USA Nationals Dates
As announced yesterday in USATT Insider, the USA Nationals this year will be July 1-7 in Las Vegas. For most of us, those are probably fine dates. However, for the large number of U.S. players attending the World Veterans Championships, June 18-24, also in Las Vegas, it poses a dilemma, since there's a week between the two. Do you attend both? If so, do you fly home and back in between, or stick around for a week?

Ideally, the two would have been back to back, with perhaps one day rest between. That's what USATT would have liked, but it was not to be, for several reasons. The main problem is that the World Veterans Championships has built into the contract that no other major tournaments can be run locally at the same time or the week before or after, since that could draw away entries from them. This makes sense, as it is a large undertaking, and the last thing they want is a competing local tournament. There was some discussion of making an exception, but apparently they didn't agree. (I wasn't in on the discussions.)

Ten Tips

Tip of the Week
Best Way to Learn – Watch, Mimic, Practice.

Board Teleconference – Executive Session
Last night we had a USATT Teleconference from 7PM to 8:40PM. Unfortunately, most of the meeting was in executive session, where we discussed confidential matters (personnel, legal, and/or certain financial issues). So I'm limited in what I can talk about.

We did come out of executive session to approve the 2018 USATT budget. It should be published on the USATT site sometime soon. We went over this previously, and went over it again during the teleconference. We also went over the dates of the USA Nationals this summer in Las Vegas – and the official dates should come out very soon. (There were scheduling complications in regard to the World Veterans Championships, June 18-24, also in Las Vegas, which I may blog about later.)

I've been pretty busy with USATT meetings recently. In December we had two days of meetings at the U.S. Open, plus the USATT Assembly. I flew out to Colorado Springs for a meeting on USATT Coaching Education and Certification on Monday, Jan. 8. There was the teleconference last night. And next Monday I'm on another teleconference regarding USOC online coaching resources that we may use or adapt. Mondays are becoming USATT Mondays.

USATT CEO Gordon Kaye returned Sunday from Vacation in Hawaii. Yes, he was there during the mistaken reporting of an incoming missile strike, and for 40 minutes or so thought his life was in danger!!!

MLK Day
Today's MLK Day, so I'm off today - yes, it's Ma Long Karaoke Day! Here's the Chinese National Team members singing Karaoke (2:57) in 2010 – Ma Long, Wang Liqin, Ma Lin, and Wang Hao. The music starts about 15 seconds in. Ma Long sings 54 seconds in. (When they are standing at the stage at the start, L-R it's Wang Hao, Wang Liqin, Ma Lin, and Ma Long.) And just for fun, here's video (15 sec) of a trusting player blowing the ball up as Adam Bobrow smacks it out of the air. 

EmRatThich Table Tennis World Ranking System
Here’s the article and ranking list. This is not something he threw together – he goes over in detail the way his system works, which analyzes “43,735 table tennis matches played in 2017 (in official ITTF events) nearly 100 table tennis international tournaments during 2017.”

There have been many complaints about the new ITTF system, which rewards participation as well as level of play, leading to results that often don’t always correspond to actual playing levels. For example, it has Ma Long at #7 in the world, when he’s obviously #1 or #2. Here are the ITTF rankings. If you page down to “Official Documents,” there is info on how they are done. 

When doing such ranking systems, there is always the conflict between trying to set up the most accurate system, versus setting up a system that rewards and thereby increases participation. This is a classic case. USATT has the same problem - many players avoid playing to "protect" their rating. Using a system that rewards participation would likely increase participation, at the cost of accuracy. 

So let’s compare the two rankings, and you can judge for yourself.

Tip of the Week
Systematically Practice Against What You Have Trouble With. (I normally do these on Mondays, but I was out of town Monday and Tuesday, and didn’t have time to do one on Wednesday.)

Spin Wheel
I had some fun in December with the new TSP Spin Wheel, which was sent to me by PingPongDepot. It’s basically a small tire attached to the table that allows you to practice looping by spinning the wheel. Included with it is a speedometer (technically, a tachometer) that tells you how fast you are spinning it! That’s half the fun – the kids at the club were battling to see who could make it spin the fastest. Here’s video (4:02) of the wheel in action. (This one is white, but the one I have is black.)

I didn’t want to hurt the sponge on my racket so I annexed an inexpensive sponge racket as the full-time racket to be used with the Spin Wheel – I recommend you do the same. The wheel will spin the same whether you use a $300 racket and sponge combo or a $15 one.

The key is to use your normal loop stroke (forehand or backhand) and do it over and over, focusing on proper technique each time as you build up the spin. Some might get careless and use just their arm, so focus on using the whole body, as you do with a loop, from the legs on up. Done properly, it could help in developing the stroke and the muscles used.

It wasn’t all fun for me when I found out what I’d suspected – that with age, I probably don’t get as much spin as before. I was able to hit an even 60 on the speedometer with my forehand (I’m not sure if that correlates directly to miles per hour, but it’s all relative), but then John Olsen went over and hit 72, dashing my hopes and dreams.

USOC Meeting on Coaching Education and Certification
I returned yesterday afternoon from a whirlwind trip to the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, where I met with USATT and USOC people on creating a USATT Coaching Education and Certification Program. Those attending the meeting were:

• Larry Hodges (Chair of USATT Coaching Committee and member of USATT Board)
• Jörg Bitzigeio (USATT High Performance Director)
• Mark Thompson (USATT Chief Operating Officer)
• Denise Parker (USOC Vice President, National Governing Bodies Services and former CEO for USA Archery)
• Chris Snyder (USOC Director of Coaching Education)
• Avery Wilson (USOC Director of Strategic Planning)

The USOC people have extensive experience in developing education and certification programs for Olympic sports, and so we weren’t starting from scratch. They were very knowledgeable and extremely helpful. We spent probably the first half of the meeting going over where USATT currently stood – who the coaches were, where they coached, the current business model of USATT clubs where the coaches develop players, and current resources. We went over the current coaching certification program – USATT has two, both the badly outdated USATT certification program (much of it created by me in the early 1990s when our situation was very different) and the ITTF program, which we have adopted as part of our program.

Coaching Matters, and Away Mon & Tue
I’ll be away Monday and Tuesday, so next blog will be next Wednesday. I’ll be at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, meeting with USATT and USOC people about setting up a USATT coaching education and certification program. My flight leaves at 6:50AM from Dulles Airport on Monday, so I’ll be leaving for the airport very early. We have a detailed agenda to go over – I’ll likely go over here when I return. It’s actually formulated in the form of questions – 18 of them.

The USOC is in the business of winning medals for the U.S., and part of that business is setting up coaching programs that lead to these medals. They have a lot of experience working with the various sports organizations in doing this, and are willing to support us in this with money and other resources. There was a time when there simply weren’t enough training centers or potential coaches in the U.S. to make this worthwhile for table tennis, but these days we have lots of both. So now we can focus more and more on quality.

Meanwhile, I’m also involved in about a zillion other issues. I’m on the selection committee that’s currently debating the coach of the year awards – we have the nominations, and there are some very tough choices to be made from a number of highly qualified coaches. Picking and choosing among them is perhaps the least favorite part of my volunteer work. The coaching committee is also debating the grandfathering of a top coach, and along with it various requirements in general, such as English skills needed, the value of full-time versus part-time coaches, and the potential problems of being a high-level coach while still competing as a player.

Books I Read in 2017: "I have no life, and I must read."
Today’s blog is only partly related to table tennis – skip ahead if you have no interests in my book-reading proclivities. Below is a listing of the 58 books I read in 2017, which includes three books on table tennis, and another on coaching. It includes 21 novels by Mike Resnick; I’ve now read 43 of his books, 41 of them science fiction novels, the other two books on writing. I also read biographies of the first ten U.S. presidents (partly in preparation for a SF novel I might write), and lots of other stuff.

NON-FICTION (21)

North American Youth Olympic Games Qualification – Boys’ Final
Here’s the match, Kanak Jha vs. Jeremy Hazin (17:35, missing first game). This was one of the few top matches I got to see at the US Open, since I was so busy in meetings, coaching, and playing. But it was a great tactical match – basically, Kanak, age 16 but already over 2700 and #90 in the world, gave a clinic in receive and ball placement.

The match epitomizes something I’ve been quoted saying many times: “Tactics isn’t about finding complex strategies to defeat an opponent. It’s about sifting through all the zillions of possible tactics and finding a few simple ones that work.” In this case, Kanak used disarming receives to take away Jeremy’s serve advantage, and then used one seemingly simple tactic that completely dominated the match – attack the middle and wide forehand.

It seems simple, but the execution is far more difficult than it appears. If you just keep going after someone’s middle or forehand, they can anticipate it, and jump on that shot, so you have to be ready to switch back and forth. If you attack too aggressively, you make mistakes; if not aggressive enough, opponent has time to react.

Watch the rallies, and you’ll see over and over that when Kanak attacks the middle, Jeremy would struggle to react, either going for erratic counterloops (ones he’d likely made if the attack were to a corner) or awkward blocks. If Jeremy hedged over to cover the middle, usually with his forehand, Kanak immediate attacked the opened forehand corner.