's Remarkable Table Tennis Return
Here's the video (3:37) from KHOU 11. "He's one of America's greatest table tennis players and he calls Houston home. How he got here is part of his incredible story."

Christmas Table Tennis
Here's what you get when you Google these and click on Images! Here's a new one - Ninja Santa! (Here's the non-Facebook version.)  

Shark vs. Mermaid
Here's the video - I have no idea what's going on!!! It seems to be in Hindi. Link should take you to 10:28, where the TT starts.

Ping Pong Battle
Here's the video (9 sec)! Warning: Strong language.

New from Pongfinity

• Funniest Moments 2021 (8:30)
• Best Ping Pong Shots 2021 (8:12)
• World's Biggest YouTubers Try Ping Pong (8:04)

Science Fiction Sales and Publications
On Dec. 19, I sold a science fiction story to Stupefying Stories, "The Annual Times Square Paint Dry," which should be coming out soon. Meanwhile, my fantasy story "Love Drops" just came out in New Myths Magazine. I have eight other SF and fantasy stories coming out early next year, along with a feature interview of me coming in January. As you can see, I'm always juggling my TT and SF lives!

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Next Blog on Monday, Dec. 27 29
There will be a Tip of the Week every Monday, but my next blog will be on Dec. 27 29. I'm going out of town for three weeks - coaching the ITTF Hopes Camp and Tournament in Amman, Jordan, Dec. 6-15; the US Open in Las Vegas, Dec. 16-22 (where I have to adjust in one day to the ten-hour time difference between Jordan and LV!), and a family gathering in San Francisco, Dec. 22-26.

Tip of the Week
How to Get Lucky.

Christmas Table Tennis Book Shopping
Don't forget to do your Christmas table tennis book shopping!!! Below are my seven books on table tennis that are in print. You wouldn't want me to go broke and have to live and play ping-pong on the streets? (And note that "And Still More Table Tennis Tips," fourth in the series, will come out early in 2021.) Or, if you are a non-reader, skip this and move on to the sections on the Teams, the Worlds, and so on!

• Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers
• The Spirit of Pong
• Table Tennis Tips
• More Table Tennis Tips
• Still More Table Tennis Tips
• Table Tennis Tales & Techniques
• Professional Table Tennis Coaches Handbook

North American Teams
Just had three exhausting days coaching at the JOOLA North American Teams!!! Actually, five days, since I was coaching at our pre-Teams coaching camp for two days before. This was my 45th consecutive time at the Teams, every year starting in 1976 (excluding last year, which was Covid-cancelled). Here are complete results. It also signified another milestone. My first 22 years, 1976-1997, the Teams were in Detroit, with the annual Thanksgiving drive there. This makes 23 years in Maryland/DC (where I live), so I've now played more Teams here than in Detroit.

My club, MDTTC, had ten junior teams with about 40 players. Since we only had five MDTTC coaches (myself, Cheng Yinghua, Jack Huang, Lidney Castro, and Wang Qingliang, with Jeffrey Zeng Xun coaching some players), it meant we had a coach for a little over half the team matches. (Since some teams had byes in some rounds, we were able to be there for over half.) A number of the parents are players, and they, along with players on the team, also helped coach, so most players ended up with someone in their corner. It's actually a great learning experience for players to coach their teammates - not only do they learn to be team players, but they learn tactics by watching other players and thinking about what's happening. I'm often amazed at some of the insights kids have - it's often easier to think tactically when watching then when actually playing.

Our kids did really, Really, REALLY well! I can't wait for the new ratings to come out. Coaching was both tactical and psychological - one of the trickiest parts of coaching between games is recognizing which to focus on, and how much. I'm pretty good at pep talks, but they always come at the expense of coaching tips, since you only have 60 seconds - and you often want to emphasize certain things, so you do sort of a recap in the last ten seconds or so. (Or just do what one opposing coach did - I started timing him, and he averaged over 2.5 minutes coaching between games and in time-outs. I actually yelled "Time!" at him a few times, but he just ignored me. I almost called for an umpire.)

I had a good run in close matches, going 5-0 in deuce-in-the-fifth matches that I coached. In three of them, I called a timeout right at the end and called the serves to use - and magically, it worked each time!!! ("Magically" in this case means the kids executed flawlessly.)

I spent a large percentage of my coaching time reminding kids to focus on attacking the "three spots" - wide forehand, wide backhand, and middle (roughly opponent's playing elbow). Next to serve and receive advice, it's probably the thing I emphasize most. Receive advice was mostly about where to play the return, and how aggressive on average. Often the best advice was simply to have them control the serve back to the wide backhand, and then rally. Other times it was important to play aggressive off the serve, though they should always vary it.

I coached one girl who caused havoc in her division. She played a number of old players who, despite all the experience and having much higher ratings, couldn't play at her pace. The tactic there was simple - serve fast and deep to the three spots, and then keep attacking those three spots. In each match, we'd usually narrow down the two best spots to attack, though we'd make sure to go to all three - and her execution was great. We pretty much put backspin serves on hold. The older players were very gracious about losing to a girl 1/4 their size, helping turn the tournament into a great experience for her. In new ratings, I think she may come out #1 in her age group in the country - she beat at least three players rated higher than the current #1, and I don't think she had any "bad" losses.

One of our juniors played a higher-rated player who blocked with long pips, no sponge. That's a touch match for a junior - this is where older, experienced players do well, while the long pips players feast on less experienced players. But we quickly found the two spots the player had trouble covering - extremely wide backhand and middle forehand, which was his "middle" (since he covered most of the table with his backhand blocks), and went after those two spots. He won, deuce in the fifth! Most players would likely have automatically gone to the wide corners, but he covered the wide forehand well. Many players might have tried to go his "middle," and gone right at his elbow - which was where he blocked best. His "middle" was where most players played their forehand best. Once again, good tactics + good execution = another win!

Meanwhile, I heard rumors there was some other major tournament going on...why in the world were they scheduled at the same time???

World Championships in Houston
USA's Lily Zhang teamed with China's Lin Gaoyuan to reach the semifinals of Mixed Doubles and win a bronze. It's the first medalist at the Worlds for a USA player since Dick Miles made the semifinals of Men's Singles at the 1959 Worlds - 62 years ago!!! We've had a few close calls - Gao Jun (while representing USA) made the quarterfinals of Women's Singles in 2003 and 2005, and Dan and Rick Seemiller once made the quarterfinals of Men's Doubles. Plus, of course, Kanak Jha reach the quarterfinals of Men's Singles this year, the first time a USA player has done that since Miles in '59!

Here's where you can find videos of the major matches, such as the men's semifinals between Truls Moregard vs. Timo Boll.

The Men's Singles Final is tonight (Monday, Nov. 29) at 7PM Houston Time (8PM Eastern Time), between China's world #1 Fan Zhendong (as expected) and Sweden's Truls Moregard (not expected!). How did 19-year-old world #77 Truls get to the final? This is how:

• Round of 64: defeats Chuang Chih-Yuan (TPE, world #25), 4-3
• Round of 32: defeats Patrick Franziska (GER, world #14), 4-3
• Round of 16: defeats Lim Jonghoon (KOR, world #71), 4-3
• Quarterfinals: defeats Quadri Aruna (NGR, world #17), 4-2
• Semifinals: defeats Timo Boll (GER, world #11), 4-3

Now let's look at Fan Zhendong's route to the final:

• Round of 64: defeats Amir Hossein Hodaei (IRI, world #165), 4-0
• Round of 32: defeats Emmanuel Lebesson (FRA, world #39), 4-0
• Round of 16: defeats Wang Chuqin (CHN, world #16), 4-2
• Quarterfinals: defeats Lin Gaoyuan (CHN, world #7), 4-1
• Semifinals: defeats Liang Jingkun (CHN, world #9), 4-1

Notice how Fan coasted to the final, only losing a few games to the three fellow Chinese teammates he played in the last three rounds before the final? Contrast that with Truls, who needed to lose just one more game to Quadri and he'd have made the final with five straight 4-3 wins!!! Plus, of course, Truls didn't have to face any of the Chinese players. Most interesting match was his semifinal win over former world #1 Timo Boll (now #11), who almost reached the final at age 40!

Women's Singles wasn't quite so interesting - the four semifinalists are all Chinese. Wang Manyu (world #5) upset Chen Meng (world #1) 4-3 in one semifinals, while Sun Yingsha (world #2) defeated Wang Yidi (world #10) 4-1 in the other semifinals. So the final is between Wang Manyu and Sun Yingsha at 6PM Houston Time (7PM Eastern Time).

For info on how to watch the finals live, go to the World's Where to Watch page. Here are some links, including daily wraps:

• 2021 World Championships Finals: Behind The Scenes In Houston! (2:18, with Barbara Wei - a former junior star from my club, MDTTC!)
• Results - Select one of the five events
• News Page
• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3
• Day 4
• Day 5
• Day 6

Houston Vlog #3 - My way to the quarterfinals
Here's the video (4:20) from Timo Boll.

World Championships Coverage by Steve Hopkins

• World Championships Focus: Kanak Jha
• World Championships Focus: Lily Zhang
• 2021 World Table Tennis Championships: Day 6 Update
• 2021 World Table Tennis Championships – Day 5 Update
• 2021 World Table Tennis Championships – Day 4 Update
• 2021 World Table Tennis Championships – Day 3 Update
• World Championships Day Final 64 Results: Jha Advances, Harimoto falls
• World Championships Opening Day Update: Kanak Jha and Three US Women Advance

World Championships Coverage by Amy Karpinski

• 2021 World Table Tennis Championships – Day 5 Doubles
• 2021 World Table Tennis Championships- Day 4 – Doubles Round of 16
• 2021 World Table Tennis Championships – Day 3 Doubles
• 2021 World Table Tennis Championships – Day 2
• 2021 World Table Tennis Championships – Day 1

News From the ITTF Annual General Meeting Held During the Worlds

• Watch the 2021 ITTF Annual General Meeting (5hr 46 min). If you go to 4:46:17, it shows the results of the ITTF Election for Executive Vice President. There were 15 people running for 8 positions, with each country voting for eight candidates. Coming in first was Wahid Oshodi of Nigeria, with 116 votes, with China's Liu Guoliang coming in second with 114. Finishing tenth (and so not getting elected) was USATT CEO Virginia Sung, with 64 votes. Here is a screen shot of the results.
• Different experience but Annual General Meeting gains universal approval
• Petra Sörling elected ITTF President unopposed
• Petra Sörling Elected as New ITTF President (76 sec)
• Busan, Korea to Host the 2024 World Championships
• Electronic Table Tennis Review System Approved by the ITTF Board of Directors

USA Table Tennis Star Celebrates Thanksgiving Day with Stellar Performances
Here's the ITTF article on USA's Kanak Jha.

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

• Event Recap of World Table Tennis Championships
• Timo Boll Defeated Top Chinese Player
• Why Tomokazu Harimoto Lost at WTTC 2021?
• World Table Tennis Rankings
• Chen Meng at WTTC 2021 (16:40)
• What happens when you serve without tossing up the ball? (4:44)
• Before the final of the 2021 World Table Tennis Championships (Men's single event) (3:17)
• Coach said to Liang Jingkun "We must win" [WTTC 2021] (11:19)
• Can Miu Hirano make a miracle again? [WTTC 2021] (12:15)
• Lin Yun-Ju (Taiwan) vs Lim Jonghoon (South Korea) - 2021 World Table Tennis Championships Finals(5:40)
• Rules of table tennis (7:34)
• Timo Boll defeated top Chinese player [WTTC 2021] (5:31)
• Why Tomokazu Harimoto lost [WTTC 2021] (4:48)
• How strong is student's table tennis level in China? (7:27)
• Fan Zhendong at Houston WTTC 2021 (11:52)
• China versus America - Ping pong diplomacy (3:48)

12 Movement Exercises and Coordination with Table Tennis Training Tool (Part 1)
Here's the video (5:53) from Ti Long.

Ask the Coach
Here's the page at PingSkills.

Learning Spin Through Multi-ball
Here's the video (4:55) from Coach Jon.

New from the Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis

• Table tennis teacher method (2:53)
• Stiga CYBERSHAPE with Truls Moregard Show (2:02)
• Pingpong learning with pvc tools (22 sec)

WAB Club Feature: Alameda Ping Pong Gym
Here's the article by Steve Hopkins.

Reflections of a Legend - Jorgen Persson
Here's the video (6:30).

New from the Malong Fanmade Channel
Lots of new videos here.

Man VS Machine: Who Plays Table Tennis Better?
Here's the video (6:26).

55 Ping Pong Sounds
Here's the video (9 min) from Adam Bobrow!

aMAZING sKILLS sHOTS iN pING pONG
Here's the video (26 sec)!

Non-Table Tennis - Story Sale to Daily Science Fiction
Just sold a short story to Daily Science Fiction (one of the major "Pro" SF magazines), "Four Score and Seven Years of the End of America: A Bibliography." It's literally a fictional bibliography of books published from 1953 to 2040 whose titles humorously show the downfall of America. It's my 121st short story sale. Sorry, no table tennis this time!

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Tip of the Week
How to Fix a Weakness in Your Game.

Classic Hardbat World Championships
I had an adventurous weekend in Sugar Land, TX, just outside Houston, where I played in the first Classic Hardbat World Championships. It was held on Sunday, Nov. 21, just two days before the start of the "Sponge" World Championships in Houston. (Results are not yet online - they may go up later on Omnipong or Facebook.) Thirty-seven players competed, including nine over 2400. (Draw included Mario Genovese, who flew in from Malta, plus a number of players from other countries who now live in the US.) Prize money was 1st $2000, 2nd $1250, 3rd $750, 4th $500, 5-8 $150. (Here's the single elimination stage; RR group results should go up later.) 

Special thanks goes to Director Steve Claflin (who organized all this), referee Dan Reynolds, the many sponsors (including sponsor and presenter "We R Table Tennis," a new startup - no web page yet - that "will endeavor to put a FREE ping pong table into every school in America." I had a great time and can't wait to return next year! (Did I mention the free pizza they served for lunch? They also had free shuttle service from the very nice Marriott hotel in the Sugar Land Town Square.)

The final, between top seed Jimmy Butler and current US Nationals Champion AJ Carney, was a classic - an incredibly entertaining and well-played match that got better as it went on. Here's video - go to 2:33:30 for the Final. Jimmy is a steady attacker from both wings, who normally stays relatively close to the table, counter-hitting consistently from both wings. (But late in the match he added in chopping, and played his aggressive forehands more off the table as the rallies got faster.) AJ also mostly attacks from both wings (sometimes close to table, other times backing up), but also chops a lot.

It looked like AJ had it wrapped up in the best of five to 11. Jimmy wins the first, 11-9, but AJ wins the next two at 7 and 6, and leads 7-2 in the fourth. It's over, right? From here on, Jimmy played like a champion . . . and also had a bit of luck. Jimmy switches to a super-steady countering and chopping game, and AJ makes four straight mistakes, and it's 7-6. Then AJ smashes . . . and Jimmy chops back a net dribbler! (AJ lunges for it and pops it up, Jimmy kills.) It's now 7-7. Jimmy misses his own serve, then AJ puts Jimmy's next serve into the net, 8-all. But Jimmy misses a backhand kill, and AJ smashes a forehand, and he leads 10-8 match point. Jimmy hits a forehand off, the match is over - but no, it just nicked the edge! (See it at 3:05:49.)  He then deuces it. AJ has five match points before losing that game, 16-14. The only net/edge point - at 13-all, AJ gets a net, except instead of winning the point, it popped the ball up, giving Jimmy an easy kill. So, we're into the fifth!

AJ goes up 2-1, and smashes one - but Jimmy chops it back on the edge! Jimmy wins four in a row, 2-5 (AJ missing his own serve at 2-4) - and Jimmy then gets another net dribble winner, and it's 2-6, and then scores a sixth in a row to make it 2-7 - the same score that AJ led the previous game. But no comeback this time. At 4-9, AJ gets a net dribbler (5-9). Jimmy scores the next point to go up 10-5, and yells, "That's it!", just about the first thing he's said all match. He wins, 11-5.

As to me, I was in Group C with five others. I went 4-1, including a win over Randy Hou, a 2125 pips-out penholder, which is almost like hardbat, so very tough. I had a struggle with mostly-chopper Rick Mueller (1880), who caught me off guard early with his aggressive chops, almost chop-blocks but coming fast. After losing the first, I won the next two pretty easily. In the fourth, he began pick-hitting like crazy, but I'm up 10-9 match point - and he pops up my serve on the edge to deuce it! He wins in deuce with more pick-hits, and then - by continuous pick-hitting (should be illegal for choppers!), has me 10-8 match point. But I smack in two winners and win in deuce. Whoo!

Against the top seed in my group, Vlad Farcas (2450, with a win over Jimmy Butler in sandpaper), I was up 8-4 in the first and had a few game points before losing the first on a net ball, 14-12. I won the next, then he won the third, and the fourth, 11-8. If I'd pulled out that first game, we'd might have been in the fifth!!!

In the single elimination, in the round before the quarters, against Mishel Levinski (2576), I had several games points in the second before losing it, 14-12. He won the other two games pretty easily - it's not easy playing all-out forehand attack at age 61 against a near-2600 player!!! 

It was a great and fun weekend adventure. I initially hoped to stay a few days and tour Houston, but alas, I needed to get back to help prepare our players for the Teams, and so flew back on Monday morning. Steve promises to run it again next year, and so that time I will schedule a Houston tour either before or after.

World Table Tennis Championships

• Here's the ITTF World Championships Page, with schedules, results, and news items. It began today in Houston. (I would be there, but I have to be here in Maryland to prepare and coach players for the North American Teams this weekend.)
• Here is the World Table Tennis Video page, where you can watch live videos of tables 3-10. (There doesn't seem to be video of tables 1 & 2 there, but apparently they will start showing those matches on Day 3. Here's the video schedule. See note below on Tables 1 & 2 videos.) USA's Barbara Wei, Adam Bobrow, Jimmy Butler, Timothy Wang, and Roger Dickson will be doing commentating on some of these tables.
• Tables 1 & 2: To see the action on these tables, I'm told you have to subscribe to World Table Tennis, then click on Live or download the World Table Tennis App. 
• ITTF Worlds: Watch the Draw (37:58), in case you want to see how the draws at the Worlds were made.
• Houston, The Trophies Have Landed.

USA-China Ping-Pong Diplomacy

• Historical China-USA Pairs Enter World Table Tennis Championships on 50th Anniversary of Ping Pong Diplomacy, from ITTF news
• Training Match of Joint Chinese-American Pairs: Lily Zhang (USA)/Lin Gaoyuang (CHN) and Kanak Jha (USA)/Wang Manyu (CHN) (11:51)
• Great Power Competitions: How ping-pong redirected diplomacy between the United States and China, from The Baffler
• Jeff Moon on U.S.-China ping pong diplomacy (3:04) from CGTN
• Can the US and China Ping-Pong Their Way to Peace Again?, from CNN

2021 ITTF Pan American Championships
Here's the ITTF page, with complete results and news for the event held Nov. 13-19, 2021, in Lima, Peru.

North American Teams and US Open

• Here's the 2021 JOOLA North American Teams page. The event will be held Nov. 26-28, 2021, in Washington DC. There are 160 teams. I'll be there! My first Teams (then in Detroit) was in 1976, my first year playing. I've been to every Teams since (Detroit, Baltimore, now DC) ever since - this will be my 45th in a row (not counting 2020, when it was cancelled due to Covid). Originally I always went as a player, then as a player/coach, now just as a coach. I'd likely be at the Worlds in Houston except I'm committed to coaching at the Teams. It's silly that USATT/ITTF chose the same time frame to run the Worlds as the Teams, which were already scheduled.
• Here's the 2021 US Open page. The event will be held Dec. 17-22 in Las Vegas. There are currently 680 entries. I'll be there! My first US Open was in 1976, in Philadelphia, my first year playing. I've been to every US Open and US Nationals starting in 1984.

New from Timo Boll

• Houston Vlog #2 - Early Blockbusters (3:41)
• Houston Vlog #1 - Getting ready for the states (4:20)
• Last live update before World Championships (34:29)

2 Backhand Loop & 2 Forehand Loops
Here's the video (1:35) from Jishan Liang.

Game Play Drills
Here's the video (60 sec) from Ted Li.

How to Hit the Powerful Backhand Rocket Against Backspin
Here's the video (10:15) from Ti Long.

New from Samson Dubina

• Healthy For Your Mind
• Pandemic Robot Training
• Just play the game! ...OR ...Or call an umpire?

New from Tom Lodziak

• "That is horrific!" How did players react to my new purple rubber?
• Interview with Dave Harvey, 7 times national veteran champion

New from Coach Jon

• Learning to Spin (4:55)
• One Joint…One Serve: It’s all about a more focused approach to serving (4:57)
• All About Backspin (11:18)

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

• Who Will Win Gold for the 2021 World Table Tennis Championships in Houston
• Shang Kun Will Be Absent in TTBL 2021
• Best Professional Table Tennis Coach in China
• Ma Lin speaks English (12 sec)
• Why 0 is called love in table tennis? (4:30)
• Ma Long, Xu Xin withdrew from World Table Tennis Championships in Houston (8:12)
• Who will win the 2021 WTTC in Houston? (3:27)
• China vs Japan World table tennis championship (41 sec)
• What is a let serve in table tennis? (13:06)
• Beautiful girl with hammer forehand (Shanghai transportation university) (7:23)
• Zhang Jike training in 2021 (6:21)
• He Zhiwen the legend in table tennis at 59 years old (45:21)
• Amazing junior level in China (4:32)
• Choreiking - the smartest table tennis racket in the world (7:11)
• Cao Wei vs Sun Yingsha (Men vs Women) (72 min)

New from the Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis

• Team China lineup for world table tennis championships Houston (1:48)
• Video analysis of the point (1:21)
• Technology in table tennis (6:32)

Worlds Visa Issues
Here are three somewhat cryptic ITTF news items involving visa issues at the Worlds and USATT.

• Executive Committee Meeting: Decisions Taken (Oct. 22, 2021)
• ITTF Emergency Executive Committee Meeting Called (Nov. 15, 2021)
• Statement following the ITTF Executive Committee Meeting on 18 November (Nov. 19, 2021)

RIP: Bill Guilfoil - Memories
Here's the video (6:42). Bill died on Nov. 12, six days short of his 99th birthday. Here's his legacy obituary.

Two Sisters Tashiya and Tiana Excel at Pan Am TT Championship
Here's the article from The Daily News ePaper.

Ping-Pong Phenomenon Estee Ackerman Visits Hempstead Town
Here's the video (3:40).

Young Hockey Goalies Tried Table Tennis to Improve Coordination - It Worked
Here's the article and video (2:55).

New from Steve Hopkins

• World Championships Houston: Preview
• World Championships Houston: The Draw
• WAB Club Feature: Gold Coast Table Tennis Club
• 2021 PanAm Results: Calderano and Diaz Take Singles Titles

Call for Nominations: The Center for SafeSport Athlete Director
Here's the USATT info page.

Help Wanted: ITTF High Performance Manager
Here's the ITTF help wanted info page. "Main Responsibility: The High Performance Manager will be responsible for the development, management, improvement and monitoring of various programs and projects within the High Performance Unit that aim at establishing a high performance platform within the international Table Tennis community in the pursue of the related strategic objectives set in the ITTF Strategic Plan."

Presentation of the Candidates for the ITTF Executive Committee
Here's the article and video (73 min) from the ITTF. Sixteen people are running for eight positions, including USATT CEO Virginia Sung, China's Liu Guoliang, and French coach Michel Gadal (Jean-Philippe Gatien's coach).

New from the Malong Fanmade Channel
Lots of new videos here.

Cartoon Ping Pong Paddle Shirt, Anyone
Here it is!

I Don't Like the Looks of This . . . This is a Ping-Pong Ball!
Here's the NASA cartoon! (Here's the non-Facebook version.)

Fiery Table Tennis
Here's the video (50 sec)!

Waterbomb Special
Here's the video (3:57) from XOLAY!

Playing Table Tennis With Your Wife - With Anything!
Here's the video (37 sec)!

Superheroes Playing Ping-Pong
Here's the video (3:51), with Batman, Spider-Man, Deadpool, and Wonder Woman!

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Tip of the Week
Don't Give a Quick Player Too Many Short Balls.

MDTTC Open, Weekend Coaching, and Jordan, Oh My!
It was held this past weekend at the Maryland Table Tennis Center, where I coach. Here are complete results, care of Omnipong. I spent much of Saturday coaching matches, including Stanley Hsu in the semifinals and final of the Open. (I wish I could blog about the tactics used, but alas, that's secret.) Here are the rating results!

I also helped coach the Novice Junior Class on Sunday, 5:30-7:00PM. Lots and lots of multiball!!! Most of it involved on player on ball pickup, one doing multiball, and one shadow-practicing behind him. I also had them do some two-person multiball drills, so two players could do multiball at the same time.

Meanwhile, I'm preparing to coach for a week at the ITTF Hopes Camp and Tournament in Jordan, Dec. 8-14. (I fly out on Dec. 6.) The top 20 boys and 20 girls from around the world will be there. (Except for China, which doesn't seem to be participating in this.) I'll be coaching Ryan Lin, the US #1 eleven-year-old until he turned twelve a week ago. Also going are Mandy Yu (with coach Wei Qi) and Tashiya Piyadasa (coached by father Thilina). The time-consuming part is that ITTF requires all 37 coaches who are going to take a three-week online course. I did the first week's course already, finishing it yesterday. The next session goes up next Thursday, and the final one the Thursday after that (Thanksgiving). With these courses, the Jordan trip itself, the World Hardbat Championships, the North American Teams, and the US Open, this next month is going to be extremely busy. But thanks goes to USATT, USATT High Performance Director Sean O'Neill, and Director of Para Programs Jasna Rather (who obviously is involved in other activities besides Para) for their help in organizing the Jordan trip!

Joerg Bitzigeio Arbitration
I've blogged about USATT losing roughly $200,000 in the arbitration case with former High Performance Director Joerg Bitzigeio. USATT should have had a news item on this, where they not only could have been upfront with the membership, but could have given their side. Several people (including USATT board members and committee members) told me they have never heard about this and asked me where I get it from, since there has never been a USATT announcement on it. So here's a public notice from June, 2021, from the law firm of Benezra & Culver, Firm Prevails in Two Arbitration Hearings/Trials (see paragraph 4).

In August of 2020, our firm participated in an arbitration hearing for its client, Joerg Bitzigeio against his former employer, USA Table Tennis (“USATT”). Mr. Bitzigeio is the former high performance Director of USATT. During his tenure, the US Table Tennis team experienced unprecedented success. Nonetheless, a new Executive Director essentially forced him from his position and failed to pay him the $90,000 in severance due to him under his employment agreement if USATT materially reduced his job responsibilities. After the hearing/trial, the arbitrator awarded Mr. Bitzigeio $90,000 in severance and $8, 222.57 in prejudgment interest. It also ordered USATT to reimburse Mr. Bitzigeio for the $74, 931.50 in attorney fees and the $7,67.40 in costs that he incurred pursuing his claim.

If you add up the numbers, it shows that USATT was forced to pay about $174,000. But that doesn't include USATT's own legal fees, which presumably would have been similar to Joerg's - so perhaps about $75,000. So that comes to about $250,000 in all, more than my initial estimate. (Perhaps USATT's legal fees were less, but we have no way of knowing without their telling us. And note that while we would have had to pay the $90,000 fee to Joerg either way, in this case we had to pay it while simultaneously paying the salary of his successor.) Hopefully, nobody is going to get mad at me for publicizing a public matter that's already public about a public organization!

ITTF Pan American Championships
Here's the ITTF page for the event taking place now in Lima, Peru, Nov. 13-19. There have been three ITTF news items so far, all featuring USA players.

• Unexpected semi-finalists but no surprise
• Biggest upset since restart, Sarah Jalli stakes claim
• Defending champions face exacting times in Lima

Classic Hardbat World Championship in Houston
Here's the info page - it's this Sunday! I'm playing in it, along with Jim Butler, AJ Carney, and many others - here's the player listing. I'm coaching until 4PM on the Saturday before, then driving straight to the airport for a 7PM flight (arriving at 9:45PM), play on Sunday at 8:30 AM, fly back Monday morning. (So next week's blog will likely be on Tuesday.) Great thanks to Steve Claflin (former junior star) for setting this up. Here's an article on a Malta star flying in for it: Mario Genovese Ready for the Classic Hardbat World Championship in Texas.

USATT to Conduct Elections for Elite Athlete Seats on the Board of Directors
Here's the USATT news item. "Pursuant to Newly Adopted Bylaws, Eligible Elite Athletes Will Choose Four Representatives to Serve on the USATT Board of Directors in Two Separate Elections – Eligible Elite Athletes Are Encouraged to Submit Their Request to Run in Elite Athlete Elections Starting Today." As of now, I know of four players running in the first election for two spots: Lily Zhang, Nikhil Kumar, Tahl Leibovitz, and Jennifer Johnson.

ITTF Emergency Executive Committee Meeting Called [About Worlds in Houston]
Here's the ITTF news item. The main discussion will be related to the remaining entry and visa issues for the Worlds in Houston. But it also has this seemingly cryptic statement: "As USA Table Tennis issued a legal letter to the ITTF insisting that the Annual General Meeting must be held in the United States in accordance with the ITTF Constitution, this therefore also obliges them to perform their duties. The ITTF now must look at measures in the highly likely case that these duties will not all be met."

The Hardest Step in Table Tennis - the Step Around
Here's the video (1:26) from Timo Boll.

New from Samson Dubina

• Lucky Balls
• Excessive Celebration

Ball Placement
Here's the video (58 sec) from Brian Pace.

Forehand & Backhand Counterlooping
Here's the video (46 sec) from Angel Luis.

Continuous Forehand Loop Development
Here's the video (1:58) from Jinxin Wang.

Opening Attack & Footwork
Here's the video (60 sec) from Wang Hui.

Backhand & Forehand Attack with Footwork
Here's the video (65 sec) from Patryk Zyworonek

The Key to Consistency
Here's the video (4:42) from Coach Jon.

Seth Pech vs. Andrew Cao 2021 Edgeball Open
Here's the video (10:58) from Seth, who gives point-by-point analysis.

Felix Lebrun vs Chuang Chih-Yuan Analysis of the Points
Here's the video (1:54) from the Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis.

How to Hit Backhand with Long Pimples Against Backspin
Here's the video (6:49) from Ti Long.

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

• Doubles Serving Rule
• Final Warm-up Houston WTTC 2021 - Ma Long vs Fan Zhendong
• Ten Reasons Why Table Tennis is a Great Sport
• Concentration in table tennis with Miu Hirano (3:03)
• Ma Te vs Chen Meng (Men vs Women) (48:57)
• Ma Long vs Fan Zhendong | Final 2021 Warm-up for WTTC (10:21)
• What is the most important skill in table tennis? (14:02)

15th Si and Patty Wasserman Junior/Open Tournament Results and Photos
Here's the links page.

Coach Lin: "Get Better with Me"
Here's the video site I recently discovered.

Portland Ping-Pong Club Needs Better Lighting
Here's the fundraiser! Junior star Kevin Nguyen is leading the charge to raise $4000 for the better lighting.

Table Tennis Player Killed In Chicago
Here's the article/obit and video (2:35) on Shaoxiong 'Dennis' Zheng.

FISU World University Games Announcement
Here's the USATT news item. "With the US Open being just a little over a month away, many athletes will be preparing for one of the biggest events at the Open; the University Games Trials."

New from Steve Hopkins

• 2021 PanAm Update: Lily Zhang, Adriana Diaz, Calderano, Aguirre Advance
• WAB Featured Club: Houston International Table Tennis Academy
• Focusing on New Players Post-Pandemic: Rhode Island Club
• Flipped Script in Slovenia: Four Chinese Advance to Quarters

Timo Boll: Fan Zhendong is the Favorite, But Other Chinese Look Vulnerable
Here's the article from Edges and Nets.

ITTF News
Here's their news page, video page ("World Table Tennis") and home page.

New from the Malong Fanmade Channel
Lots of new videos here.

$120,000 YouTuber Ping Pong Competition!
Here's the video (2hr 54min)! Adam Bobrow does some commentating.

Zazzle Table Tennis Shirts
Take your pick!

TT Trump Shows Different Grips
Here's the video (7:57) from Larry "Trump" Bavly!

No Look Shots from Level 1 to 100
Here's the video (3:45) from Pongfinity!

Adam vs. Toa 2.0
Here's the video (15:36) from Adam Bobrow! You should see the kid bouncing the ball on the handle of his racket while riding a scooter.

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Tip of the Week
Relentlessly Reliable Receives with Systematic Practice.

Weekend Coaching and Upcoming Schedule
It almost didn't happen. On Thursday I took the Pfizer booster shot. Alas, I was one of the small minority to have a bad reaction to it. I spent much of Thursday night shaking in bed, feeling like I was freezing to death and nauseous. It wasn't helped that the heating in my house had broken down and the temperature dropped to around 50 degrees inside! On Friday, I was still nauseous and could only eat cream of wheat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. (But I got the heating problem fixed.) By Saturday I was still a bit weak and slightly nauseous (cream of wheat for breakfast and lunch, then a real meal for dinner), but I managed to coach two group sessions at the club. However, having these symptoms is far better than the alternative - having the real thing!

Saturday was "multiball day" - for both the beginning and advanced junior groups I fed multiball nearly the whole session, with a twist at the end of each session. At the end of the beginning class session, I and other coaches hit live with the students, who took turns, staying up until they missed three shots. At the end of the advanced session, we had the advanced kids feed each other multiball. Yeah, I'm training them to take my place, so I'm no longer needed!!!

For the advanced session on Sunday, I was a practice partner - and this is where I realized those two days in bed from the booster reaction was still affecting me as I struggled to move. But I got better as the session continued. We finished with Brazilian Teams doubles, where doubles teams stayed up until they lost a point or won three in a row. I was with Riley Yang, and we did surprisingly well! I dominated with my serves (not easy in doubles!) and otherwise just kept the ball in play and let Riley do the damage. But I pulled off a nice backhand loop near the end for a winner! (We won't talk about the short serve that I somehow got aced by.)

One nice thing is that several of the kids from the recent Ecuador trip have sent me thank you notes and cards. They have no idea how much they are appreciated!

My upcoming table tennis schedule is packed. Here are the highlights, excluding the normal group sessions.

• Nov. 13-14: Coaching at the MDTTC Open.
• Nov. 20-22: Competing at the Classic Hardbat World Championship in Houston. Here's the list of players. I coach two group sessions the afternoon of Saturday, Nov. 20, then fly out that night to Houston, compete all day on Sunday, and fly back on Monday morning, Nov. 22, just in time to help prepare our players for the upcoming Teams.
• Nov. 26-28: Coaching at the JOOLA North American Teams. This will be my 46th consecutive year playing or coaching at the Teams, starting in 1976 and excluding 2020, when it was cancelled due to the pandemic. (I've also been to every US Open and US Nationals starting in 1984, and several before that, including the 1976 US Open.)
• Dec. 6-15: Coaching Ryan Lin at the ITTF Hopes in Jordan. This is for the best players in the world under age 12 (as of Jan. 1) - though China isn't participating. Other US players going are Mandy Yu (with coach Wei Qi) and Tashiya Piyadasa (coached by father Thilina).
• Dec. 16-22: Coaching and playing hardbat events at the US Open in Las Vegas. (I'm normally a sponge player, but play hardbat on the side and have won a lot of titles.) I'm only entered in Hardbat Singles (which I've won twice at the Open or Nationals) and Hardbat doubles (which I've won 14 times!). Alas, no hardbat age events at the Open - I've won Over 40 Hardbat six times and am the current National Champion in Over 40 and Over 60 Hardbat. Because of school (especially for those who took off up to two weeks for the recent Hopes, Pan Am Youth, and ITTF Contender tournaments in Ecuador), most of the MDTTC juniors are not attending the US Open. But they are all playing in the Teams (above) and attend the Nationals each year en masse.
• Dec. 22-26: Family gathering in San Francisco.
• Dec. 27-Jan. 1: I'm toying with taking off a few days and training as a player, possibly at the Samson Dubina camp in Akron, OH. If so, I'd be going up with Ryan Lin and his dad.

Christmas Table Tennis Book Shopping
It's that time of year again - time to do your Xmas shopping, either for some other table tennis player, or for yourself. (Interesting tidbit - I sell almost as many table tennis books in November and December as the rest of the year combined - lots of Christmas shoppers.) Here are some choices.

=>Books by Larry Hodges

• Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers
• The Spirit of Pong
• Table Tennis Tips
• More Table Tennis Tips
• Still More Table Tennis Tips
• Table Tennis Tales & Techniques
• Professional Table Tennis Coaches Handbook
• Table Tennis: Steps to Success (out of print)
• Instructor's Guide to Table Tennis (out of print)

=>Books by Dan Seemiller

• Winning Table Tennis
• Revelations of a Ping-Pong Champion
• Smash! Moments, Memories, and Tips

=>Books by Samson Dubina

• 100 Days of Table Tennis
• Why Table Tennis?: 10 Aspects of the Sport That Will Change Your Life by Samson Dubina, Sarah Jalli, and Jacob Boyd

=>Books by Dora Kurimay

• My Stories of Mental Toughness On and Off the Table
• Get Your Game Face On!
• Get Your Game Face On Like The Pros!: Mental Skills And Lifestyle Choices To Achieve Peak Performance And Play Your Best Table Tennis
• Get Your Game Face On Workbook: How to Develop Your Mental Game

=>Books by Tim Boggan

• History of US Table Tennis, Volumes 1-23

=>Books by Graham Frankel

• Kate's Progress: An Inspiring Table Tennis Story
• Ping! A Personal Perspective on Table Tennis

=>Other Table Tennis Books Published in 2020-2021

• Peak Performance Table Tennis, by Kevin Finn
• Reflections on Excellence, by Michel Gadal
• Spin: Tips and Tactics to Win at Table Tennis, by Tom Lodziak
• It Takes Balls to Play Table Tennis, by Gerard Desmond Flanagan
• Table Tennis From Then Till Now, by Rowden Fullen

USATT Bylaws
In my blog last week, I wrote about USATT Bylaws Problems, focusing on the new Bylaw 7.5 that will allow a majority of the board to appoint another board member, thereby further cementing their majority. If they choose to take advantage of this bylaw, I'm not going to hesitate to call it what it is - a power grab. This one is by far the most problematic one. But my idealist side tells me there's no way they can fail to fix this bylaw - right? Seriously, I'll be impressed by the board member who first stands up and proposes fixing it. (And while I may sound critical below, I do appreciate the time and effort spent on redoing all these bylaws . . . again. We do seem to spend a lot of time doing that.)

Here's the USATT news item about the proposed bylaws (since passed). Here's the actual revisions. Here are a few problems. (And note that while some of these perhaps could be explained, the simple reality is that they have not been publicly explained to my knowledge - and the idea of "never explain," often cited as a leadership principle, doesn't work in a public organization like USATT, or really any other organization or group with thinking, reasoning members.) The document to go over, comparing the changes to the previous version, is 106 pages, so I haven't even come close to examining it line by line. If someone else wants to do a more thorough analysis and puts it online, and it's done thoughtfully, I'll likely link to it.

In 7.10, it says, "At the end of 2020, the Directors were selected in accordance with these Bylaws and all Directors began their four (4) years terms on January 1, 2021." This does not seem to be accurate. Many of the board actually began their terms in 2020, some as early as February, 2020. While some have made the argument that these board members didn't start their term on the "permanent board" until Jan. 1, 2021, that is not true. For example, in the minutes of the June 1, 2020 board meeting, it specifically states that five people had been appointed to the "permanent board" - and three of them are still on it, with terms that started well before Jan. 1, 2021. (The minutes even say that the USOPC required USATT have a permanent Board in place by June 1, 2020.) By putting in the bylaws that their terms began on Jan. 1, 2021, they seem to have increased their four-year terms an extra seven months. I wish they could have simply put in that the initial terms would be slightly longer so as to get to that nice, tidy Jan. 1 date for terms to begin.  

It says, "all Directors began their four (4) years terms on January 1, 2021," but this isn't correct in another way. As I've blogged about a number of times, initially the board did not allow the National Collegiate Director his position on the board, despite it being required by both the USATT bylaws and the USOPC's Ted Stevens Act, until Feb. 22, 2021, and so he did not begin his four-year term on Jan. 1, 2021. Why put something in the bylaws that is factually incorrect? (And this also doesn't change the problem that for nearly a full year before Jan. 1, 2021, USATT had a board that was setting up procedures for the "permanent board," but did not allow the NCTTA rep to be seated and take part in this.)

In 7.13, it says, "Unless otherwise restricted by law, by the articles of incorporation or by these Bylaws, any Director or the entire Board may be removed, with or without cause." It then explains how individual members may be removed. But how would the "entire Board" be removed? It doesn't say who can do this. Twice in the past the USOPC has stepped in and done this, but this doesn't specify they are the ones who can do this.

There is also some confusion about the term "permanent board." For example, in the minutes of the June 1, 2020 board meeting, it refers to the "Appointment of Permanent Board" as taking place by June 1, 2020. While this can be interpreted multiple ways, some believe they appointed themselves as permanent members of the board! However, since they are individually listed as having their terms end on Dec. 31, 2024, they are obviously not permanent. (They simply have longer than four-year terms, since they took office seven months before Jan. 1, 2021.)  

The Perfect Receive Position
Here's the video (1:58) from Timo Boll.

Coaching DURING the Game
Here's the article by Samson Dubina.

Slow Down! You're Playing Too Fast
Here's the article by Tom Lodziak.

New from Ti Long

• How to use Backhand against backspin easily (8:45)
• Side to Side Footwork from basic to advanced and exercises (8:29)

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

• What is a Let Serve in Table Tennis?
• Perfect synchronization in table tennis: Ma Long, Xu Xin (2:45)
• 4 basic table tennis techniques you should know (18:31)
• Aruna Quadri vs Maria Xiao (Men vs Women) (23:02)

Executing the Short Forehand Push
Here's the video (78 sec) from Bob Chen.

Footwork and Stroke Chemistry
Here's the video (65 sec) from Anav Gupta.

Serve Attack & Random Play
Here's the video (68 sec) from Patryk Zyworonek.

Counter Topspin
Here's the video (49 sec) from eBaTT.

Punny Boy - the Forehand
Here's the video (3:04).

Why Your Next Table Tennis Racket Should Have a Straight Handle
Here's the video (7 min) from Coach Jon.

Reaction and Anticipation Training for Table Tennis
Here's the video (6:25) from Dr. Table Tennis.

How to Train with Multiball Alone
Here's the video (4:23) from Everything Table Tennis.

10th Anniversary Westchester Open
Here's the USATT article by Will Shortz.

New from the National Collegiate TTA

• NCTTA Holds World University Games Trials at US OPEN!
• Internship, Career Advice, 1:1s and More

New from Steve Hopkins

• Jingkun and Gerassimenko Top Upset-Filled Event in Lasko
• Following the “INfallible Chinese in Lasko
• WAB Club Feature: Austin Table Tennis Club

Inspiring Conversations with Adam Davis of Salt Lake City TTC
Here's the article from VoyageUta.

ITTF News
Here's their news page, video page ("World Table Tennis") and home page.

New from the Malong Fanmade Channel
Lots of new videos here.

Point of the Day!! Champions League Day 1
Here's the video (36 sec).

Table Tennis Jigsaw Puzzles
Here's what my Google Search found!

The Best Table Tennis Players in the World
Here's the video (20 sec)!

Tears of My Opponents
Here's the must-have table tennis mug!

Funny Serves
Here's the video (7 sec)!

Ping Pong Stereotypes 5
Here's the video (3:19) from Pongfinity!

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Back from Ecuador
I was coaching in Ecuador for nearly three weeks, and it's been a month since I last blogged. And boy, is there a lot to cover! Here's a quick Table of Contents.

• Tip of the Week: Use Practice Matches to Practice
• 19 Days Coaching in Ecuador
• USATT Bylaws Problems
• USATT Volunteers at the Open
• George Brathwaite Tribute
• Peak Performance Table Tennis - new book by Kevin Finn
• Weekend Coaching and Halloween Party
• Everything Else

Tip of the Week
Use Practice Matches to Practice.

=>START ECUADOR
19 Days Coaching in Ecuador
I returned last week from almost three weeks coaching in Cuenca, Ecuador. I could write a book on it!!! So much happened. For all their help in these events, I want to thank USA Table Tennis, High Performance Director Sean O'Neill, Team Leader Daniel Rutenberg, the players and parents, and my three fellow coaches - Thilina Piyadasa, Qiumars Hedayatian ("Q"), and Wei Qi. I also went to thank Ecuador Table Tennis for the excellent job they did in putting together these events. I also want to thank the umpires and referees for the professional jobs they did - I had no problems with them throughout.

While in Ecuador, I went on a diet. First, I tried to limit my calory intake. Second, I stopped drinking soft drinks, in particular Dr Pepper, my go-to drink. Result? I lost eight pounds. But Stanley Hsu lost five, and he had less to lose - some of this due to getting sick. More on that below.

Here's a summary, with great apologies to anyone or anything left out.

PART 1 - Oct. 10: Arrival. There were a number of complications in getting to Cuenca. I was on a flight with Ryan Lin and his dad, Hung, connecting in Miami. But the flight to Miami was delayed, and we wouldn't have been able to make the flight to Cuenca. So we had to cancel that entire flight and get a new flight - this time connecting in Panama City, Panama!!! I have fond memories of my 61 minutes in Panama - 15 minutes sitting on the plane waiting to get off; 15 minutes speed walking through the airport and barely making it to our connection just minutes before they closed the door; and about half an hour sitting on the plane waiting to take off. Ah, the sites of Panama!!! (I told Ryan the famous palindrome about the Panama Canal and Teddy Roosevelt: "A Man, a Plan, a Canal . . . Panama!" (Of course, there's a bit more to the story, but I won't get into that.) Here's a good place to thank Steve Hsu (Stanley's dad) and Hung Ling (Ryan Lin's dad) for their help in arranging my flights - which seemingly had to be changed every day due to changing circumstances.

Then it was a 3.5-hour wild ride from sea level to Cuenca at 8400 feet altitude, a roller-coaster ride that went on and On and ON! I got pretty nauseous. Next time, on the way back, I remembered to take Dramamine.

PART 2 - Oct. 11-16: Hopes Week. This involved a four-day camp and a two-day tournament. The camp was run by head coach Zoltan Batorfi and assistant coach Rafael Armendariz - and they did an excellent job. The top ten boys and girls from the Americas (under age 12 as of Jan. 1) took part. The four US players were Ryan Lin, Charles Shen, Manda Yu, and Tashiya Piyadasa. The two US coaches were myself (working with Ryan and Charles) and Thilina Piyadasa (working with Mandy and daughter Tashiya). I could write a book about this week alone!!! They trained six hours/day for four days, training with others in the group and multiball with the coaches. A key thing was adjusting to the thin air, where the ball travels differently than at sea level. (Most players were in this same situation, but some opponents were used to training at high altitude.)

One of the boys in the camp wasn't eligible for Hopes (but was allowed to train with them), so there were nine boys and ten girls in the Hopes tournament. On the first day of the camp, I remember the smallest kid in the camp, Emanuel Otalvaro from Columbia, as he went about his training, seemingly always smiling, and often doing "silly" things like throwing weird experimental serves at people, or bouncing the ball against the side of the table over and over. He didn't seem to stand out in practice. But when the tournament began, that's when we discovered how consistent he was. He plays a soft, mostly off-table spinning, fishing, and lobbing game, about 2250 level. He dominated the Hopes on the boys' side, going 8-0.

Finishing tied for second were Enrique Rios of Puerto Rico (with a 2274 USATT rating) and Ryan Lin, both 6-2. (Charles came in fifth, just missing the playoffs.) But since Ryan had defeated Rios head-to-head (deuce in the fourth), Ryan finished second in the RR, Enrique third. However, there was a secondary stage, where the players who finished first and fourth, and second and third, played semifinals. And so Ryan played Enrique again. This time he was down 0-2 in games, but fought back to 8-all in the fifth. We had a timeout, I called two serves - and Enrique missed both! So Ryan won again, 11-8 in the fifth. In the final against Emanuel, Ryan lost the first badly, but made it to deuce the next two games (leading 10-8 in the third), but lost both. Here's a picture of Ryan and Emanuel. Ironically, they were the two smallest players in the camp.

On the girls' side, coached by Thilina, Mandy Yu came back in the final from down 0-2 to win against Dafne Sosa of Dominican Republic, while Tashiya finished third. Here's Mandy and Dafne. And so USA came first and third on the girls' side, and second and fifth on the boys' side.

CHEESEBURGER SPECIAL - Alas, I had made a promise that if a USA player came in first, I'd eat a cheeseburger. (Here's the story behind that.) And so, afterwards, they ordered a quarter pounder with cheese from McDonalds, and while everyone watched and cheered, I was forced to eat it!!! Thanks a bunch, Mandy!!! Here's the video (8:19) - don't you dare watch it!!!

Meanwhile, the Pan Am Youth players arrived on Thursday, Oct. 14, and began training on Friday (getting used to the air) for the Pan Am Under 11 and Under 13 Championships. How does the air affect players? On the first day, in the first five minutes of counterlooping, Xianyao broke four balls, Mu Du three, all off the edge of their rackets as the balls came in higher than expected.

PART 3 - Oct. 18-24 - Pan Am Under 11 and Under 13 Championships. Now USA had 16 players, 4 coaches, a team leader (Daniel Rutenberg), and 17 parents. We went from the 20 players in the Hopes to over 160 players from countries all over the Americas. Here's the ITTF page, with complete results and other info. (This page is probably better for results.) Here are ITTF News stories, many of them featuring USA players. Here are pictures taken by Daniel. Here's the entire entourage!

Officially, I was in charge of Under 13 Boys (Stanley Hsu, Mu Du, He Xianyao, and Krish Gandhi); "Q" was in charge of Under 11 Boys (Kef Noorani, Brian Wu, Max Mouchinski, and Kyler Chen); Wei Qi in charge of Under 13 Girls (Amber Liu, Yishiuan Lin, Mandy Yu, and Aria Shi); and Thilina Piyadasa in charge of Under 11 Girls (Tashiya Piyadasa, Geetha Krishna, Abigail Yu, and Tiana Piyadasa). We each oversaw the training and daily schedule of the four in our charge. But for the tournament, where players in the same event would go out together, we coached players from outside our group. I ended up coaching mostly Stanley, Mu Du, Kyle, Max, Brian, Mandy, and one huge key match for Geetha.

I could write another book on this week. Instead, here are bullet points.

• The coaches often worked one-on-one with the players. I had brought along my "racket bag," a huge racket case with four rackets - long pips with sponge (for choppers); long pips without sponge (for blockers); short pips; and antispin. Throughout the tournament I and other coaches would pull them out so players prepare for a player using that equipment. For example, Geetha had to play the second seed in Under 11 Girls' Singles, Paola Zerpa Flores of Venezuela, a chopper with long pips. I brought out the chopping blade and chopped to her for 45 minutes. We devised a tactical plan involving her using her short backhand pips to alternate driving and pushing, with mixed in forehand loops and smashes. Geetha then executed the tactics brilliantly and pulled off the upset, 3-2!!! Which led to her getting the bronze in singles.
• In the final of Under 11 Girls' Singles, Tashiya was down 1-2 in games and 0-5 in the fourth against Karolayn Maldonado of Ecuador. Tashiya won the next 15 points in a row (!), winning game five 11-4. Fourteen of those points came exactly the same way - she slow looped against a push, and the opponent blocked off. At high altitude, slow, spinny loops are deadly - they just shoot off the end when you block. The irony is that at high altitude, pushes are deadly as they jump at you and have more spin then expected (since there's less air resistance to take off the spin). But if a player just drops the racket and spins, the push becomes a trap, as they have to face that spinny loop. This tournament was Tashiya's coming out party - she swept Under 11 Girls' Singles, Doubles, Mixed Doubles, and Teams!
• In Under 11 Boys' Doubles, Brian and Max faced the top-seeded and seemingly overwhelming favorites from Columbia, Emanuel Otalvaro and his partner, Juan Mineros. Emanuel swept singles in the Hopes and Pan Am Hopes Under 11. But Brian/Max pulled off the upset in the quarterfinals. Alas, in the semifinals, up 9-7 in the fifth, they lost to a pair from Guatemala. Kyler and Kef won the final over the Guatemalans.
• We had downpours nearly every day. This led to some problems with humidity. Most were minor. But just before the Under 13 Boys' Team final (Stanley & Mu Du vs. Puerto Rico), it not only downpoured, but it poured in through leaks in the roof onto the playing area. They postponed the final for an hour. But due to the essentially 100% humidity and the water pouring in, the players found their rackets were slick, and no amount of drying seemed to help more than temporarily. And so ball after ball slid off their rackets. This especially hurt Stanley and Mu Du, who play aggressive close-to-table looping games, and had to change their games dramatically. Stanley barely pulled out his two matches, but we lost the final 3-2. But the conditions simply weren't realistic - you won't play in humidity like that at the Olympics, Pan Ams, Worlds, Team Trials for any of these, the US Open, Nationals, or other major tournaments.
• We also had a problem with noise, but that we need to get used to, as that's the norm at many tournaments, including the Worlds. During many matches people in the crowd chanted and played musical instruments during points. This meant the players couldn't hear the ball hit the table, a key part to timing. I'm told this is the norm in Latin American tournaments, and so our opponents were more used to this. It's not the norm in the US, so we weren't as prepared for it. I told the players to focus on watching the ball hit the table, which helped some. As with humidity, the noise affected certain players more than others.
• The high altitude also caused problems. While the Hopes players had 24 hours of training to prepare for their tournament, the Pan Am Youth players only had ten hours, since we had to share the tables with other countries and so there was limited table time.
• Another interesting dynamic we faced was the language. Latin American coaches called out advise between nearly every point, mostly in Spanish (the Brazilians in Portuguese). We couldn't do the same in English since many of the opposing coaches and players understood English. (I toyed with talking very fast!) Having Wei Qi coach our Chinese-speaking players (10 out of 16!) was an advantage as few, if any of the opponents understood Chinese.
• And then the stomach virus struck. It started with Xianyao He, who came down sick just before the singles, with a 102 fever. (A doctor came in and diagnosed it.) He had to drop out of singles. Then we found out several of the parents had also come down with it. Then Stanley Hsu came down with it - not as bad as Xianyao's, but it put him in great discomfort. He tried to play singles - he was likely the favorite - but wasn't able to play effectively and lost to Sebastian Bedoya of Columbia, who Stanley had beaten 3-1 in the Teams. (Sebastian went on to win Under 13 over Enrique Rios.) And then I came down with the virus. I spent three days coaching while grabbing my stomach. It wasn't fun.
• A serious topic of discussion were the many "13-year-olds" who towered over me and looked like high school seniors. But they all had passports that "proved" they were 13. This was ironic, considering the two top Hopes players were the two smallest players, with the smallest winning.
• With all these tribulations, all 16 USA players won a medal!

PART 4 - October 25-27: ITTF Contender. Most of the USA contingent left after the Pan Ams. But three players stayed for the final event - Stanley, Mu Du, and Kef. Also joining us was USA's Nathaniel Hwang and his dad, former USA junior star Dennis Hwang, now a medical doctor. Kef was in Under 11 and Under 13 Boys', the other three in Under 13 and Under 15 Boys. Here's the ITTF page, with complete results and other info. Here's the ITTF News Page.

Kef got second in Under 11, losing the final to Emanuel. Once again Stanley seemed the favorite - and now he was healthy and pretty much used to the air! In the quarterfinals, he played Hamilton Hato Yamane of Brazil, a chopper/looper who Stanley and Mu Du had both beaten somewhat easily in the Pan Ams. At the Pan Ams, Hato had played very aggressively - so aggressive that I told Stanley and Mu Du to play him as an attacker who sometimes chopped. However, in the ITTF Contender, he switched to a steadier chopping game, and attacked less - but more effectively when he did. He caught Stanley off guard, winning the first two games at 4 and 8. Stanley won the next two easily at 4 and 5, and led 7-5 in the fifth. But he made some mistakes, and Hato attacked more, and Hato led 10-8 match point. Stanley deuced it but lost 12-10 in the fifth. Hato went on to win the event, defeating Enrique Rios in the final, 3-0. (Hato essentially came out of nowhere - nobody was looking at him as a contender.) There's a key tactical thing we'll need to work on next time the two play, but I can't really go over it here. Mu Du made the quarterfinals of Under 15, losing to Enrique.

And then it was time to leave - or was it? Kef, Nathaniel, and their dads had already left, but Stanley and his dad, Mu Du and his mom, and I were the last to leave, with a 4 AM pickup for the 3.5 hour ride to the airport. At 11:25 PM, there was a knock on my door, the panicked van driver. It turns out a nationwide anti-government protest had just erupted, and that we needed to leave immediately. We quickly got our things together and went to the lobby. Unfortunately, the word came back that all the roads out of Cuenca were blocked by protesters, with fires, barricades, and rioters. We were shown images and video - it was pretty nasty. So, the five of us, and dozens of other players/coaches/parents from all over South America and elsewhere were stranded in the hotel. We couldn't even step outside due to the violence. Here's video (2:33).

So we went back to bed and awaited our fate. At about 8AM, there was another knock on my door, and it was driver, saying the roads were now open. So we got into the van and took the 3.5 hour ride to the airport, just making our flight. (Others were not so lucky, and missed theirs.) And then, late that night, I was home!!!
=>END ECUADOR

USATT Bylaws Problems
Last week, while I was in Ecuador, the USATT board passed a series of bylaws. There are a number of problems with them, but I'm going to focus on one of them in this blog, buried in 106 pages of bylaw revisions. (I'll likely write about other problems in next week's blog.)

7.5: The Board, in its sole discretion, may also appoint an Interim Director until 2024. The Interim Director shall be either the Chair of the AAC or another member of the AAC as selected by the Board in its sole discretion.

What does this mean? It means a majority of the board can now pad its majority by simply appointing another voting member (from anyone they choose from the Athletes Advisory Council) who fits in with their majority, thereby increasing their majority (for the next three years) by 1/11, or 9%. This is just wrong.

The US Senate is currently split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, with Vice President Kamala Harris the tie-deciding vote giving the Democrats the majority. Suppose the Democrats decided to appoint nine new members to the Senate (9%), thereby increasing their majority to 59-50. Or if they decided to increase their current 220-212 lead in the House (three vacancies) by 39 (9%), thereby increasing their lead to 259-212. Do you think Republicans would object? The same if the Republicans held the majority and padded their majority. Allowing a majority to arbitrarily increase their majority by 9% changes a small majority into a nearly insurmountable majority. And that's the point! They are literally appointing a majority representative to increase that majority.

Some will try to make the argument that, "We need this person on the board!" You can make the same argument for many people. Since the person they appoint will be an athlete from the AAC, that person will have the opportunity to run for not one, not two, not three, but four athlete rep positions on the board this fall. (See 7.6.4, the election of the four athlete representatives, and the USATT news item on the elections.) If they need a specific person's advice, that person doesn't need to be on the board for that. But here's the key part - the USOPC has mandated that all Olympic sports have boards composed of at least 1/3 athletes, and so USATT will now have four athletes representing them - and yet, the USATT board wants to appoint another. Does USATT believe they know better than the athletes over who should represent them?

I hope the USATT board will rethink this one, and take out that provision.

US Open Volunteers
Here's the USATT News Item. I'm singling this one out for a reason - they no longer are offering hotel or partial air fare for volunteers. Normally, all volunteers get half a room and up to about $250 in air fare, along with two free events. This year - neither, just the two free events and a t-shirt for five days work. Presumably, this is because USATT is nearly broke, due to the pandemic and the roughly $200,000 lost in the (former high performance director) Joerg Bitzigeio arbitration case. But seriously, they really need to offer volunteers more than this. Five days of work, and to do so, you have to pay for your own flight and hotel?

There's another serious problem that I've already heard grumbling about. It says that the two events they play in cannot conflict with their shifts. But since they only know the starting time of their two events, how can they schedule their events and shifts so as to not conflict? This is the obvious question that the Volunteer form should have addressed. USATT needs to have someone oversee this, so volunteers can trade time slots or times so as to complete their events. 

George Brathwaite Tribute

• Ping-Pong Legend George Braithwaite Honored in New York City Ceremony on Oct. 23, 2021
• Documented Clips From The Chief George Braithwaite's Life Celebration Event (6:27)
• Roosevelt Island Celebration Of The Life Of Chief George Braithwaite (80 min)

Peak Performance Table Tennis: Unlock Your Potential and Play Like the Pros
Here's the new book that just came out by Kevin Finn, table tennis player and strength training and nutritional consultant. From the opening of the back cover: "What athlete hasn't become frustrated at losing a game, not because they were outplayed or outmatched, but because they gassed out, had a mental lapse, or just couldn't get in the zone? Peak Performance Table Tennis comprehensively covers those game aspects needed for peak performance and provides actionable steps for athletes to ensure they are in the best possible position to perform at their peak when it matters most."  

I haven't had a chance to read it - my reading queue is rather long - but I like the opening to the chapter on Tactical Skills on page 48: "When I first sat down to write this chapter, I unironically explored the possibility of simply making it one sentence long: 'Go buy Larry Hodges' Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers.' If you are at all interested in improving your game via tactics, that book is your one-stop shop!"

Weekend Coaching and the MDTTC Halloween Party
After 19 days in Ecuador, it was great to be back coaching at MDTTC! It took only minutes to adjust to playing at sea level again - going up is hard, coming down is easy. (Of course, I didn't really train much at high altitude, so unlike the players, I didn't really get as used to playing in the thin air.) On Saturday, Oct. 30, we had the Halloween party - not at MDTTC, but at a local park, where we had a barbecue (hamburgers and hot dogs) and a huge number of other food dishes brought in by players and parents, about 70 of us in all. The kids came in costume. Lots of games were played, from beanbag toss to throwing a football and frisbee around.

Then it was back to MDTTC. My first session back was with the Beginning kids, where we did (as usual) lots of stroking and footwork drills. Then came the advanced group (1800-2350), where I fed multiball for about 90 minutes. On Sunday and Monday, I worked with the advanced group again - including much of the sessions as a practice partner. One drill involved a player serving long to backhand, receiver backhand looping it back, and then into a footwork drill - but the kids had a hard time returning my tricky long serves, where I vary the spin and serving motion. I do need to spend some time just serving to some of them.

News of the Last Month
If I were to comprehensively cover every table tennis news item that went up this past month, as I often do, this blog would be rather looooong. Instead, here are some links to browse.

• Minutes of USATT Board Meeting on Oct. 4, 2021
• USATT News
• ITTF News
• Butterfly News
• Edges and Nets
• Timo Boll
• Samson Dubina
• Tom Lodziak
• Ti Long
• Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis
• Coach Jon
• NCTTA
• PingSunday/EmRatThich (news) - of especial interest, "Is Ma Long Forced to Retire?"
• PingSunday/EmRatThich (video)
• Malong Fanmade Channel
• eBaTT
• Adam Bobrow
• Pongfinity

Ma Long Multiball Looping
He makes it look so easy! (46 sec)

Dimitrij Ovtcharov Finding Ways to Play Table Tennis After Surgery
Here's the video (5:53)!

Marvel and Table Tennis
They seem to like table tennis! In Ant-Man, at 1:33:40, Ant-Man swats the evil enemy Yellowjacket with a ping-pong paddle! In Spider-Man: Homecoming, at 34:40, here are two pictures of Spider-Man running past a pair playing table tennis in a garage:

• Scene1
• Scene2

Here are some others, mostly copied and pasted from a past blog:

• Repeating gif of Loki playing table tennis
• The Avengers vs. Chinese National Team
• Hulk vs. Superhero
• Tim "Hulk" Boggan
• Spider-man Table Tennis (see last segment)
• The Avengers beginning table tennis set
• Spiderman racket
• Thor racket
• Hulk racket
• Spider-Man vs. Ant-Man (18 sec)

There's No Crying in Table Tennis
Here's the shirt!

Large Objects for Paddles Pong
Here's the video (36 sec)!

Many Objects Pong
Here's the video (41 sec)!

The Other 12 Ways of Playing Table Tennis
Here's the video (69 sec)!

Non-Table Tennis - SF Stories
On November 1 (Monday), I had two new science fiction stories published. (Alas, I think you have to buy the magazine to read them.) With five other stories coming out in December, it's going to be a fun Christmas! Here are the two that just came out:

• "99 Sextillion Souls in a Ball" in Dark Matter Magazine. What happens if a religious world government (helped by advanced computers) takes "Be fruitful and multiply" to its logical conclusion, ending in the complete conversion of the earth's mass into humans?
• "The Purple Rose of Retribution" in Utopia Science Fiction. What happens when an elderly luddite is forced to live in a virus-filled virtual world?

***
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This week's blog will go up on Wednesday, Nov. 3. I just got back from coaching in Ecuador for 19 days (lots to blog about!), and need a couple more days to catch up on other things. 
NOTE - the blog will go up late Wednesday afternoon. I'm working on it, but not only is there a lot to write about, but the heat in my house broke down, and so it's 58 degrees inside and my fingers are freezing!

Next Blog and Tip of the Week on November 1 3
I'll be coaching the US Junior Team in Ecuador Oct. 10-28. See segment below.

Tip of the Week
Ten Table Tennis Quotes for Improvement.

Ecuador
I'm off to Ecuador on Sunday morning - and when I say "morning," I do mean it! I'll be leaving at 3:30 AM for the airport for a 6AM flight to Miami, then transferring to a flight to Guayaquil, Ecuador, arriving at 12:46PM (1:46 PM eastern time). From there we have a 122-mile bus ride to the playing site in Cuenca, Ecuador. Traveling with me will be Ryan Lin and his dad, and Mandy & Abigail Yu and their mom. Guayaquil is 12 feet above sea level; Cuenca is 8400 feet. It'll be a long, uphill ride!!! The 18-day trip can be divided into four segments.

• Oct. 11-16: ITTF Americas Continental Hopes Week & Challenge. Twenty of the best Hopes players from the Americas (under 12 as of Jan. 1) will train together, with a tournament at the end. I'll be coaching the two USA players in it, Ryan Lin (2121) and Mandy Yu (2017). They are ranked #1 in the US in Under 12 for boys and girls, respectively.
• Oct. 14-17: The US Under 13 and Under 11 Teams and coaches arrive on Oct. 14, and will train through Oct. 17 in a "mini-camp," in particular getting used to playing in the high altitude. (At 8400 feet, air resistance is 74% what it is at sea level, and oxygen is 16% instead of 21%. The ball plays very differently.) This overlaps with the Hopes, so I'll be jumping back and forth. The other coaches will likely run most of these sessions.
• Oct. 18-24: ITTF Pan Am Under 13 and Under 11 Championships. We'll have 16 players, 1 team leader, 4 coaches, and 16 parents. Here's the USATT news item, USA Table Tennis Announces 2021 ITTF Pan Am Youth Championship U13 and U11 Teams. Daniel Rutenberg is the Team Leader. Coaches are Larry Hodges (me) for Under 13 Boys; Wei Qu (U13 Girls); Qiumars Hedayatian (Under 11 Boys); and Thilina Piyadasa (U-11 Girls).
• Oct. 25-31: WTT Youth Contender. USA players competing in this are Stanley Hsu, Mu Du, Kef Noorani, and Nathanael Hwang. (I'm coaching Stanley and Mu Du.)

Weekend Coaching
We did a lot of work on pushing and on attacking pushes this weekend. Way too many players just pat the ball back when pushing, instead of really doing something with the ball. You can push quick, heavy, angled, and short or long. Or you can just pat it back and be a patsy. We also did a lot of doubles play, capped off by Brazilian Teams Doubles on Sunday - the kids loved that. We paired them off (with established teams playing together, such as Stanley Hsu/Mu Du, Ryan Lin/Winston Wu, and so on), and they battled it out. One side note - I spent one 90-minute session as a practice partner . . . yeah, I need to get back in shape. Shots that used to be easy aren't so easy anymore. As I kept crying out, "That used to be easy!" After I get back from Ecuador, I have to do some physical training, practice, and get back into playing shape. (The only good news - many of the kids, even the advanced ones, still have great difficulty with my serves!)

USATT Board Meeting Tonight
The USA Table Tennis Board of Directors will have an open Zoom meeting tonight at 8PM eastern time. The agenda and info on joining in is at the USATT Agendas and Notices page. I'll be coaching at MDTTC when they start, but may join in around 8:30PM or shortly after.

MDTTC and WDCTTC Opens
There are two local tournaments this month. I'll be coaching on Saturday at the MDTTC Open. (And leaving for Ecuador at 3:30AM on Sunday!)

• Oct. 9-10: Maryland Table Tennis Center October Open
• Oct. 23-24: 2021 Washington DC October Open and Giant Round Robin

Late Guyanese Table Tennis Champion George Braithwaite to Be Honored
Here's the article. "The George Braithwaite Table Tennis Court will be unveiled at Capobianco Field, Roosevelt Island during the late sportsman’s Ping Pong Diplomacy Commemoration on Saturday, Oct. 23."

ITTF Proposals
Here's the ITTF AGM Working Documents, which shows the various proposals to be considered at their meeting at the upcoming Worlds. Here's the one I find most interesting - it allows doubles teams to serve crosscourt from the left-hand court, instead of always crosscourt from the right-hand court. See Proposition A-22, proposed by Iran, which would require a 3/4 majority to pass.

• To amend 2.6.3 As the ball is falling the server shall strike it so that it touches first his or her court and then touches directly the receiver's court; in doubles, the ball shall touch successively the right half court of server and receiver, or it shall touch successively the left half court of server and receiver.
• Rationale:   The extension of the service rule removes the disadvantage for right hand players and allows more flexibility to use their best position when starting a rally.

ITTF News

• 2021 European Championships, Sept 28-Oct. 3 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania
• 2021 Asian Championships, Sept 28-Oct. 3 in Doha, Qatar
• Khalil Al-Mohannadi Elected President of Asian Table Tennis Union
• Here's their news page, video page ("World Table Tennis") and home page.

How to Destroy a Defender: 5 Tips
Here's the video (5:36) from Timo Boll.

New from Samson Dubina

• Pandemic Robot Training
• 6 Types of Footwork Drills
• Tournament Checklist
• 13 Stages
• Check out the Action!

Tips to Improve in Table Tennis
Here's the article by Vikash Sahu - Practicing Serves, Spare Equipment, Stretching, Competing.

Footwork in Table Tennis
Here's the video (3:31) from Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis

Optimization of Adaptability and Resilience in Sports and Life
Here's the article by Adam Formal.

2 x Backhands & 2 x Forehands
Here's the video (54 sec) from Nandan Naresh

Short Ball Backhand Return
Here's the video (2:41) from Bella Xu

Preparing For a Table Tennis Tournament
Here's the video (6:47) from Coach Jon.

Why Ma Long Picked Up Only One Ball?
Here's the video (3:29) from PingSunday/EmRatThich.

The Lasting Legacy Of The Seemiller Brothers On Table Tennis
Here's the video (3:55) from KDKA (CBS) in Pittsburgh.

New from Steve Hopkins

• Fakel Gazprom’s Big 3: Calderano, Lin Yun-Ju, Ovtcharov
• WAB Club Feature: Song Jeho TTC
• Euro Teams: No Timo, No Dima, No Problem
• Euro Teams: Final Four
• ITTF Rankings Update: Fan and Ma Long Secure at Top

New from Table Tennis Central

• Outstanding Table Tennis Plays (Team China) [HD] (8:03)
• Youth Table Tennis Level in China [HD] (2:04)
• Team Germany playing UNREAL Table Tennis for 8 Minutes [HD] (8:18)
• Defender vs Defender in Table Tennis [HD] (16:51)

$100,000 JOOLA Global Championships
Here's the info page on this huge international tournament to be held next year, Sept. 1-4, in Orlando, Florida, minutes away from Disneyworld and Universal Studios.

Egypt's Superstars Ready to Challenge for 2021 World Table Tennis Championship in Houston
Here's the article from World Table Tennis.

Why Were So Many Fans at the China National Games Women?
Here's the article from Edges and Nets.

New from the Malong Fanmade Channel
Lots of new videos here.

Ping-Pong Gun
Here it is, from Etsy! It's only $5, but you have to assemble it yourself. You may not be the best player at your club, but now you can be the biggest nuisance!!!

Real Beer Pong Shirt
Here it is! I don't drink (well, except water, Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice, and Dr Pepper), but I've heard others do. And now they are playing REAL table tennis.

World's Okayest Ping-Pong Player
Here's the shirt! C'mon, unless you are Ma Long or one of his peers, this is the shirt for you!

If Table Tennis Were Like This...
Here's the video (50 sec)!

Best Table Tennis Points
Here's the video (5:54) from Pongfinity!

Mostly Non-Table Tennis - Capclave Science Fiction Convention
I spent much of the weekend jumping back and forth between coaching at MDTTC and the Capclave SF Convention, held in Rockville, MD, 25 minutes away. I was on three panels (moderating one), did a reading, and had a two-hour author signing session (along with others). Here's a picture of me at the signing! I have eight SF books, including The Spirit of Pong, which is both SF and TT. I have nine books on table tennis - here's all my books. One interesting note - my "secret identity" is really getting out - SF fans and writers keep coming up to me to ask about or mention table tennis! (In the picture, that's my science fiction & fantasy pen collection on display.)

***
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Tip of the Week
Forehand Push for Playing Choppers.

Weekend Coaching
As always, active feet was a priority in the sessions over the weekend. Another emphasis was forehand attacking from all parts of the table. This was fun for me since, during my active playing career, I started off most rallies as an all-out forehand attacker. The key is balance and recovery. So often a player can't get to a ball, and yells, out, "I'm too slow!" No, they weren't too slow - they were off balanced from the previous shot, or didn't recover as part of their follow-through, and so had little chance on the next shot. Another emphasis, repeated from last week, was serving low - I'm really trying to create a club of net-grazing servers.

In an intermediate group session, when they played points, I kept calling out when a player had great ball placement, or when they did not. Many of them are starting to get into their heads that nearly every ball should go to the wide corners or the opponent's elbow. There were two back-to-back points that emphasized this. One player serve and smashed to the opponent's middle forehand, where the other kid was standing and waiting, and counter-hit a winner. Poor placement!!! The very next point the smash went to the middle, and the opponent couldn't even get his racket on it. Great placement!!!

Ecuador
I'm continuing to prepare for 18 days in Cuenca, Ecuador, Oct. 10-28. We had a 95-minute Zoom meeting on Friday on the trip, with 22 participants. (Actually more, since some parents and players shared their link.)

Originally I was only going down from Oct. 14-28. However, it turns out ITTF is running a Hopes (Under 12) camp and tournament, Oct. 11-16. USATT is sending out top rated 11-year-old boy (Ryan Lin, 2121) and girl (Mandy Yu, 2017), and I was asked if I could go down as their coach. I've worked with Ryan for years, starting five years ago when he started in my beginning table tennis class, and coach him regularly at tournaments and group sessions. I didn't really know Mandy or her game, but her parents sent me videos, and I'm now an "expert" on her game! (I took notes.)

Right after the Hopes Camp is the ITTF Pan Am Youth Championships for Under 13 and Under 11, Oct. 18-24. Our 16 players are going down early to practice three days to get used to the 8400 foot altitude, a major concern. So the 16 players, ~18 parents, 4 coaches, and team leader will arrive on Oct. 14. Immediately after that event is the ITTF Youth Contender, Oct. 25-27, where I'll be coaching Stanley Hsu and Mu Du, both from my club. And then I fly home!

Mount Rushmores of Table Tennis
Who are the four best players of all time? I thought about that recently, and realized you really had to divide it into four groups, men and women, hardbat and sponge. After some browsing on the list of World Champions, here's my list. Some of these choices were relatively easy, such as Men's Hardbat. Others were difficult. For example, for Men's Sponge, Zhuang Zedong won Men's Singles three times in a row - but later a number of people came forward and said that Li Furong, runner-up all three times, was ordered to dump. And there are others that could be on that list, such as Zhang Jike, Jiang Jialiang, and Ichiro Ogimura. And it was painful leaving off USA's Ruth Aarons (2-time World Singles Champion) from Women's Hardbat. But to add one of these, you have to take someone off!

• Men's Sponge: Ma Long, Jan-Ove Waldner, Guo Yue-Hua, Wang Liqin
• Women's Sponge: Deng Yaping, Wang Nan, Ding Ning, Zhang Yining
• Men's Hardbat: Viktor Barna, Richard Bergmann, Bohumil Váňa, Johnny Leach
• Women's Hardbat: Angelica Rozeanu, Mária Mednyánszky, Gizella Farkas, Gertrude Pritzi

USOPC Audit: USATT
Here's the USATT audit report from June 18, 2021. I don't remember seeing this before, but someone posted a link to it this morning at the Mytabletennis.net forum (see 14th post). The report is linked from the USOPC's NGB Audit page - scroll down and click on "NGB Audit Reports," and five reports come up. (The others are USA Archery, Climbing, Field Hockey, and Judo.) USATT normally posts these on the USATT Financial Reports page - if you scroll down, you'll see the audits from 2005-2019. However, they have not posted the reports for 2020 or 2021, even though USOPC has already posted the 2021 audit. Someone had already sent me the link to the report yesterday, but I haven't had a chance to really go over it, but it does look like USATT has some things to fix. If someone puts together a thoughtful analysis of this, I'll probably link to it. Or USATT could post a report on how they are addressing these issues. (The due date for most of the things USOPC is asking for is Oct. 4, Monday.) 

Late Gyuanese Table Tennis Champion George Braithwaite to Be Honored
Here's the article. "The George Braithwaite Table Tennis Court will be unveiled at Capobianco Field, Roosevelt Island during the late sportsman’s Ping Pong Diplomacy Commemoration on Saturday, Oct. 23."

The Around-the-Net Shot Tutorial
Here's the video (9:30) from Adam Bobrow!

New from Samson Dubina

• Tournament Tough in 20 Steps - Learn how to train your mind and body!
• Pan American Champion - The Best in North and South America
• Winning in Mind - Part I and Part II
• Redefining Winning - Winning Defined by the E.L.M. TREE
• Success - Quiz Yourself on the 12 Aspects of Mental Success!
• Improving Your Serves - Through Visualization and Deliberate Practice

New from Ti Long

• Ma Long's powerful Backhand Loop technique Against BackSpin (9:05)
• 3 advantages of Ma Long's Backhand technique in the Chinese National Championship 2021 (6:27)
• Improve and fix Backhand Topspin technique with Robot (4:20)
• Forehand Topspin Technique Guide by Legend of Zhang Jike (6:18)

New from the Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis

• Table Tennis in children performance or education physical (4:09)
• Forehand serve in table tennis. An analysis of Chinese players (6:18)
• Forehand serve in table tennis. Final phase and the foot roll (1:01)

5 Bad Mistakes in Reverse Pendulum Serve
Here's the video (7:41) from Eddy Zeile from the Dublin TTC.

How to Lob Like a Pro (in 4 Steps)
Here's the article from Alex Horscroft at Expert Table Tennis. (This went up on Sept. 9, but since the reorganized their page, I somehow missed it.)

Stroke Chemistry & Footwork Drill #2
Here's the video (62 sec) with Gabriel Perez.

New from Edges and Nets
Here's their page. They have ten new articles, covering the Chinese National Games and the WTT Contender in Doha.

A Different Perspective On Table Tennis at Jon’s Table Tennis Training
Here's the video (5:27) from Coach Jon.

Rachel Yang Interview
Here's the video (4:39), interview by Sally Moyland.

Tournament Highlights With Nandan Naresh
Here's the video (2:10).

USA Table Tennis Team Takes Home a Big Medal Haul from 2021 Pan Am Youth Championships
Here's the USATT article.

Table Tennis: A Breaking Method
Here's the new book by Oscar Roitman. (Kindle only - I already ordered my copy!) "Oscar Roitman gives us an approach of a new way of teaching table tennis and throughout this book - which used a very didactical and clear narrative - he describes the teaching process of Table Tennis through up to day pedagogical and methodological tools. The foundation of all these tools are the author's own experiences as a table tennis player and as a coach."

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

• Fan Zhendong-14th National Games Table Tennis Men's Singles Final Award Ceremony
• [Fan Zhendong] Congratulations to Xiaopang for winning the championship
• Wang Chuqin vs Liang Jingkun | Bronze Medal | 2021 Chinese National Games
• Fan Zhendong vs Liu Dingshuo | Final | 2021 Chinese National Games
• Fan Zhendong is monster champion (best points collections) | Chinese National Games 2021
• Wang Chuqin vs Liu Dingshuo | Semi-final | 2021 Chinese National Games
• Fan Zhendong vs Liang Jingkun | Semi-final | 2021 Chinese National Games
• Ma Long vs Fan Zhendong | Final | 2021 Chinese National Games (Gold Medal)
• Liu Shiwen admires Ma Long so much
• (Bronze medal match) Olympic champion Chen Meng VS Liu Shiwen
• (Gold medal) Wang Manyu vs. Sun Yingsha | National Games 2021 Final
• (Gold Medal) Ma Long/Wang Chuqin vs. Yan An/Xu Chen

New from Steve Hopkins

• China National Games: Fan Wins, Liu's Upsets Headline
• China National Games: Liu Who?
• WTT Star Contender Doha: Hugo Tops Field
• WTT Star Contender Doha: Final Four is Set
• WAB Club Feature: Bridgeport Sports Club

ITTF News

• Brazil's History-Maker Hugo Calderano Lifts First WTT Trophy in Doha
• New ITTF T Laboratory ready
• Here's their news page, video page ("World Table Tennis") and home page.

New from the Malong Fanmade Channel
Lots of new videos here.

Americans Champs at Pingpong Table, Not So Much Ryder Cup
Here's the article from USA Today - which went up before Team USA won the Ryder Cup over Europe, 19-9. The article is about how the best USA golfers are highly competitive among themselves in table tennis, with many of them bringing their own rackets. Golf/table tennis players in the article include Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Stewart Cink, Matt Kuchar, Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, and Daniel Berger.

Party on the Plaza
Here's the picture from the Colorado Gazette. "Bernie, mascot of the Colorado Avalanche, and Miles, mascot of the Denver Broncos, helped kick off the ping pong tournament that was part of Party on the Plaza."

Tongue Pong?
Here's the video (58 sec)!

Ping Pong: Spider-Man vs. Ant-Man
Here's the video (18 sec)! Of course, Ant-Man is no stranger to ping-pong - in the Marvel movie Ant-Man, at 1:33:40, he swats the evil enemy Yellowjacket with a ping-pong paddle!

Non-Table Tennis - Capclave Science Fiction Convention
This next weekend is the Capclave SF Convention in Rockville, MD. As with most years, I'm a panelist, plus I'll be doing a reading at 7PM on Friday night, right after my 6PM panel. Here's my schedule and my Capclave Bio. (See the table tennis quote in my bio!) I'll also be in the mass author signing at 8PM on Saturday night. Saturday is going to be tricky - I'll be in a panel at 11AM for an hour, then drive to MDTTC (25 minutes) to coach from 1-4PM, then back to the convention for a 7PM panel and then the mass signing. (Regarding readings, they have erratic attendance - sometimes there's a roomful, other times nobody shows. The most awkward is when one person shows up!)

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Tip of the Week
A Good Warm-up.

Weekend Coaching
It was a busy three-day weekend for me - it looks like I'll be doing group sessions every week on Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays. The 51 kids in the Maryland TTC junior program are divided into four groups. I work with Group 1 ("Select," 15 kids from about 1800 to 2350, ages mostly from 11-15) in all three of their weekly sessions; once a week with Group 2 ("Progress"); and with Group 4 ("Novice") in their one weekly session. Other coaches/practice partners include head junior coach Wang Qingliang; Cheng Yinghua; Jack Huang; Lidney Castro; John Hsu; Nathan Hsu; Matt Hetherington; and Greg Mascialiano. For their age, there are some really strong players in Group 1, including the #1, #3, and #5 in 12 and Under, and the top two in 11 and Under. They include (with apologies to those not listed - too many of you!):

• Stanley Hsu (12, 2330), #1 in 12 and Under, #2 in 13 and Under Boys
• Ryan Lin (11, 2121), #1 in 11 and Under, #3 in 12 and Under Boys
• Winston Wu (11, 2027), #2 in 11 and Under, #5 in 12 and Under Boys
• Riley Yang (10, 1790), #5 in 10 and Under, #7 in 11 and Under Boys
• Mu Du (13, 2186) #8 in 13 and Under Boys
• James Zhang (14, 2196), #15 in 14 and Under Boys
• Ryan Lee (14, 2125), #20 in 14 and Under Boys

With the elite players, my focus is generally on footwork and positioning, placement, consistency, serve, and receive. I spent an inordinate amount of time just watching their feet; a good coach gets to know everyone's footwear. Several players still lean too often instead of moving to the ball, so that's something we're working on. I also worked a lot with players on serving low, a common problem that many never recognize. (Many players, even strong ones, think they serve low enough, but they are not really.) The key isn't just making the ball cross the net low (though that's important); it's also making it bounce low, which isn't quite the same thing. (See link on serving low above.) I demoed this a number of times.

With the novice group, the focus is on fundamentals. It's mostly multiball, often two at a time (a player on each corner, and I rapid feed to both sides); other times one does the multiball and the others line up behind, shadow-practicing (i.e. mimicking the motions of the player doing the multiball, as if they were actually hitting the ball). You'll note from the bulleted list above that, currently, we don't really have many high-ranked girls in our "elite" group. However, at the advanced beginning level, we are packed with up-and-coming girls - it's a wave that's going to hit the tournament world in about two years!!!

US Open
Here's the page for the event, to be held Dec. 17-22 in Las Vegas. The entry form ("Prospective") went up a few days ago, along with a link to Omnipong for entering online. As usual, I'll be there coaching. I've been to every US Open and US Nationals starting in 1984 (and a few before that). I've also been to the US/North American Teams (they changed names in 1998) every year starting in 1976, my first year!

USATT Announces 2021 ITTF Pan Am Youth Championship U13 and U11 Teams
Here's the news item. (This went up after I put up my blog last week, so I added it there late. Hope you enjoy my humorous quip!) Here's the ITTF page on the event, where you can see both the listings of players from each country and the doubles pairings. (Team pairings will likely go up soon - they will be the same as the doubles pairings in most cases, though not all.) I have my flights - I'll be in Ecuador Oct. 14-28. We have a big group - at last count, 16 players, 1 team leader, 4 coaches, and 17 parents. I'll be coaching the Under 13 Boys' Team - Stanley Hsu (2330), Mu Du (2186), He Xianyao (2208), and Krish Gandhi (2268). I'm looking forward to working with all of them!

Support Your Local Table Tennis Coaches and Writers!
This is my periodic note about my books - if you don't buy them, then you can't read them!!! (Well, you could borrow them from someone else who bought them.) Here's where you can find out about all 17 of my books, including 9 on table tennis:

• Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers
• Table Tennis Tips
• More Table Tennis Tips
• Still More Table Tennis Tips
• Table Tennis Tales & Techniques
• Professional Table Tennis Coaches Handbook
• The Spirit of Pong (fantasy table tennis novel)
• Table Tennis: Steps to Success (out of print)
• Instructor's Guide to Table Tennis (out of print)

But I'm not the only coach with books. Here are other active USA coaches with table tennis books you should add to your library.

=>Dan Seemiller

• Winning Table Tennis: Skills, Drills, and Strategies
• Revelations of a Ping-Pong Champion
• Smash! Moments, Memories, and Tips

=>Samson Dubina

• 100 Days of Table Tennis
• Why Table Tennis? (with co-authors Sarah Jalli and Jacob Boyd)

=>Dora Kurimay

• My Stories of Mental Toughness On and Off the Table
• Get Your Game Face On!
• Get Your Game Face On Like The Pros!: Mental Skills And Lifestyle Choices To Achieve Peak Performance And Play Your Best Table Tennis
• Get Your Game Face On Workbook: How to Develop Your Mental Game

=>Richard McAfee: Table Tennis: Steps to Success (the successor to my book of the same title)

=>Tahl Leibovitz: Ping Pong for Fighters

ITTF Pan American Youth Championships (U19 & U15)
Here's the ITTF page for the event that took place in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Sept. 12-18, with complete schedule, draws, results, and articles. USA won a bunch of medals, winning 8 of the 15 events! (Here's the USATT News Item on it, which went up on Thursday, Sept. 23.) Here are some articles

• Pan Am Youth Championship: USA Wins 8 of 15 Events by Steve Hopkins
• Youth Pan Am Update: TeamUSA Wins 3 of 4 Team Events by Steve Hopkins
• Champions! by Samson Dubina
• ITTF Pan American Youth Championships News Page

Houston Ready for Successful World Championships
Here's the ITTF news item.

Forehand Loop Sequence
Here's the video (1:57) from Jishan Liang

Ball Placement Secret Tips! and More!
Here's the video (10:59) from Seth Pech. "In this episode of how I practice I talk about Ball Placement and how it can be the difference maker! I also talk about movements and increasing spin on shots."

Precision Placement Multiball Drill
Here's the video (26 sec) from eBaTT. "To elevate your game you must be able to not only place the ball in different location but change location within split seconds."

Serve Like a Pro
Here's the video (3:05) from PingPonged TV, with four tips from Spanish Olympian Maria Xiao.

Short Pips Forehand or Short Pips Backhand
Here's the video (5:03) from Coach Jon.

Parkinson's Symptoms Fighting with Table Tennis
Here's the video (3:37) from Performance Biomechanics Academy Table Tennis.

New from Samson Dubina

• Improving Your Serves
• 5 Robot Reasons
• Champions! Pan Am Youth Championships

New from Ti Long

• Improve and fix Backhand Topspin technique with Robot (4:20)
• Forehand Topspin Technique Guide by Legend of Zhang Jike (6:18)

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

• Liu Shiwen, Fan Zhendong play for team Guangdong | 2021 National Games (4:55)
• Hou Yingchao - the hero falls down | Quarter-final men's team (3:00)
• Ma Long is impossible to defeat | Quarter-final men's team (47:12)
• Very difficult match even for Fan Zhendong | National Games 2021 (43:09)
• Liu Shiwen lost to a younger player | 2021 National Games (53:54)
• Xu Xin is the captain of team Shanghai | 2021 National Games (2:55)
• Xu Xin lost badly (Shanghai vs Hebei) | 2021 National Games (4:08)
• Ma Long nearly lost (Beijing vs Fujian) | 2021 National Games (17:51)
• 30 minutes of Ma Long practice session in 2021 (28:29)
• Chopper vs Chopper: Ma Te vs Hou Yingchao | 2021 National Games (24:18)
• Wang Manyu dominated Chen Meng | 2021 National Games 39:28)
• Ma Long is playing for team Beijing (National Games 2021) (6:05)

New from Steve Hopkins

• Pan Am Youth Championship: USA Wins 8 of 15 Events
• Youth Pan Am Update: TeamUSA Wins 3 of 4 Team Events
• WAB Club Feature: HiTT
• Euro 16: Patrick Franziska Wins
• TTBL Update: Dusseldorf and Ochsenhausen 6-0
• PongNow: Ian Seidenfeld (17:42)

Ping Pong for Good
Here's the page for this site, "a movement for brain health." (JOOLA just announced a partnership with them - here's their news item.) Their objectives:

• Making playing ping pong accessible to all, anytime, anywhere, intergenerationally.
• Ping Pong Therapy in physical therapy offices, rehabilitation centers & assisted living facilities.
• Ping Pong Fitness activated in schools, gyms & community centers
• Support Clinical Research to develop more protocols for treatment and widespread adaption

Mastering Your Own Game: Meet Nenad B. of Ping Pong Parkinson
Here's the article. "There’s magic in a spinning [ping pong] ball. It's so addictive. When you're playing, you're completely focused. Nothing else matters."

ITTF News
Here's their news page, video page ("World Table Tennis") and home page.

China National Games Table Tennis Commences
Here's the article from Edges and Nets.

New from the Malong Fanmade Channel
Lots of new videos here.

Top 20 Table Tennis Comebacks
Here's the video (29:53) from Table Tennis Report.

Ping Pong Champion and Other Table Tennis Shirts
Here's the page from Teenavi! (I'm toying with getting "Ping-Pong Because Murder is Wrong," but someone will take that the wrong way.)

Crazy French Table Tennis Cartoon
Here it is! I'm told the words on the left are, "It's hard to believe! Even with a robot he is rubbish!!!", and on the left, "Help meeeeeeeee!!!…" (Here's the non-Facebook version.) I love how people are hiding or diving behind tables and barriers, and the person with the umbrella!

Best Ping Pong Game Ever
Here's the video (3:32) - Table Tennis Tic-Tac-Toe from Pongfinity!

Cat Forehands
Here's the video (10 sec) - he's two for two!!! Note the relaxed ready position, how he moves to the ball, and how he does a perfect weight transfer as he rotates into the shot, with a strong follow-through. There's nothing I can teach this cat.

Moment of Victory
Here's the video (14 sec) from the Fremont TTC as one kid knocks off the cup and wins it for the team. Make sure to have the volume turned up! (That's Shashin Shodhan feeding the winning shot.)

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