How the Game Has Changed! A Look Back to 1994
I was doing some research on something recently and came across an article I wrote in the Sept/Oct 1994 issue of USA Table Tennis Magazine. The article was my diary as the USA head coach at the King Car International Youth City Championships in Taipei, Taiwan, Aug. 22-30, 1994. We had two boys' teams and two girls' teams, with 14 players. Many of the best junior teams from all over the world attended, including teams from all over Europe, Asia, and a few from South America and Africa. The notable missing team was China, since we were in Taiwan.

Before the tournament we had a five-day joint training camp with the Taiwan and South Korean Teams. I noticed that their players had incredible footwork and forehand loops, but their backhand loops were rather weak. So I called our team together and told them our focus during the tournament was simple - get your backhand loops into play as they weren't used to facing them. The strategy worked - USA #1 (Dave Fernandez, Barney J. Reed, Richard Lee) came out of nowhere to get third place in Boys' Teams, beating some of the best teams from Taiwan, South Korea, and Sweden - with each match played in front of 20,000 screaming fans!!!

What jumped out from reading the article was how the game is changed. Here are three excerpts.

USATT Teleconference and the USATT Hall of Fame Banquet
We had one last night, a rather short one, only about 70 minutes, starting at 7PM. All nine USATT board members (including me) attended, as did the USATT CEO, COO, HPD, LC, and the chair of the HPC. (Awe, c'mon, do I have to spell these out for you? Think of it as a brain teaser.)

The meeting really had two parts, the "Open" session and the "Closed" session. During the open session we primarily discussed:

• World Veterans - over 4000 entries. However, there have been problems with visas from some countries, likely due to the U.S.'s changing to more restrictive policies, and we may have lost up to 100 entries. We also arranged to have a USATT board meeting at the Veterans on Wednesday, July 20, with a board dinner the night before. 
• U.S. Nationals. Final entry deadline is May 25, so what are you waiting for?
• Para Data Protection Guidelines
• Volunteer Recognition

Then we went into closed session to discuss legal matters. I wish I could discuss these matters, but I cannot. I'm hoping the saga of the biggest issue discussed will come to an end sometime this summer so I can write about it. I've hinted about it a few times, but suffice to say it's mind-boggling how one person can waste so much of everyone's time. I've now spent nearly 100 hours on this one issue that only about 20 people in USATT know about.

Tip of the Week
Tactical Thinking Between Points.

Doubles Foibles
I did a lot of doubles coaching on Saturday during the Junior League Training. This is a joint junior league and training session (mostly ages 8-13), where we do both singles and doubles, often using improvised games so the players get specialized type training. For example, we play games where the server loses the point if he doesn't serve and attack, or gets two points if he serve and attacks and eventually wins the point, or where the server starts out behind 7-9 or 8-10. And so on.

During the doubles segment on Saturday the one thing that stood out was that . . . no one thing stood out. Every team had different strengths and weaknesses. But there was one pattern and that was in most teams (not all), both players had the same doubles weaknesses, as if they copied from their partner. Here's a rundown. (Note that I'm picking on the problems I found, but they also did a lot of things well.)

Upcoming Tournament, Coaching, and Writing Plans
WORLD VETERANS AND USA NATIONALS.
I'll be at both, June 18-24 and July 2-7 in Las Vegas. For the Veterans (4046 entries!), I'll be doing daily online coverage for USATT. We also have a USATT board meeting during the Veterans that I'll attend. At the Nationals I'll be coaching, attending meetings, and of course going to the Hall of Fame Banquet where I get the Lifetime Achievement Award!!! (Hope to see some of you there.) Between the two, June 25-July 1, I'm taking a Las Vegas writing/reading "vacation," where I plan on getting a lot of writing done in my hotel room - see my writing plans below. I'm also helping with a pre-Nationals clinic for some of our junior players, plus I'll be running a 90-minute coaching seminar, tentatively on July 1, on Serve and Receive Tactics - you are invited to that! (I may move that to Tue or Wed night.)

TABLE TENNIS COACHING PLANS.
My shoulder is rapidly improving, and I actually think I probably could do private coaching now. I can tough my back with my right arm again (yay!), and no longer have to hold it with my left when I comb my hair. (Seriously, how funny does it look combing your hair while using your other arm to hold the combing arm?) But here's the problem - if I did so and re-injured it, I'd be right back where I was before. So I'm planning to wait until at least late summer or even September before I start up private coaching again. When I do so, I plan on greatly limiting my hours, probably doing private coaching only two times a week. This is both to minimize the chance of re-injuring the shoulder and other injuries, plus it opens up more writing time. For now, I'll continue just running group sessions.

Early Bird Entries at the USA Nationals and the Coaching Seminar
Here's the USA Nationals page, July 2-7 in Las Vegas. The early "Early Bird" deadline is tomorrow, May 11, so don't forget to enter NOW!!! On May 12 cost for adults goes from $250 to $325, for juniors from $225 to $300. So maybe, just maybe, you should consider entering NOW!!!, and save yourself $75? It's like getting a free sheet of Tenergy!!! (Did I mention you should enter NOW!!!?)

I blogged about the USA Nationals on April 19, where I wrote about the 91 events, spectating, equipment booths, the Hall of Fame Banquet, the VIP package, the USATT board meeting, and the coaching seminar I'll be running.

The coaching seminar will be on Serve and Receive Tactics, tentatively held on Sunday, July 1, from 5:30-7:00PM. (I might see if it can be moved to perhaps Tue or Wed night.) It will be FREE to all USATT members. Here are topics I will be covering:

Serve Tactics

• The purpose of the serve
• Set-up serves vs. trick serves
• Types of deception
• Long serves
• Short serves
• Serving combos
• Holding back on serves
• Ten-point plan to serving success

Receive Tactics

Today is "Larry's Gripes" Day!
Everyone should be allowed to air their gripes once a year. Here are mine.

Withering Weekend Work and Shifting Shoulder Shockers
Forget Spider-man, it's Spider-day at MDTTC! At least on Saturday it was. During a junior session a giant Wolf spider came crawling into the playing area. You can imagine how the kids reacted. At first the coaches shooed them back to the tables, as the spider was near the barrier, away from the table. But someone had to take action we needed a hero! I grabbed a box, and with my paddle, got the thing to crawl onto it. Then I let it go outside, despite several girls screaming, "Kill it!"

Despite all the excitement, we got some serious table tennis in. We did a lot of up-down table games, but had them start with varying scores, such as the server is down 7-9 or 8-10.

In my Sunday Beginning Class the focus was on smashing. Which is almost as exciting for them as the spider was on Saturday. Then we had the more advanced Talent program, where we challenged them with more complicated drills than usual. For example, in one drill the player would serve short backspin his partner's forehand. Partner would quick-push to the wide forehand. Player would loop down the line to partner's backhand. Partner clocked it crosscourt to player's backhand. Then then they continued the rally with the backhand-forehand-forehand drill. We also did a bit of serve practice, and I'm impressed with their improvement. Some may remember I noted in a blog earlier this year that I thought some of them needed a lot of serve practice, but that's exactly what's happened. One kid, who absolutely could not put backspin on the ball back in January, may now have the heaviest backspin serve in his group - yeah, he got determined and has been practicing it, and can now make the ball bounce backwards on the far side of the table. 

Tip of the Week
Serve and Attack . . . Almost Always.

World Team Championships
The World Team Championships finished yesterday in Halmstad, Sweden, April 29 - May 6. SPOILER ALERT! Yes, China won Men's and Women's Teams (again, for the 21st time each), this time over Germany and Japan. So it was more of the same, but also more of the new. (See the numerous links on this below, as well as Team USA info.) Basically, only three men's team can give any serious challenge to the Chinese right now - Germany, Japan, and South Korea - but they are big longshots. It's unfortunate that Germany's Dimitrij Ovtcharov (world #3) was injured and couldn't play in the final, but it's unlikely that would have changed the final result. It's easier for a ping-pong ball to go through the eye of a needle than to beat a team that has Ma Long and Fan Zhendong.

On the women's side, Japan (and perhaps Hong Kong) are the only countries that can challenge the Chinese, but it'd still be a sizeable upset if anyone were to beat the Chinese women, a team that includes world #1 Chen Meng, #2 Zhu Yuling, Liu Shi Wen and Ding Ning. Guess what all four have in common? All have been ranked #1 in the world in the last 20 months. (Liu and Ding are currently ranked #10 and #11, but those aren't realistic and says more about the new ITTF system which favors participation more than before. Ding was #1 as recently as October 2017, Liu in September 2016. Many still consider Ding the best in the world. China didn't even play world #1 Chen Meng in the semifinals or final.) But the Japanese women have one thing going for them - a younger team that could get better.

Unified Korean Team vs. Japan
They played out the Women's Semifinals at the Worlds this morning (starting at 10AM their time, 5AM Eastern Standard Time), and as expected, Japan won relatively easily, though match #2 was 16-14 in the fifth! (Here's video from 8-all on in the fifth - Kim had three match points, but also had a pair of edges after deuce.) Here are the results - and I'm using the ITTF designation "COR" to designate the Unified Korean Team:

• Mima Ito (JPN) d. Jeon Jihee (COR), 2,8,9
• Kasumi Ishikawa (JPN) d. Kim Song I (COR), 4,-6,8,-11,14
• Miu Hirano (JPN) d. Yang Haeun (COR), 4,5,-9,6

And so Japan moves into the final where they will play China . . . I mean, the winner between China and Hong Kong, which is being played right now. (So yeah, they'll play China.)

Yesterday a top player emailed me pointing out something about the unified Korean team issue that I should have addressed in my blog yesterday. (He asked to stay anonymous.) We're all thinking what a wonderful thing this was, Korea unifying as one team, as they did in 1991 when they last won Women's Teams at the Worlds (over China). But let's take a closer look.

Here are two teams, Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea (and I'm going to start referring to them as North and South Korea from here on) who entered as two teams, went through the preliminaries, and made it all the way to the quarterfinals - and then, rather than play, in mid-tournament they decide to become one country, one team!!! Thank about this. It meant:

North and South Korea Unified at Worlds
Here's some breaking news - rather than play their Women's Team quarterfinal match, the two Koreas will join forces. They will advance into the semifinals, where they'll play Japan, who defeated Ukraine in their quarterfinals. It's the first time they will have a unified team since they won Women's Teams at the 1991 Worlds, as commemorated in the 2012 movie, "As One."

My first thought on this was, "Is this legal, for two different countries joining up like this in the middle of a tournament? Can USA join forces with China perhaps?" But we'll let this Ping-Pong Diplomacy take precedence over such niceties.

Here's what USATT CEO Gordon Kaye posted on Facebook: "I am truly moved by what is unfolding in front of my eyes in table tennis, and more importantly, the world. A few moments ago, the teams from North Korea and South Korea, due to meet in the quarterfinals of the 2018 ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships, both elected not to compete against each other and instead have decided to compete together for the remainder of the tournament as a unified Korea. This is what sport is supposed to be about. Peace. Friendship. Changing the world."

Here's the actual video (1:57) of the announcement at the Worlds. Here are articles on the breaking news.