Tip of the Week
Do You Serve a Lot of Net Serves? Good!!!

Weekend Coaching, Tips, Eyes, and Shoulder
Over the last few weeks several new players have joined our junior training program. I’ve worked a lot with each of them, working on developing their fundamentals. I think one of the key things here is focusing on grip and stance – if you get both of those right, the rest often falls into place as if you were holding two ends of a rubber band. Get either wrong, and the rubber band (the player) gets twisted. (Here’s my Tip from almost 13 years ago on this, Grip and Stance.)

On the forehand, it’s also important to focus on the idea that you rotate the shoulders back, thereby giving yourself a big hitting zone to the side. Once that becomes a habit, the rest becomes easy.

Tip of the Week
Practice Each Aspect of a Technique Separately.

Weekend Coaching
I did four group sessions over the weekend, 6.5 hours. Sunday seemed iffy because of the predicted snow, but it came about five hours later than expected, so we got both sessions in. Because of the snow, I couldn’t get my car up the hill outside our club! But one of the parents literally got behind my car and pushed, and we managed to get to the top (fifty yards at most) though it took about five minutes.

I had one session with our top junior group, rated from 1800 to 2550. One of our best players was having trouble covering his wide backhand when blocking – I pointed out that it was a ready position problem, that he was holding his racket to far out in front and so didn’t have time to bring it back against deep attacks to his wide backhand. I also got another of our top players to better disguise his serve – he was setting up differently for regular and reverse pendulum serves. You need to always set up the same way, and hide which you are doing until the last possible moment.

Tip of the Week
Why Lobbing is Good For You, Why Lobbing is Bad For You.

Weekend Coaching
I coached in four group sessions over the weekend, totaling 6.5 hours. I spent about half of them feeding multiball, half as a practice partner/coach. I think I blocked about 10,000 shots over the weekend! If I block like this in tournaments, I’ll never lose. I also had some good counterlooping duels with some of the more advanced players – my training of the last few months has made this a bit easier. Ryan Li (age 9, rated 1568, moving up fast) did a drill with me where I blocked one to backhand, one to middle, one to backhand, one to wide forehand, and he alternated backhand and forehand – and did 600 in a row without missing at a pretty good pace. (The drill actually started with him serving backspin, I push to his backhand, he backhand loops, I block, and then the footwork drill begins. But because he wasn’t missing, he only had to do two backhand loops – yes, I missed one block along the way, but his count continued.)

Tips of the Week (since my last blog)

Next Blog – January 6, 2025
I’ll be out of town the rest of the month, leaving for the US Open on Dec. 15, and then Christmas with family in Sonoma, CA (near San Francisco). So, I’ll go back to weekly blogging on Monday, Jan. 6. However, a Tip of the Week will still go up every Monday. Happy Holidays, and see you next year!

Tip of the Week
Off-Speed Blocks.

US Open, and Elite League, and Weekend Coaching
This Sunday, Dec. 15, I’m off for the US Open Dec. 16-21. I’ve been to every US Open and US Nationals starting in 1985 (plus several before that, starting with the 1976 US Open when Gerald Ford was president). So, this will be my 39th US Open in a row, to go with my 39th US Nationals in July. It would be 40 in a row for each except they canceled both in 2020 due to Covid.

Tip of the Week
Where to Serve From.

North American Teams
Yesterday I finished coaching at my 48th consecutive Teams – that’s 144 days! My first was in 1976, when it was the US Open Teams in Detroit. Now it’s the North American Teams in Washington DC. (They skipped 2020 because of Covid or this would be my 49th in a row.) I used to play in it, of course, then became a player/coach, but now I just coach. This year there were 239 teams and 921 players. My club, MDTTC, had 14 junior teams and 7 coaches. I ended up coaching in about 90 matches – sometimes two at a time. On Friday I coached from 9AM to 8PM; Sat 8AM to midnight; and Sunday (on very little sleep) 8AM to 8PM. (That’s 39 hours in three days.) I coached 17 Team matches in all.

Here's an interview (90 sec) at the Teams with Stanley Hsu, the US # 16-year-old, from MDTTC. 

As usual, it was a combination of tactics, sports psychology, and other happenings. Here are some highlights:

Tip of the Week
How to Do a Relentless Three-Point Attack.

Teams, Coaching, and Foot
I’m rushing to get this blog out since I’m coaching at the MDTTC Teams Camp over the next three days, getting our players ready for the North American Teams, Fri-Sun, Nov. 29 – Dec. 1. There are currently 910 players and 226 teams – here’s the listing. There are 14 MDTTC junior teams. We’ll have seven MDTTC coaches working with them, including me.

I first played in the Teams in my first year of playing, way back in 1976, when I was 16. I’ve played or coached at them every year since – this is my 49th year in a row except for 2020, when they were cancelled due to Covid.

Tip of the Week
How to Loop Against Deep, Heavy Backspin.

MDTTC Open and My Books
Here are the results of the MDTTC Open, held at my club this past weekend. Winning the Open was Stanley Hsu (2521), who recently turned 16. (He defeated MDTTC coach Bruno, rated 2558, in the final, 9,9,9.) In the semifinals were Mu Du (16, 2376) and Ryan Lin (just turned 15, 2399). James Zhang (17, 2275 but recently over 2300), was up 7-5 in the fifth against Stanley in the quarterfinals. All four started out in my beginning classes. (Mu Du technically started in our summer camps, but spent the first month or so in my beginning group.) They spent years since in private and group sessions with our other great coaches (and I’ve also worked with them since), but I helped get them started back when they could barely see over the table!!! They (and their coaches) have worked incredibly hard to get where they are. It’s hard to believe that they’ll all be heading off to college soon.

Tip of the Week
How to Flip Short, Heavy Backspin.

RIP Mossa Barandao
Alas, this icon of DC and Maryland table tennis passed away in his sleep two days ago in a hospital in Malaysia. In late September, while attending a wedding in Shantou, China, he went for a morning run, and collapsed, apparently from heat stroke, which led to massive internal organ failures. He went into a coma in the hospital. Since China didn’t recognize his American health insurance, $52,760 was raised from 224 donors on GoFundMe (which also explains his situation, with updates).

Mossa came out of his coma on October 4, 2024. On October 12, he turned 51, and the doctors and nurses in the Chinese hospital, along with his wife, threw him a surprise birthday party. His family and friends shared video messages to wish him a happy birthday. On October 21, he was airlifted from China to Malaysia for further treatment. Alas, the internal trauma was too much.

Tip of the Week
The One-Two Punch of Tactics.

Weekend Coaching, Grip Changes, and a Wrenched Neck
I worked with two kids this weekend who had seemingly parallel but opposite problems. One had a nice topspin backhand which he could take right off the bounce. But his forehand was basically all flat, very little topspin. So we spent some time on that. It’s almost tempting to turn him into a forehand hitter (perhaps with pips) with a looping backhand, like Sweden’s Mattias Falck, who made the final of Men’s Singles at the 2019 World Championships and won Men’s Doubles at the 2021 World’s. But it’s a myth that pips-out players don’t topspin the ball – they actually stroke up and forward at contact to generate enough topspin to control the ball, just not as much as an inverted looper. Anyway, let’s see how this player develops.

Another was the opposite – a looping forehand but one of the flattest backhands I’ve ever seen. He basically stabbed at the ball. The problem was that in simple drills, he could make some nice backhand kills with this shot – but there’s no margin for error, and it’s unlikely he could make these shots consistently in game situations. So we worked on adding a little topspin to that shot.