Tip of the Week
Should You Experiment If You Have a Big Lead?

Mercy Points and Comebacks
There was quite a lot of discussion on Facebook from my blog last week about whether to give "mercy points." So let's revisit. 

The basic rule is that it's up to you if you want to give a mercy point at 10-0. Both Ma Long and Jan-Ove Waldner, generally considered the two main candidates for Greatest of All Time, have given away mercy points or played exhibition at the end of a lopsided match. Other top players are die-hard try to win every point, even at 10-0 against a beginner. Some players might be insulted if you "give" them a point, so it depends on the player and circumstances. As I said, in a non-competitive match, I prefer to put a ball up and let them "earn" the point.

It also depends on the event. A senior focused on winning Over 50 at the Nationals shouldn't take chances there, but might give a point (or go easy) at 10-0 match point in a rating event against a much weaker player. Some champions are cut-throat at all times; others are only cut-throat when it matters, and can turn it on or off when needed.

Comebacks do happen. Most of my playing career took place when games were to 21. During that time, I came back from 14-20 or 15-20 match point seven times. Nobody has ever done that to me. (The biggest comeback against me was Joe Cummings, when I lost from up 20-16 match point at the Southern Open in Baton Rouge in the late 1980s. Still stings, since the kids at the Resident Training Program at the Olympic Training Center, where I was at various times manager/director/one of the coaches, spent the next year saying, "Cummings back!")

=>Math Alert!!! Skip this paragraph if you suffer from Math Phobia!<=
What are the chances of a comeback from 0-10? If each point is even, then the odds are 0.5 to the tenth to reach deuce, and then it's 50-50 you win, so the odds are 0.5 to the eleventh, or about one in about two thousand (1 in 2048). But if you give a point away, it drops to about one in a thousand (1 in 1024). But let's assume the opponent gets hot and would score 60% of the points. The odds of him reaching deuce from 0-10 are one 0.6 to the tenth power, or one in 165. At deuce, the math gets tricker since you have to win two in a row (see note on this below), but the odds of him winning at deuce are about 69%. So his chances of winning from down 0-10 are about 1 in 239. If you give a mercy point, then the odds of him winning are about 1 in 144. Now let's assume you are playing a world-class player who wins 80% of the points against you, but spots you a 10-0 lead. He'll have about one chance in 9.3 of deucing it. At deuce he's about a 16-1 favorite (94%), and so his chances of winning the game from down 0-10 is about 10.1%. If you give a mercy point at 10-0, then his chances are about 1 in 7.9, or about 12.6%. (Here's a simple way of calculating the odds at deuce. If the other player wins 80% of the points, then he has a .8 squared chance of winning two in a row, or 0.64 = 64%. The opponent wins 20% of the points, so has a .2 squared chance of winning two in a row, or 0.04% = 4%. If they split points and it's deuce again, then the calculation starts over and doesn't affect the odds. So you just take the probability the stronger player wins two in a row - 64% - to the probability the weaker player wins two in a row - 4% - and that's the probability the stronger player wins, i.e. 64 to 4, or 16 to 1, or 94%.)

One question that came up is whether a player who gets a "mercy point" or has an opponent who starts playing exhibition is morally expected to lose. Not a chance. The one giving the mercy point or playing exhibition at the end is the one taking the risk. The only time it would be immoral to come back is if you join in the exhibition play.

Here are some of the biggest comebacks I know of.

• In 1977, Curt Kronlage (age 13, rate 1677) won the first and was up 20-6 match point on chopper Sid Jacobs (senior player, rated 1858), and lost 16 points in a row, and lost the third 21-14. Yep, I remember all the numbers!
• Sometime in the late 1970s, the Hungarians Istvan Jonyer and Tibor Klampar were up 20-8 match point in the semifinals of Men's Doubles at the Worlds against a Chinese team, and lost.
• At the Sun TV Open in the early 1990s, I was down 0-10 in the fifth to Pat Cox in the final of I think Under 2400, and scored ten in a row to 10-all! But games were to 21 back then. I won the match, 26-24 in the fifth.
• In different junior events at the US Nationals one year, one kid was up 10-2 match point in two different matches and lost both.
• I was told that Brian Masters was up 10-0 in the first game against Jim Butler at the US Team Trials one year and lost the game and match. (I was there but didn't see the match.)
• I once played in a handicap tournament at some 4-star tournament, where you played one game to 51. I was about 2250 and played this player under 1000, and had to spot him 48 points, the maximum. So I was down 0-48!!! I tied it at 48-all - yes, 48 points in a row, he was that bad. Then he got two net/edges in a row! I deuced it, 50-all. Then he net-dribbled my serve back, 50-51 - I think it was the first serve he'd returned the whole match! Then, on the very last point, he suddenly (and extremely awkwardly) smashed a winner, the only point in the match he earned, to win, 52-50!!! I still remember lunging for that smash on the last point, couldn't believe it actually hit, and when I lobbed it off, it left me scarred for life!!! About 50 people were watching this at the end.
• Scott Gordon reports that "in one of the Gilbert Cup tournaments [early 1990s?], Kong Linghui was up something like 19-3 against someone (I think Kim Taek Soo), and almost lost. His opponent deuced the game and Kong had to win the deuce battle, if I remember right."
• Samson Dubina reports, "At the tournament last weekend, Kenzie was down 2-0 and 10-0 and came back to win the match. At the league last Thursday, Fiona was down 10-2 in the fifth and came back to win. Personally, I feel that I have a 0.001% chance to come back from down 10-0... so I would prefer not getting a mercy point. A 10-0 comeback truly is possible."

USATT Coach of the Year Awards
Here's the USATT News item. (Update: They've added bios.) Here is the USATT Coach of the Year info page, which includes a listing of past winners. (I've won twice - but what it doesn't show is that I was runner-up for Coach of the Year three times in the 1990s!!!) This year's winners are:

• National Coach of the Year – Tao Wenzhang – Spartans TTC, Santa Clara, CA
• Mark Nordby Developmental Coach of the Year –  Dan Liu –  ICC, Milpitas, CA 
• Volunteer Coach of the Year – Mike Boyd – Samson Dubina TTA, Uniontown, OH
• Doc Counsilman – Qingliang Wang – MDTTC, Germantown, MD  
• Para Coach of the Year – Vlad Farcas – San Antonio, TX
• Para Development Coach of the Year – Gary Fraiman, Sunrise TTC, Clearwater, FL

Weekend Coaching
I pulled out my chopping blade and chopped to Navin Kumar for close to half an hour, getting him ready for the World Parkinson's Championships in September in Berlin (hopefully!), where we know there's a strong chopper. (I use a Butterfly Joo Saehyuk blade, with Tackiness C-II on the forehand, Feint Long II on the backhand. I'm almost the same level chopping as attacking.) The focus was on long rallies, where he attacked with his backhand long pips all over the table, with occasional forehand attacks. We also worked on his blocking (chop blocks on the backhand) and forehand attack. Here's video (50 sec) of my looping to his forehand block. (The Junior Program was off this weekend, so otherwise I had a free weekend.)

Baby Yoda Shirts
I now have two of them! (Yeah, I'm a fan of The Mandalorian and Baby Yoda (Grogu). Here are my two shirts, which you can get at Amazon.

• Baby Yoda Serving
• Baby Yoda with Paddle and Ball

USATT Coaches Meeting
We had our last Zoom session on Friday at noon, eastern time. They are every two weeks, on Fridays for about one hour, and hosted by USATT High Performance Director Sean O'Neill. The sessions are open to all USATT coaches. Others attending were Gao Jun, Jasna Rather, Samson Dubina, Marguerite Cheung, Mike Lauro, Britt Salter, and Larry Hodges (me). Here's a group picture and here's video (57:41). Here was the agenda:

1. Intros
2. 2020 COY
3. Switcher Studio Opportunities
4. Free STUPA (android & iOS)
5. Insurance/Coaching License
6. January 15 USATT Covid Update
7. WTT Doha Bubble
8. 2021 National Team Trials
9. Your turn

USATT Coaches Committee Meeting
On Thursday night, the USATT Coaches Committee (Pieke Franssen, Gao Jun, Dave Fullen, and Larry Hodges) had a Zoom meeting (about 45 min) with USATT CEO Virginia Sung and High Performance Director Sean O'Neill. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss coaches' licenses and other upcoming coaching certification issues. It's something they are working on, but nothing to report on yet.

Senator Jeff Merkley and Table Tennis
Here's the video (3:03) of CNN panning over the ransacked office of Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) after the recent Capitol attack. At 1:35, for about ten seconds, you can see he has a Desktop Table Tennis set!!! They even zoom in on it for a few seconds. (They made a real mess of his office, even stole a laptop computer.

NCTTA Cancels 2020-21 Season
Here's the news item. "Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) has canceled its entire 2020-21 season. The Collegiate Table Tennis Championships at the Round Rock Sports Center will not be held this year. The safety of our student-athletes and volunteers remains the highest priority."

New from Samson Dubina

• Paddle Palace Stretch of the Week - The Scorpion! (36 sec)
• Featured Videos!
• Chopper Simulation Training (55 sec)
• Learnin' Experience - Read about 4 main keys to improvement

Cardiofit Ping
Here's their webpage, and here's info on a free trial session starting Jan. 17. "The first virtual club that offers a specific physical training for table tennis from home by video-conference."

Table Tennis VOD Review #7 - Where's the Bread and Butter?
Here's the video (29:40) from Louis Levene. "I make most of my comments for this one near the end of the video so watch it all the way through!"

Forehand and Backhand Looping Technique
Here's the video (60 sec).

How Strong is Xu Xin's Forehand?
Here's the video (3 min) from 247 tabletennis.

What’s the Score???
Here's the article by Coach Jon.

Timo Boll vs Kanak Jha | FINAL | German Cup 2021
Here's the video (7:24) of their match in the Team Final. You can read more about it in Steve Hopkin's "Boll Perfect as Dusseldorf takes German Cup." Here's another interesting match: Timo Boll vs Hugo Calderano | FINAL | German Cup 2021 (11:01). 

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

New from Steve Hopkins

• Boll Perfect as Dusseldorf takes German Cup
• PongNow Interview: Dora Kurimay (18:38)
• PongNow Interview: AJ Carney (17:37)
• First Rankings of 2021: Fan, Xu Xin, Ma Long
• Robot Training With Aditya Sareen – Developing Footwork & Hand Speed
• A Tentative Start to 2021 – ITTF Calendar
• TTBL Liebherr Cups Preview: Dusseldorf, Ochsenhausen, Grunwettersbach, Bergneustadt

USATT News

• USATT Announces the Coach of the Year Awards for 2020 (See segment above.)
• Nine States to Host Inaugural US Nationals State Qualification Tournaments
• USATT Announces New Membership Programs for 2021 (At some point I'm going to look into this and perhaps write about it. If you have any comments, email me.)
• 2021 WTT Middle East Hub Competitions
• Player Profile: Ye Tian Is Ready to Step Up His Game
• Switcher Studio Joins Forces with USA Table Tennis as Live Video Software Sponsor

ITTF CEO Explains How Table Tennis Survived COVID-19
Here's the article from Australia's Ministry of Sport. "International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) CEO, and World Table Tennis (WTT) director, Steve Dainton, spoke with Ministry of Sport on how COVID-19 affected the world of table tennis and the battle between traditional broadcast and Over-The-Top digital streaming broadcast (OTT)."

ITTF News

• Fan Zhendong & Chen Meng headline first release of new ITTF Table Tennis World Ranking.
• Here's their home page and news page.

Ping Pong Review
Here's the review of Taiyō Matsumoto's manga Ping Pong, which was released as two-volumes in English last year. They are a bit expensive, about $20 each, but are both 520 pages, so that's a lot of pages!

• Ping Pong, Vol. 1
• Ping Pong, Vol. 2

"So, Do You Play?" Asks Girlfriend's Little Brother, Gesturing Grandly To Ping-Pong Table
Here's the article from The Onion!

Dominic Thiem Plays Table Tennis
Here's the video (28 sec) - note all the two-handed backhands! Dominic Thiem (on the right) is the world #3 tennis player. Not sure who is on the left. (Email me if you know.)

Double-Ball No-Table Table Tennis
Here's the video (2:04)!

Game Over: Table Tennis Gone Wrong
Here's the video (5:12) - with a "fake" Mr. Bean!

Eight-Two, Brute
Here's the cartoon!

Coronavirus Table Tennis Cartoons
I searched the Internet and could only find four - and three of them were by me. So here they are! (I didn't do the first one.)

• US-China Coronavirus Pong
• Help Wanted: Coronavirus Smackers
• When Will They Let Us Play Table Tennis Again?
• Why Coronavirus Hates Table Tennis (Yeah, that's me at the 1983 Pan Am Trials, where made the Final 16. Photo by Donna Sakai.)

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Tip of the Week
Play Both Weaker and Stronger Players.

Weekend Coaching - Navin and Stanley
The junior program starts again next weekend, so no group sessions this past weekend. I did my usual session with Navin Kumar, and it was one of our best. He blocks with long pips on the backhand (no sponge), and has gotten pretty good at it. About a year ago I'd worked with him on chopping down on the ball slightly at contact, a chop block, but due to Parkinson's, it didn't work out well - it requires a fine touch. So since the we've focused since then on meeting the ball more straight on.

Coach Gary Fraiman (from Florida) saw a video of one of our sessions and suggested he chop block more. (Gary is highly experienced coaching Para players, and as a player is a long pips chopper, so he knows about long pips.) He and I discussed it via Facebook messenger, and I decided to introduce it again - and this time Navin picked up on it quickly!!! When you meet a topspin ball straight on with long pips, you get much of your spin back as backspin. But if you chop block it with the pips, it returns nearly all of the spin, especially if there is no sponge under the pips. Plus, since the ball isn't sinking directly into the wood, it bounces out softer, giving more control, especially depth control. This allows Navin and other players with long pips to block loops back with heavy backspin, both deep and short on the table. (You can't really block a power loop back short, but you can against softer loops or ones that land short.)

• Chop Blocks (55 sec) mostly against my backhand topspin
• Chop Blocks (51 sec) where he moves me around (plus I pull off a lefty loop)

Navin also was interviewed by 13-year-old Peyton Magee, editor of the Georgia-based Loch Lomond Gazette.

Meanwhile, other players were also doing private coaching. Here's video (49 sec) of Stanley Hsu (age 12, #1 in the US in Hopes Boys at 2286) counterlooping with Coach Cheng Yinghua (4-time US National, 2-time US Open Men's Singles Champion, and former Chinese National Team member). Stanley started out in my beginning class (I taught him the fundamentals), and I still sometimes coach him in our group sessions and at tournaments.

Should You Give a Mercy Point or Win 11-0?
Here's the video (6:01) from Pingponged TV. It's nice to give up a point to avoid embarrassing an opponent. However, it also risks a rare comeback from 10-1, and (the bigger, more likely problem), can throw off your focus, which could affect you afterwards. Also, against a rival, winning 11-0 can affect their confidence against you in future matches, making it harder for them to beat you. Of course, the simplest path, and one recommended by the most competitive-minded, is to play every point all-out, even at 10-0 against a beginner. (Some players will actually get upset if you give them a "mercy" point - but that's often if you make it too obvious, instead of making them at least sort of earn it.)

My policy on this is as follows.

• In a competitive match, if I'm up 10-0, I don't even think about the score; I play to win, and if I win 11-0, fine, but all that matters is that I won the game or match, won it playing well, and kept my focus. In a slightly competitive match, where there's little chance of a comeback, if I’m up 10-0 match point against someone considerably weaker, then I'll sometimes play a lobbing exhibition point, if I think the opponent is okay with it. (What is a "competitive match"? Any match where, if you play really poorly and the opponent plays really well, he could win. Typically, that might be a 400-point difference in rating, assuming the ratings are accurate - but to play it safe, make that 500 points. By the time you are up 10-0, you'll know if the ratings are accurate.)
• In a non-competitive match, if I'm up 10-0, I won't give away the point. But I will almost always pop a ball up slightly and give the opponent a chance to partly earn the point. But they still have to smash it past me! Against a near-beginner who can at least somewhat smash, I'll make it even easier, and give them the easiest possible ball to smash - high, but not a lob, and without any serious spin. Then I'll fish and lob the rest of the point.

I've had a few 11-0 wins in tournaments. Back in the days when games were to 21, I only once beat someone 21-0, though I could have done so many times against beginners. The one time I did was against this 1800 player who, after I won the first 21-18, went crazy between games, yelling out he could have beaten me and would beat me, and drawing a crowd to watch this crazy guy. (I was about 2250 at the time.) I bore down in the second. It was at around 10-0 (with him screaming every point) that I really became determined to win 21-0 - and at 20-0, I was never so focused! On a side note, the first 2000 player I ever played was Herb Horton, early in 1976 when I was a beginner. He beat me 21-1, 21-0, 21-2. Another interesting match that shows no lead is too big - against Pat Cox in the final of I think Under 2400 at a 4-star Sun TV Open in Pittsburgh, I was down 0-10 in the fifth. I tied it up 10-all! But games were to 21. I went on to win . . . 26-24!!!

The Years 2020, 2021, and 2022
Am I the only old-timer from the days when games were to 21 (before 2001), who, this past year, whenever someone said "2020," thought we were at deuce, and for this next year, whenever someone says "2021," will think I'm down game point? Next year is worse - that's when we lose, 2022. (Of course, every time we say 2021 we are admitting that 2020 won.)

11 Return Sidespin Serves That Make the Opponent Give Up
Here's the video (13:27) from Ti Long. Some of these are way under-used by aspiring players.

Ma Long Forehand Loop (Topspin) | Weight Transfer Analysis
Here's the video (2:13) from inMotion Table Tennis.

Super Tip - Develop your Serve
Here's the video (2:47) from Eli Baraty.

Table Tennis Analysis
Here's the article by Coach Jon.

New from Samson Dubina

• Top 10 Ways to Make Improvements This Year!
• Mike Boyd - Volunteer Coach of the Year
• The Case For Footwork (4:13) - Footwork Tips to Start of 2021 in the Right Way!
• Winning and Learning

The Life of a Table Tennis Coach in Covid Times
Here's the video (8:12) featuring Ernesto Ebuen, from pingponged TV. "We talked to Ernesto Ebuen, a player born in the Philippines who migrated to the United States in 2007 where he has been able to build a career in table tennis: as a player, as a coach and as co-founder of PINGPOD: a concept of a small format table tennis clubs in NYC. In this personal interview he tells us how the Covid 19 pandemic took away one of his loved ones at the very beginning of the pandemic, how he himself faced the disease and how a table tennis club can manage infections and continue to function despite a positive case of covid-19."

Table Tennis Talk Podcast | Episode 5
Here's the podcast (82 min) featuring Dan Seemiller, Jr., head coach at the El Paso TTC, by Joey Cochran of Table Tennis Junkie. "Also Ultimate Table Tennis, T-League 2019, the Chinese Nationals, Joey's Coaching Corner, and the Weird World of Table Tennis."

USATT News

• Jun Gao Hired as the USA Table Tennis National Coach
• USA Table Tennis Congratulates Newly Certified Coaches

New from Steve Hopkins

• Kurimay Video – My Stories of Mental Toughness (36:12)
• WAB Club Feature: PingPod
• Footwork With Coach Yu Di (2:43)
• WAB Club Feature: Triangle Badminton and Table Tennis
• A Profile of Ye Tian of the Swan Warrior Table Tennis Center
• Butterfly Top 10 VIDEOS of 2020
• Butterfly Top 10 INTERVIEWS of 2020
• Ma Long’s Luneng Team Wins China Super League

John Tannehill Tribute
Here's the music video (4:09) featuring Tannehill and others, from Dave Fullen.

Top 50 Best Table Tennis Points of 2020
Here's the video (14 min) from TTEntertaining.

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

2021 Preview: Top three male athletes with a point to prove
Here's the ITTF article, featuring Hugo Calderano, Liam Pitchford, and Mattia Falck.

ITTF News
Here's their home page and news page.

The Magic Chopper
Here are two videos of "The Magic Chopper" from the 1960s, Zhang Xielin of China - a penhold chopper. (He was also known as Chang Shih-lin.) He apparently beat most of the Europeans, who had trouble adapting to his unconventional chopping technique, which included backhand sidespin chops. (His Chinese teammates were used to him, and so did better.)

• Against Hiroshi Takahashi of Japan, Men's Team final, 1965 World Championships in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia (3:13). China d. Japan, 5-2.
• 1984 Exhibition (2:48).

Christmas Paddle Video
Here's the video (53 sec) - "This truly is a special moment... boy gets the perfect gift this Christmas." A must watch.

Earn £100 a Week Teaching Monkeys to Play Table Tennis
Here's the ad! (Here's the non-Facebook version.) I have no idea when this came out or the context, but I now know that "Teaching ping-ping to monkeys is both challenging and rewarding. All it takes is patience and a large box of bananas."

Ping-Pong Trick Shots
Here's the video (1:10) from LegendTrix.

More Ping-Pong Trick Shots
Here's the video (1:22) by a kid from Dude Attack. (It's listed as video #5, but the previous ones weren't ping-pong trick shots.)

Men's World Cup: The Lego Movie!
Here's the video (3:27) as once again Fan Zhendong and Ma Long go at it!

Santa Wishes You a Happy New Year 2021!!!
Here's the cartoon. (Here's the non-Facebook version.)

Puppy-Pug Pong
Here's the video (19 sec)! Hilarious!

Mostly Non-Table Tennis - My Science Fiction Blog
Here's the blog, with a new entry for January 2, 2021. (Note that both larryhodges.com and larryhodges.org both go to my SF blog.) It's mostly about my sales and published stories in 2020, a writing workshop I'm currently attending (sort of like attending a table tennis camp), and about the 67 books I read last year! (This includes six on table tennis.)

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Tip of the Week
Use Quick, Deep Pushes to Set Up Your Attack.

Miscellaneous

• Today's blog is my 1800th blog, and coincidentally the last of the year. (I used to do them five days a week, Mon-Fri.) This is in addition to 17 books and over 2000 published articles!
• There was no junior group sessions this past weekend - holidays!!! But I did coach Navin Kumar on Saturday. Here are two videos (note how empty the club is due to holidays and pandemic!): Forehands (20 sec, and note how six seconds in I move in and start taking the ball quick off the bounce, to rush Navin) and Loop to Navin's Block (35 sec, and if you listen closely, near the end you can hear me doing my Gollum impression, where I tell myself "I can't do this" and then "Yes I can!", back and forth).
• My quick and really, really bad limerick epitaph for 2020:

The year 2020 for ping-pong,
A year of nonstopping wrong,
Like playing 'gainst long pips,
Or players with wrong grips,
Or a ball smacked in your face by King Kong!

New from USA Table Tennis
You definitely want to see the first video - may they all rest in peace. I knew them all, other than Varner.

• Gone, But Not Forgotten (3:06) - Jack Howard, George Brathwaite, John Tannehill, Gus Kennedy, Billy Varner, Jim Scott, Michael Clarke
• USATT 2020 Review (3:17)
• Coaches Christmas Catch-up (30:59), with Sean O'Neill, Doru Gheorghe, Tahl Leibovitz, Mike Lauro, Larry Hodges. (Go to 11:46 and you can see my new Baby Yoda Table Tennis shirt.)

Fundraiser for Tahl Leibovitz . . . and a Topps Card for Donators!
Here's the page. He's already won gold at the Paralympics, and his going for a repeat!!! Here's the USATT Tahl Leibovitz Bio and his USATT Hall of Fame page. PLUS - here's the added benefit. If you donate, you get a virtual Topps Card!!! Here's mine - I'm a star! (Here's the non-Facebook version.)

Michael Clarke RIP
He passed away from Covid-19 last week, age 73 but still an active player and coach from Baltimore. (Here's a Facebook posting that has his picture - he's in the middle. Here's the non-Facebook version.) He's mentioned and pictured in the USATT Gone, But Not Forgotten video, at the end. Here's an excerpt from my blog from Feb 13, 2017 where he and I did a clinic and exhibition for kids at the Potomac Recreation Center in Maryland:

Then Mike and I did a rather humorous exhibition, which I introduced by saying, "A very bad thing happened today." When the kids all leaned forward to find out about this "bad" thing, I explained that just one hour before, Michael had told me that he could beat me. "He thinks he can beat ME!" I exclaimed over and over. And so it was on - with the loser having to sweep and mop the gym (or so I claimed). As usual I played the bad guy, and so everyone was quickly rooting for him. I'd insist they cheer when I won the point, and boo when he scored, and of course the kids did the reverse. I cheated, tried bribing the scorekeeper, and so on. We did the first table tennis wave in history (for about the 500th time over the years, but don't tell them). I also managed to throw in my 50-foot serve from the side, blew the ball over the net, lots of lobbing, and brought out the big paddle and mini-paddle. As always, I lost, where I was rolling about on the floor lobbing on the last point before Michael finally smashed a winner to win 11-9.

Casting Call for a Sports Drink Commercial - Looking for Ping Pong Experts
Here's the info page on how to apply. They are looking for Ping Pong Experts who are ages 10-13 or 50+ years old, who can be in Los Angeles for one or more shooting dates in January. Deadline to apply is January 8, 2PM Pacific time. The ones chosen will be paid $2500 . . . and you'll be a professional actor!!!

New from Samson Dubina

• Ok With Losing? - An interesting perspective...
• Breathe Man, Breathe! - This applies to YOU!!!!!!!!!!
• Two Aspects of Rallies - NEW Article and Video (27 sec)
• Videos of the Week

8 Types of Hook Serves to Destroy Opponents!
Here's the video (15:27) from Ti Long.

Two-Way Multiball Training
Here's the video (30 sec) from Rahul Shah - a great way for one player to practice loop against backspin, the other counterlooping against an opening loop against backspin.

SPIN: Tips and Tactics to Win at Table Tennis
Here's the video (49:23) from Pingskills, where they interview Tom Lodziak, author of Spin: Tips and Tactics to Win at Table Tennis.

Table Tennis and Lateral Epicondylitis (Tennis Elbow)
Here's the article by Licensed Physical Therapist Aldin Soneja.

Covid-19 and Table Tennis: Which Type of Mask Should I Use?
Here's the video (16:16) from the Pong Professor.

The Backhands of Jimmy Butler and Jorgen Persson
Here's the video (9:15) from Jimmy Butler. It starts off with a rally between Butler and Daniel Tran that ends with a you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it backhand smash by Butler, and then goes into a tribute to Jorgen Persson's backhand smash. (Persson was the 1991 World Men's Singles Champion.) Watch the reaction of Daniel when Jimmy smashes that backhand!

World #27 Tells Us Her Secret to Play Backhand and Many More Tips
Here's the video (14:28) from Pingponged TV, featuring world #27 Britt Eerland from the Netherlands.

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

Best Points of the Decade
Here's the video (37 min) from Table Tennis Destiny.

What Disease Does Ping-Pong Have the Potential to Prevent?
Here's the video (59 sec) - but the guesses by the competitors were also correct!

Table Tennis Talk Podcast | Episode 21
Here's the podcast (52:15) from Joey Cochran. "...we wrap up 2020 with some of the most anticipated tournaments of the year, the ITTF Finals and WTT Macao. This is the first WTT event and gives us a lot to look forward to next year. We also talk about the exciting new virtual reality table tennis game, Eleven table tennis."

New from Steve Hopkins

• Timo Boll’s Champions League Bubble Part 2
• The Year in Review: All the Pong News that’s Fit to rePrint
• Diaz, Zhang Debut with New Team in China
• Borussia Dusseldorf over Liebherr Ochsenhausen in Last TTBL of 2020

Peace on Earth
Here's the article from Coach Jon.

World Team Table Tennis Championships Cancelled After Three Postponements
Here's the article from Inside the Games.

ITTF News
Here's their home page and news page. Here are some highlights.

• Best of 2020: Matches of the Year!
• Day One of the Chinese Super League sees the ITTF World Professionals make winning start
• Continued success for ITTF World Professionals team on day two of Chinese Super League
• Eberhard Schöler, yet another landmark, a special celebration
• ITTF reflects on highs and lows of the year. 2020 World Team Table Tennis Championships cancelled amidst pandemic

Santa Dimitrij Wishes You a Merry Christmas
Here's the picture from the world #12 (former #1 for two months in 2018)! (Here's the non-Facebook version.) One of your New Year's Resolutions has to be to learn to spell " Dimitrij Ovtcharov," right?

£500 Challenge from the World Champion
Here's the 1946 ad from four-time Men's Singles World Champion Richard Bergmann. (Here's the non-Facebook version.) That's £20,000 in modern money, or about $27,000.

Top 20 of 20
Here's the video (8:09) from Adam Bobrow - 20 mostly hilarious shots as he throws "snakes," lobs, and other shots at opponents.

Insane Table Tennis Cartoon
Here's the video (73 sec).

Funniest Moments 2020
Here's the video 12:37) from Pongfinity!

Funny Japanese Commercial - a Decahanded Player?
Here's the video (15 sec) - in case you ever wondered what it would be like to play with ten hands and paddles.

Ping-Pong Trick Shots
Here's the music video (1:46)!

Kids crazy Ping pong trick shots

• Part 1 (3:25)
• Part 2 (2:20)

Dinosaur Masked Pong
Here's the picture!

Baby Yoda Table Tennis

• Me in my Baby Yoda table tennis shirt (video should take you to 11:46).
• Baby Yoda playing table tennis shirt #1 (one I'm wearing above)
• Baby Yoda playing table tennis shirt #2 (I just ordered this one!)
• Baby Yoda playing table tennis
• Baby Yoda ping-pong paddles
• Baby Yoda Ping-Pong Duel (23 sec)

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Tip of the Week
Proper Strokes Are 1-2-3: Don't Forget the Neutral Position!

USA Table Tennis Museum
Wouldn't it be great to have one? A place where we could all learn about the greats of our past? Schiff and McClure. Miles and Reisman. Seemiller and Boggan. O'Neill and Butler. Cheng and Zhuang. Aarons, Fuller, and Green. Neuberger and Shahian. Martinez and Sweeris. Bhushan and Lee. Gao and Feng. And so on.

There are various table tennis collections around the country, there's the online USATT Hall of Fame, and Mike Babuin maintains the Cary TTA museum in North Carolina (but the link to the actual museum is no longer active) - and Mike just sent me a video of the Cary Museum (10:52). So maybe that's something we might build on? Or do we start something new? I'm talking about a really serious one, with a dedicated building and curator, like the ones they have for just about everything you can imagine. Here are some other museums, so why not table tennis?

There is an ITTF Museum in Shanghai, but that's a little tricky to commute to unless you're in China. USATT, Scott Gordon, Tim Boggan, Will Shortz, Paddle Palace, Mike Babuin, and many others have extensive table tennis historical collections, and I've got a lot as well, especially my table tennis book collection. (I'd seriously consider donating it to start up the Larry Hodges [Memorial?] Library Wing of the USATT Museum!) I'd love to see it all put together in some dedicated location, with an actual curator.

Here's a listing of just some of the top sports museums in the US. It includes skateboarding, mountaineering, mountain biking, polo, lacrosse, archery, in-line skating, and flyfishing. There are four on surfing alone!!! And this isn't even a comprehensive listing. There's even a Marbles Museum!!!

Notice what's missing? The Olympic Sport of table tennis.

Of course, writing about it is a lot easier than actually making it happen. For something like this, we'd probably need a wealthy owner or investor, or someone who knows how to raise money. Or just someone who is such diehard at such an opportunity that they'd do whatever it takes to make it happen. (Here's a web page on How to Start a Museum.)

So . . . who's going to do this?

Weekend Coaching
This Sunday we completed the junior group tournament we started last Sunday. The kids were in three groups by level, with ten in each group, and played a complete round robin. Due to new restrictions how many people could be in the playing hall at one time, I actually spent half the sessions in the back room working on my computer. Parents weren't allowed in for that same reason. When I was in the hall, I took extensive notes on their play.

During a break, I came up with a non-table tennis joke that I shared with the kids - though I had to write it out for them to see it. What do you have when a father dog in the capital of Bolivia lifts its front legs in the air and freezes? A La Paz pa's paws pause. They wanted more, so I gave them a follow-up: "You walk into a room and there are three gorillas in it. One is holding a banana. One is holding a knife. One is holding a smart phone. Who is the smartest in the room?" It was hilarious listening to them debate this, though most finally settled on the gorilla with the smart phone as the smartest. Then I said, "So the gorilla with the smart phone is smarter than the other two gorillas, and smarter than you, since you are also in the room?" (Note to self: Need to create a list of table tennis jokes to tell them.)

Political Table Tennis Cartoons
Here are two that I recently put together. When I say I put them together, that means I found images online, and then Photoshopped them. (So I didn't do the actual artwork.) If you are a Trump fan, you probably don't want to click on the first one. I warned ya!

• Biden Smashes Trump (Here's the original.)
• Well, Ya Won the Election, Kid (This one is about USATT politics - I took this Far Side table tennis cartoon and changed the caption.)

Blast from the Past - Butterfly Europe 1970s Coasters . . . and My Meeting with Surbek
Here's a picture of six table tennis coasters from the late 1970s. Someone put up a picture of one of them, and so I ran to one of my shelves of table tennis stuff and found the complete set! They'd been in storage for the last 40 years or so. The six are the three Hungarians and the three S's - here's the picture of Jonyer, Gergely, Klampar, Secretin, Stipancic, and Surbek. My whole table tennis career is sort of bookended by my "meeting" Surbek in 1976, and meeting Jonyer at the 2018 World Veterans Games. With Jonyer, we just shook hands - a hugely memorable moment for me, just another Tuesday for him. Here's the story of me and Surbek.

I started playing early in 1976 at the late age of 16. I went to my first US Open that year, in July, in Philadelphia. One day I went out for lunch and sat at the bar. The place was jammed. Surbek and Milivoj Karakasevic walked in - and the only place to sit was on the two empty chairs on each side of me. So that's where they sat, with me in between!!! I didn't know at the time who Karakasevic was (top 20 in the world and father of Aleksandar, who would have been seven months old at the time), but I was fully aware that Surbek was #3 in the world and top seed at the tournament, which he'd go on to win. I'd been studying his game from a photo sequence in a Japanese book. I couldn't decide whether to get up and let them sit together, so I sort of just sat there, scared to death, while they leaned back and talked behind my back in Serbo-Croatian. I ate quickly and left, and then Surbek moved into my spot. Perhaps the most nerve-wracking moments of my table tennis life!!!

US Open and US Nationals Historical Results
Here is the page, www.ustabletennisresults.com, created by Vince Mioduszewski. It now has all results from every US Open and Nationals (even rating events!) 1933 to present. (I linked to it last week while it was still being updated.) All results are now up, but a number of scores and some results are still missing. Vince is working to get the missing data. Vince has been hard at work compiling all these results from old magazines (including a box I sent him, and from others), Tim Boggan's History of US Table Tennis (he bought the complete set of 23 books), and online results for more recent years.

USA Table Tennis Announces Election Results for Board of Directors' Positions
Here's the news item. Elected to the board were At-Large Members Thomas Hu and Dan Reynolds, and Club Representative Will Shortz. Congrats to the new members! (But see my cartoon above, Well, Ya Won the Election, Kid!)

Casting Call for a Sports Drink Commercial - Looking for Ping Pong Experts
Here's the info page on how to apply. They are looking for Ping Pong Experts who are ages 10-13 or 50+ years old, who can be in Los Angeles for one or more shooting dates in January. Deadline to apply is Jan. 8, 2PM Pacific time. The ones chosen will be paid $2500 . . . and you'll be a professional actor!!!

December Chop and Smash Blog 
Here's the article by USATT CEO Virginia Sung.

Free 6-Week Table Tennis Workout Program
Here's the info page from Peak Performance Table Tennis.

New from Samson Dubina

• Two Aspects of Rallies - Two Primary Aspects to Rallying (article and video 27 sec)
• Videos of the Week
• Short Game Training - Check out her new Power Pong Drill
• Healthy for the Mind! - Merry Christmas from the Samson Dubina TT Academy and the "Why Table Tennis?" book
• Ed Ivory - Ed Ivory - player of the month
• The Perfect Stroke - Read about the 4 Elements!
• Online Student Notes - Check out his homework for the week
• Targeting the Transition - Check out these new drills!

Snake Serve
Here's the video (8:35) from Adam Bobrow. At first, it sounds pretty basic, but it's actually pretty advanced - the serve he's teaching is my favorite serve - I do it all the time, and it's short and looks like backspin, but it's actually topspin. Players tend to push the serve, so it pops up - but even advanced players often misread it the first few times, and continue to be tentative against it even when they read it correctly. (Adam, stop giving away secrets!!!) Like his other videos, this is funny, but this time he's teaching something that can really help your game.

New from Tom Lodziak

• The Benefit of Disruptive Shots
• Good Riddance to 2020

Serve Technique: Ma Long Serve Analysis, Footwork Pattern
Here's the video (2:11) from inMotion Table Tennis.

How To Forehand Pivot
Here's the video (2:04) from Rachid El Boubou

Reverse Windshield Wiper Serve Tutorial | Short Topspin
Here's the video (6:49) from Joey Cochran at Table Tennis Junkie.

Don't Forget Flexibility
Here's the article from Coach Jon.

New Racket and Ball Colors
Here's the article from EmRatThich at PingSunday.

Here's Why Ma Long Is The Greatest Table Tennis Player Of All Time!
Here's the video (9:55) from Table Tennis Daily. One thing that jumped out to me while watching the action shots - note how on even his biggest forehands, he rotates in a circle, with head and body not moving forward. This keeps him balanced, maximizes centrifugal force, and keeps him in position immediately for the next shot. Many players move their bodies forward in this shot, and never understand why they have trouble doing two in a row.

Jim Butler Matches
You should go to Jim Butler's Facebook page and watch the almost daily videos he puts up of his practice matches. They are great - he edits out time between points, puts in background music, and often starts with something humorous, such as the tribulations of Huijing Wang's dog. He regularly plays Huijing Wang, with other videos of him playing Kewei Li, Robert Roberts, Linda Shu, and Daniel Tran.

ITTF World Professionals Make Debut at Chinese Table Tennis Super League
Here's the video (4:43), featuring Lily Zhang (USA), Adriana Diaz (PUR), Cheng I-Ching (TPE), Jeon Jihee (KOR) and Doo Hoi Kem (HKG).

Highlights with Sean, Tahl, Hank, Jimmy
Here's the video (3:34) from Sean O'Neill.

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

11 Years of ITTF - Global Sports Development Collaboration
Here's the ITTF video (2:03).

Three Thousand Days of Table Tennis
Here's the article by and about Will Shortz and his ongoing herculean feat!

New from Steve Hopkins

• Boll and Kallberg Leads Borussia Dusseldorf to Champions League Title
• PongNow: Truong Tu (20 min)
• Timo Boll's Behind the Scenes at the Champion's League Bubble

ITTF Statement on Matches Manipulation
Here's the statement.

ITTF News
Here's their home page and news page.

Bets, Lies and Table Tennis: How Police Pinged an International Pong
Here's the article from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Booba World Table Tennis Day
Here's the video - it's over two hours, but link should take you to 2:06, where there's ten seconds of "table tennis"!

Watchin' Sid & Nandan's Guest Appearance on Ryan's Mystery Playdate!
Here's the video (2:52) - "It's table tennis champs!" And that's a great entrance!

Ping Pong: Expectations vs. Reality
Here's the video (5:38) from Pongfinity.

Santa Claus Table Tennis
I found these for you so you don't have to! You're welcome.

• Santa Claus vs MLFM Table Tennis (5:52)
• Santa Ping Pong (29 sec)
• Ping Pong With Santa Claus - Go Pro (2:12)
• Santa Claus Pong (60 sec)
• Twelve Table Tennis Days of Christmas (12 videos)
• Santa watches ping pong (32 sec)
• Santa Hates Ping-Pong (52 sec)
• Santa Claus plays ping pong (3:50)
• Bounce Ping Pong presents | Santa is a PING PONG PEST (4:17)
• Jesus vs. Santa (1:11)

Mostly Non-Table Tennis - "Pinning the Egg" and "The Pushovers of Galactic Baseball Fame"
My science fiction story, "Pinning the Egg," came out this week in the Sci Phi Journal. When a Murt egg lands on Earth, it's up to the resident Zinh to stop it before it hatches and destroys all life, as part of the galaxy-wide war between the malicious Murt and the Zinh defenders, with the taunting as nasty as the fighting. The story starts with a Go game with Emperor Qin in China 2200 years ago and then moves to England, where even Excalibur makes an appearance.

I also just sold another story, "The Pushovers of Galactic Baseball Fame," to Paper Butterfly Flash Fiction. It's the humorous story of baseball's spread through the galaxy, except instead of highly skilled players that make viewers feel inferior, they want the most uncoordinated, incompetent players possible, so the aliens feel good about themselves. Just how bad can a player be? Maybe I should have done this with table tennis spreading through the galaxy, where the "stars" were the worst players?

I actually have another story making the rounds, "The Beijing Galactic Table Tennis Championships." In it, table tennis has spread to the galaxy, and now they are holding the first Galaxy Table Tennis Championships - in Beijing - with aliens (mostly non-humanoid) from around the galaxy coming to compete. However, that story is rather long, over 10,000 words (about 40 pages double spaced), so a more difficult sale.

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Tip of the Week
Use It or Lose It!

Weekend Coaching
This past Sunday and next Sunday we are running our season-ending practice tournament for our junior program. The kids are divided into three divisions by level/rating, with about ten in each, and play a complete round robin, all best of five to 11. I spent the sessions split between watching and taking coaching notes, and umpiring some of the matches (so they could get more of a tournament-like feel for the matches). In the lowest group (with the youngest kids), I taught them how to read the playing schedule and how it is created. After watching them, I realize that a lot of them need more work both on their serves, and on understanding the purpose of the serve, which is primarily to set up their attack. The really good news - I spent some time just watching their feet, and came away pretty happy - with one exception, all of them had "active feet." The only exception tended to lean to the ball instead of moving, so we'll work on that. Most had pretty good stroking technique.

In the other two divisions, the main takeaway was, "Wow!" Many haven't played a tournament in nearly a year, and they have dramatically improved. Their ratings are way behind - beware everyone when tournaments start up again!!! I knew they had improved, but it's a lot more obvious when they play real matches. You can basically add 100 or more rating points to each of their ratings. The ten in the top group ranged (in mostly old ratings) from 1984 to 2286, with all but two of them ages 11 to 13.

On Saturday, I had my weekly session with Navin Kumar. (As I note occasionally, I'm retired from private coaching, but made one exception for him since I coached him at the World Parkinson's Championships last year and will likely do so again next September in Berlin.) A lot of the focus on the session was aggressive return of serve with his long pips (no sponge), instead of just patting the ball back. I traded rackets with him to demonstrate, and showed him how you can "bump" almost any serve back quick off the bounce and rather aggressively, and if you place it well (usually to wide corners), it can tie a serve in knots. Here are two videos:

• Bumping the serve back (18 sec)
• Blocking and smashing (7 sec)

US Open and US Nationals Historical Results
Here is the page, www.ustabletennisresults.com, still under construction, created by Vince Mioduszewski. It now has all results from every US Open and Nationals (even rating events!) from 1970 to present, as well as 1940-49. Soon they will all be up, 1933 to present. Vince has been hard at work compiling all these results from old magazines (including a box I sent him, and from others), Tim Boggan's History of US Table Tennis (he bought the complete set of 23 books), and online results for more recent years.

USATT Coaches Meeting
We had another of the bi-weekly USATT coaches meetings on Friday, Dec. 11, 12:00-12:54 PM eastern time, hosted by High Performance Director Sean O'Neill. Six of us attended. Here's video (54:25) and a group picture. Here's what happened.

• Welcome to the attendees, with each giving a short report on their recent club and coaching activities: Sean O'Neill, Larry Hodges, Mike Lauro, Samson Dubina, Doru Gheorghe, Willy Leparulo
• Player Pathways. Sean spoke about this program, and here's the USATT news item, USA Table Tennis Announces the Performance Pathway Program for 2021. It involves direct athlete assistance to the top four men, women, and Para athletes.
• Reminder about the USATT Coach of the Year nominations, due Dec. 31.
• A discussion of Stupa Analytics. (I wrote about this in my November 23, 2020 blog.) You can get one free Stupa analysis. Sean said that they have received a USOPC sports science grant for our national team.
• USOPC Grants. USATT had applied for a grant late this year for some leftover money, to be used in developing the USATT coaching program. It was denied, but will reapply for 2021.
• We discussed the All-American Awards - for top ten in each age group, honorable mentions for the next ten. The question was what to do this year, with the pandemic and few tournaments? The consensus was to still have them as they are a nice incentive.
• We discussed wearables, which are items you wear that monitor various things such as heart rate and sleep. An Apple Watch and Polar Unite Watch are examples.

New from USATT

• USATT Election Results. Elected to the board were Thomas Hu, Dan Reynolds, and Will Shortz. (This was added Tuesday night.) 
• USA Table Tennis CEO Virginia Sung Elected President of North American Table Tennis Union
• USA Table Tennis Announces the Performance Pathway Program for 2021

USATT Board Teleconference
USA Table Tennis held a board teleconference last Monday, Dec. 7, starting at 8PM. Eighteen people attended, including me. This is fascinating stuff to a small minority of us; for the rest of you, skip ahead!!! (NOTE - I wrote the below after the meeting, but this morning I see that they already have the minutes up for that meeting - that's a speed record! Presumably, they approved them via email vote. The minutes match up pretty well with my notes, and go into more detail. Here is the USATT Minutes and Actions page.)

• CEO Report. Virginia Sun reported that the Olympic Training Center is closed, due to the pandemic. She had just gotten out of a USOPC meeting on Covid-19 situation with over 100 others She also reported on the T2 competitions, where, despite following protocols, a number of people tested positive afterwards.
• Budget and Audit Committee Reports. Numbers assume (for now) things back to normal in second quarter (not sure if that's before or after), but we don't really know that. They will adjust as needed. The 2021 budget was approved unanimously. One curious thing - there was little discussion of the actual budget items. In past budget meetings that I've attended (including as a board member), they often went over it segment by segment, even line by line, and sometimes spent many hours on this.
• Licensing and Sponsorship – Protecting Against Intellectual Property Infringement. It seems some equipment vendors have used USATT trademarks without permission, so they had a discussion on how to respond. Not sure if they reached a decision, but presumably this is something the CEO will handle.
• Board Elections Status Report. They will announce election results by Christmas. New board members will be invited attend February meeting. Not sure why it could take until Christmas (eleven days from now) to get results - voting ended last night (Sunday, Dec. 13), so it'd be nice to get the results today. The number of votes is usually only in the hundreds, so presumably they can do the count in one day. Perhaps there are verification protocols. I'll post here when/if the election results are posted.
• Board Meeting Schedule for 2021. Board has been meeting almost every month. Will go to bi-monthly, i.e. six times/year.
• When asked about new business, Lee Kondo asked about enforcing service rules, and cited this USATT notice.

• They then went into executive session, so I had to leave.

New from Samson Dubina

• Healthy for the Mind! - Merry Christmas from the Samson Dubina TT Academy
• Twiddling - Coaching Article by Samson Dubina
• 20 Different Opponents! - This year, become a tactical tournament player!
• NEW Coaching Video - Controllable vs Uncontrollable Factors (13:31)

Four Useful Tools for Improving Your Long Fast Serves in Table Tennis
Here's the article and video (13 min) from Matt Hetherington at MH Table Tennis.

Pendulum Serve Tutorial | Pure Backspin
Here's the video (11:50) from Joey Cochran.

Table Tennis Match Management
Here's the video from Richard McAfee (33:19).

Table Tennis VOD Review #6 - Work on Finding the Ball and Having Better Placement
Here's the video (33 min) from Louis Levene.

Table Tennis Serve Compilation (Part 2) - 11 More Ways To Serve
Here's the video (3:31) from Paragon Table Tennis. Here's the link to Part 1 - 49 Ways To Serve (3:52).

How to Return Fast Serve in Table Tennis
Here's the video (20:34) from Ti Long.

The Table Tennis Gambit
Here's the article from Coach Jon.

Here's What Olympians Eat for Each Sport
Here's the article from Live Science, with a segment on table tennis with info and quotes from Richard McAfee.

Pingponged TV Featuring Mattias Falck
Here's the video (12:45) - their first episode. Falck of Sweden, who uses short pips on the forehand, is #8 in the world, and shocked the world by making it to the final of Men's Singles at the 2019 Worlds.

Incredible Attack vs. Chop Rally
Here's the video (69 sec) - and (Spoiler Alert!) after all those shots to the corners, notice that it was, predictably, a shot to the middle that won the point. (Yeah, that's where choppers and many other players are weakest.)

Best Table Tennis Shots of November 2020
Here's the video (14:12) from TT Entertaining.

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

ITTF Equipment Webinar
Here's the video (1 hr 24 min).

New from the ITTF

• WTT Macao - more news items on the event held in Macao, China, Nov. 25-29
• #RESTART proves Table Tennis can prevail amidst pandemic
• ITTF Board of Directors Meeting (Dec. 7, 2020)
• ITTF News page

Dimitrij Ovtcharov Interviews Timo Boll
Here's the video (57 sec)!

New from Steve Hopkins

• Timo Boll Drill: The 2-2 (4:02)
• Timo Boll’s Best 10 Shots
• PongNow: Liu Juan (26:20)
• Kanak Jha’s Recent Ochsenhausen Video Highlights
• OxNation Update: Ochsenhausen Jumps to Second Position

Funny Ping-Pong Stuff
Here's the page from Etsy. Lots of neat stuff - shirts, mugs, face masks, etc. How can you live without some of this stuff? (No, I have no financial interest in Etsy!)

Impromptu Table Tennis Exhibition
Here's the video (30 sec) - but must be from a while back since the score's 20-13. (Games switched from 21 to 11 in 2001.)

Sunny Bunnies - Table Tennis Practice
Here's the video (20:46, but the table tennis is in the first 3:30)!

World's Longest Ping Pong Shot
Here's the video (8:02) from Pongfinity!

Non-Table Tennis - "The Untold Christmas Carol"
Just got another very positive review, from SFRevu, of  a current story of mine in Galaxy's Edge, "The Untold Christmas Carol," the behind-the-scenes expose of what really happened to Tiny Tim - with Satan and Benedict Arnold involved. Here are the two reviews of the story so far:

• SF Revu: "A devilish alternate take on the classic Christmas Ghost Story. Another amusing tale and the perfect way to end this issue."
• Tangent SF Reviews: "The prose was well-paced and told in a whimsical style. A nice nugget to pass a few minutes with a smile." 

***
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Tip of the Week
Should You Stick With Your Best Shot If It Is Missing?

Weekend Coaching
On Sunday, I asked one of our junior players what she wanted to work on, and she wanted to do side-to-side footwork drills. We must be doing something right!!! As usual, we focused on fundamental as I was working with our younger kids. I also set up targets on the table for serve practice and they took great joy in knocking them off - though I kept insisting that they weren't really knocking them off, they were just showing me what it would look like if they were to knock them off, so that if they were to actually knock them off, I'd know what it would look like. Did you get all of that?

They played up-down tables the second half of the session. They would hide the ball to see who served first. If the server scored two in a row, he became the receiver, and the goal was to be the receiver. They would play for about five minutes, and then whoever was receiving at that time moved up, the server moved down. To help work on specific parts of their game, we had them use improvised rules. For example, they might have to serve long to the backhand, or long anywhere, and so on.

Several of the players were hesitating when looping in the games - they'd start out right, but as they started their forward swing, they'd ease up, trying to guide the ball, instead of just letting the shot go, as they do in regular practice. So I worked with several of them on that. I had to keep stressing that this is practice, and if you can't do the shot properly in practice, when will you do it properly? I think they go the message. It only takes doing it right a few times in games to get into the habit of doing it right - at least for kids, who learn fast

USATT Election
The deadline to vote is Sunday, Dec. 13 - so VOTE!!! NOW!!! If you were a USATT member, you should have received the election info by email on Oct. 29, so go check your email box. I wrote about this in my Oct. 26 blog, where I strongly endorsed Khoa Nguyen and Thomas Hu, and also endorsed Will Shortz for Club Rep, though both candidates for that spot were good, the other being Mike Babuin. (Thomas Hu has 47 testimonials on the Thomas Hu for USATT Board of Directions Facebook page. Why not pay it a visit? Yesterday he posted 15 Priorities if he is elected.)

Seriously, if you haven't voted and you are a USATT member, stop what you are doing and vote RIGHT NOW!!! (Hopefully for Khoa, Thomas, and Will.)

USA Table Tennis Suspends All Sanctioned and Approved Activities and Events Through January 15, 2021
Here's the news item. (This went up after the blog went up, but I thought it was important and timely, so I added it afterwards.) It's a disappointing situation, but the suspension is understandable. 

USATT Board Teleconference, Monday, Dec. 7 (TODAY) at 8PM Eastern Time
Here's the USATT Agenda and Notices page, with a link to the info for the meeting, including the agenda. (It currently gives info on how to join the meeting, which uses Uberconference.) All USATT members are welcome to attend. I expect to be there. Here is the current agenda - though other items are sometimes added last-minute.

• CEO Report
• Audit Committee Report
• 2021 Budget
• Licensing and Sponsorship – Protecting Against Intellectual Property Infringement
• Board Elections Status Report
• Board Meeting Schedule for 2021

USATT High Performance Committee
The former chair, Bruce Liu, resigned a while ago, as did member Angela Guan. USATT has now filled the committee again with five members. They are Jimmy Butler, Amy Feng, Wu Yue, Feng Yijun, and Khoa Nguyen. (Here's the USATT Committee listing.) One thing of notice - there is no chair yet. I'm told they will operate without one for now.

In my view, as I wrote about the previous members (with Bruce and Angela instead of Wu and Feng), these members are all individually well qualified. HOWEVER . . . it's almost all athletes, with few coaches. I believe Amy Feng is the only regular coach among the five (though I'm not sure how much she is coaching). The purpose of the HPC is to develop top athletes, and that's exactly the purpose of a top coach - and so there should be more top coaches on the committee. As it is, it's like having 25 sluggers on a baseball team, each of them highly qualified players - and then realizing you have no pitchers. There really should be more of a balance. Of course, it's easier said than done - many of the most qualified high-level coaches might not want to do so as it would be a conflict of interest since they are coaching some of the players the HPC sets the rules for, plus they want to be eligible to coach USA teams, and the HPC chooses those coaches - another conflict of interest. (Alas, I'm not volunteering.)

Covid-19 Outbreak at USATT's T2 Qualification Tournament at ICC Table Tennis Center
Here's a discussion of this at the MyTableTennis.net forum, with 61 comments so far. Apparently at least ten people from the event have come down positive. Yikes!!! As near as I can tell from the video shown there, they did take proper precautions.

How To Footwork & Body Transition
Here's the video from Coach Jishan Liang (1:44)

Developing Hand Speed
Here's the video (2:31) from Coach Ojo Onaolapo.

How to Return Heavy Backspin Serve
Here's the video (15:03) from Ti Long.

Good Serve - Best Table Tennis Serve Placements
Here's the video (10:07) from Prospin95 Table Tennis.

Penhold Serve Tips and Techniques
Here's the video (11:29) from Joey Cochran at Table Tennis Junkie.

New from Samson Dubina

• New Videos! - Check out the recent training from the Samson Dubina TT Academy!
• Redefining Winning - Winning Defined by the E.L.M. TREE
• The Tactical Mindset - Post-Tournament Analysis
• Chopper Simulation Training - Check out the NEW Power Pong Robot Drill

Doubling Down With Short Pips
Here's the article from Coach Jon.

US Open and US Nationals Historical Results
Here is the page, www.ustabletennisresults.com, still under construction, created by Vince Mioduszewski. It currently has all the results for the US Open and US Nationals from 2000-2019. Soon it will have all of them, with US Opens from 1933 to the present, and the Nationals from 1976 to the present (plus a few miscellaneous other ones). These results include all of the events - championships ones for men, women, seniors, and juniors, as well as rating events, hardbat, etc. Vince has been hard at work compiling all these results from old magazines (including a box I sent him, and from others), Tim Boggan's History of US Table Tennis (he bought the complete set of 23 books), and online results for more recent years.

Celebrities Playing Table Tennis
After an eight-year hiatus, I recently did an update to my Celebrities Playing Table Tennis page. There are now 1446 photos of 876 celebrities! New ones added were Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Mookie Betts, Diego Maradona, Mike Trout, and Howie Kendrick. However, at this point I'm only doing occasional updates, and only for really, Really, REALLY famous people!!! (Howie Kendrick is pretty famous, but he only made the list because he's in the picture with Mike Trout.)

Here are two other sites I maintain:

• Full-time Professional Table Tennis Clubs in the USA - which I don't plan in updating during the pandemic
• USATT Leaders Page - CEOs, EDs, Presidents, Board Chairs, Editors

Table Tennis Fan Pages
Here are some table tennis fan pages (alphabetically) for US players. I'm sure there are many more! Email me or comment to me on Facebook and I'll add others to the list. (What's the difference between a "fan page" and a regular Facebook page? It's not entirely clear, but here's an online explanation. Some use regular Facebook pages as fan pages.)

• Kanak Jha
• Navin Kumar
• Nikhil Kumar
• Tahl Leibovitz
• Nandan Naresh
• Sid Naresh
• Sean O'Neill
• Jenson Van Emburgh
• Lily Zhang

Junior Olympics
Table Tennis was a part of the Junior Olympics from 1982-2013, plus in 2016. For many years starting in 1985 they also held the Junior Nationals in conjunction. This used to be an annual must tournament for serious junior players all over the country. I recently discovered that all of the results (table tennis and other sports) are online! Here's the page. (It brings back a lot of memories for me, since I was the match coach for over 200 gold medalists at the Junior Olympics and Junior Nationals, more than any other table tennis coach.)

Top 10 Men's Points | WTT Macao
Here's the video (3:26). See Hugo's backhand counterloop 26 seconds in!

Wally Green and Spin Table Tennis
Here's the video (5:07) from  WPIX 11 News.

New from Steve Hopkins

• WAB Club Feature: Fremont Table Tennis Academy
• OxNation Update: Kanak’s win helps fuel Ochsenhausen
• PongNow: Bowie and Melba Martin (27:40)
• "How I Glue" – Timo Boll (with link to video 26:18)
• World Rankings are Back: Fan, Xu, Ma Finish 2020 on Top
• WTT Macau Recap: Raising the $ Bar for the Sport
• Is It Time to Restock?

New from the ITTF
Here's their home page and news page.

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

Strange and Interesting Table Tennis Merchandise

• Baby Yoda for Table Tennis Lovers Unisex (T-Shirt Long Sleeve Sweatshirt Hoodie). I really want to buy this one, but it may say $19.99, there's also $9.99 for shipping, $4 extra for XL (?), $2 tax, for a net total of over $36 for a t-shirt. I'm still thinking about it - it perfectly joins my table tennis and science fiction worlds.
• Never Underestimate An Old Man Who Loves Table Tennis (shirt or sweatshirt)
• Ping-Pong Legend shirt
• Ping-Pong Cat shirt
• There's No Crying In Table Tennis Funny Ping Pong Joke PopSockets Grip and Stand for Phones and Tablets
• Table Tennis Drive sign

Unreal Counter-hit
Here's the video (33 sec, including slo-mo replay). With the lack of masks, social distancing, and the well-deserved shaking of hands, I hope this wasn't a recent video!

ProSpin95 Table Tennis Trick Shots
Here's the video (58 sec)!

Romi Bear & Dami Rabbit "Table Tennis" | Cartoons for Kids
Here's the video (2:16)!

Andy Capp Table Tennis
Here's the cartoon!

Quit Table Tennis
Here's the cartoon! (Here's the non-Facebook version.)

Best Ping Pong Shots 2020
Here's the video (8:37) from Pongfinity - these shots are INSANE!!!

***
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Tip of the Week
Letting an Opponent Control Play is Risky.

Sports Illustrated
They have an article in the new issue, Table Tennis Remains Diversity's Best Kept Secret. (I think it's in the December print issue.) The story features one of my students, Navin Kumar, as well as Nancy Zhou, Dr. Tsz Lun (Alan) Chu, Ibrahim Hamadtou, Anushka Oak, and Lily Zhang. Navin's involvement (and I think some of the others) came about when the writer contacted me with a series of questions about diversity in table tennis. I thought about it for a few days, and realized I was probably not the right person to interview about this. To use a metaphor, cars are important, but I'm probably not the person to interview about cars. (What's a carburetor? I have no idea.) So I sent them some other contacts, and then turned them over to Navin, who is Indian, as well as having Parkinson's (bronze in singles, silver in doubles at the 2019 World Parkinson's Table Tennis Championships) as well as having a mostly artificial heart.

Why Doesn't Table Tennis Get More Exposure?
I was asked on Facebook recently (by Mike Clardy) why our sport gets so little TV (and online) exposure from the major venues, while sports like bowling, darts, and even axe throwing get more coverage. Here was my response (with some minor updating).

It's always been a strange phenomenon that table tennis gets so little TV exposure in the US, while more obscure sports (and in some cases, "sports") are on TV. There have been a few isolated cases, such as ESPN's coverage of table tennis circa 1980, and we had some TV exposure in the early 1990s due to Dan Seemiller's efforts. But these are the exceptions. In general, table tennis doesn't get nearly as much TV exposure as other, seemingly lesser sports. The same thing applies to the various major online venues as well. But long ago I realized why. I'm going to explain with a seemingly non-related item - the history of Star Trek.

In 1964, Gene Roddenberry went to Desilu Productions with the idea for Star Trek. It was well-thought out, but was so revolutionary that it was turned down by CBS and NBC. The board of Desilu also voted against producing it - but they were overruled by their owner, Lucille Ball, of "I Love Lucy" fame. Ball liked the idea and championed it, and made Star Trek happen. If not for her, there would be no Star Trek. (Here's an article about it from Entertainment Weekly and here's another from Star Trek.com.)

How does this relate to table tennis? Well, look at all those sports and "sports" that get exposure on TV. Also look at all the bad movies and TV shows that get made. Why does that happen? Because of each of them had a "champion" who made it happen. It means that no matter what you do, there is an element of luck in getting something produced on TV.

However - and this is the BIG HOWEVER - there's a saying in sports that champions make their own luck. What that means when it comes to getting on TV is two-fold. (And now I'm going to cleverly and completely change the meaning of the word "champion.") First, you have to find your champion. Second, you have to sell your champion. In the case of Star Trek, Roddenberry went to multiple networks and studios in search of a champion, and found one in Lucille Ball. Then he was able to sell her on the idea. She championed its production, and the result is history.

In the case of all those bad movies, TV shows, and "sports" that get more TV and online coverage in the US than table tennis, they all did the same thing - they looked for and sold themselves to a champion, and that champion made it happen.

What does this mean for table tennis in the US? Occasionally someone from USATT or elsewhere looks for a champion, but is unable to sell it. Others might be able to sell it, but aren't looking for that champion, or don't know how to do so. More often, neither happens. And so (with rare, temporary exceptions), we have never found and sold ourselves to a champion to get table tennis regularly on TV in the US.

How can we change this? Simple, and by that, I mean the idea is simple, but the execution not so easy. It means going to those people (like Lucille ball) who are in a position to put both good and bad movies, TV shows, sports, and "sports" on TV and large online venues, and selling them on table tennis, just as Roddenberry did with Star Trek. It's how all those good and bad productions got on TV. All we have to do is to follow in their footsteps, and keep doing so until we find our champion - i.e. we MAKE our luck. (Hopefully as a sport, not a "sport.") If all goes well, someday someone will point at us and say, "How come a 'sport' like table tennis gets so much TV exposure, while our sport doesn't?"

One addendum I'd add to the above is that when we do get coverage, we need to make it stand out (duh!). Many focus on the personalities, which is important. But equally important, and maybe even more so, is to focus on conflicting styles. One of the reasons people love to watch Federer vs. Nadal in tennis is that clash of styles - the elegant Federer, with his power forehand and one-handed backhand, vs. the runs-down-everywhere Nadal with his topspinning forehand and two-handed backhand. One of the reasons the current world #1, Novak Djokovic, is considered boring is that he doesn't really bring anything exciting, style-wise - he's basically a robotic backboard who never misses. The same is true of the past tennis - think of the clash in styles of McEnroe (net-rusher) vs Borg (two-winged topspinner) v. Connors (aggressive flat hitter). Or boxing - who could forget the dancing, boxing style of Muhammed Ali vs. the constantly coming-at-you attack of Joe Frazier? (Okay, I'm dating myself.)

In the past, table tennis at the top had more styles, but many of those styles are almost dead now - pips-out hitters, choppers, even Seemiller grip players. The difference in styles is more subtle, so it's more important that the commentators and public relations directors emphasize the differences - for example, the backhand dominance of Japan's Tomokazu Harimoto vs. the off-table topspins of Xu Xin vs. the two-winged blistering attacks of Ma Long and Fan Zhendong.

Weekend Coaching and MDTTC Juniors
On Sunday, I worked mostly with two of the younger players in the junior session, with a focus (as usual) on fundamentals. One thing that always surprises me about younger kids - they are fascinated with serves, and given a choice, will often choose to do that (and do ball pickup!) rather than actually, you know, play!!! Afterwards, I stayed late and hit with two of our 1800 juniors. I'm way, Way, WAY out of shape after eight months of pandemic isolation (i.e. mostly sitting in my lounge chair reading, writing, doing crossword puzzles, and watching TV), and when I played a practice match with one of them, it showed.

This was the first Friday-Sunday after Thanksgiving since 1975 that I didn't play or coach at the North American Table Tennis Teams Championships (previously the US Teams). My first year was 1976, when I was 16, and it's been 44 years in a row until now. It was cancelled this year.  

All these cancelled tournaments is, of course, disappointing to the kids, who train so hard for them, as well as the incredible coaching staff that works with them. I'm pretty proud of our players. In the new rankings that came out last week (after the Presper Financial Architects Open in Ohio, which didn't get cancelled), in Hopes Boys (12 and under), my club (MDTTC) now has the #1, 3, 5, and 6 players in the country, with ratings of 2286, 2078, 2020, and 1994. We also have the #2 and #3 in 11 and under, at 2078 and 1994 - these two are also in the Hopes rankings at #3 and # 6, and have another year of eligibility. We also have the #1 in 9 and under. (The latter plays out of Philadelphia but trains with us on weekends.) We also have 7 of the 21 players in Mini-Cadet Boys (13 and under). Along with my great fellow coaches, I've worked extensively with most of these players, several of them starting out with me. Here's a listing of some of our top junior players.

• Stanley Hsu (12, 2286, #1 in Hopes Boys, National Hopes Champion)
• Tiffany Ke (16, 2220, #12 in Junior Girls, but recently #1 with a rating over 2400, with two years of eligibility left, National Team Squad)
• Nicole Deng (14, 2116, National Mini-Cadet Champion, National Team Squad, trains with us on weekends)
• Ryan Lin (11, 2078, #3 in Hopes Boys, #2 in 11 and Under)
• William Wu (14, 2071)
• James Zhang (13, 2059, #14 in mini-cadets)
• Stephanie Zhang (17, 2038)
• Lance Wei (13, 2027, #17 in mini-cadets)
• Mu Du (12, 2020, #5 in Hopes Boys)
• Winston Wu (11, 1994, #6 in Hopes Boys, #3 in 11 and Under)
• Ryan Lee (13, 1986, #21 in mini-cadets)
• Arjun Kumar (9, 1585, #1 in 9 and Under, trains with us on weekends)
• A dozen others from 1600-1900

On Saturday, I had my weekly session with Navin Kumar. (As I've often noted, I'm retired from private coaching except for these sessions.) He made a breakthrough on attacking pushes with his long pips (no sponge), as he's gaining confidence in taking the ball right off the bounce and "bumping" it with a quick topspin. His forehand was also much stronger than usual this session. Here's video (14 sec).

World Table Tennis
Here's their home page, with the large title, "Introducing World Table Tennis: A New Perspective." WTT was set up by the ITTF to run all of their events.

Here's the ITTF home page for World Table Tennis Macao, held Nov. 25-29 in Macao, China (where they have created a "bubble" for players and others involved, due to the pandemic), with complete results, articles, pictures, and video. Note the links to Prize Money ($400,000, including $15,000 appearance fees), Playing Format, and Scoring - the latter two are especially of interest.

USATT Coverage (from World Table Tennis)

• HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY FIVE
• TOP POINTS OF DAY FIVE
• HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY FOUR
• TOP POINTS OF DAY FOUR
• HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY THREE
• TOP POINTS OF DAY THREE
• HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY TWO
• TOP POINTS OF DAY TWO
• HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY ONE
• TOP POINTS OF DAY ONE
• FENG TIANWEI VS LILY ZHANG
• LILY ZHANG VS PETRISSA SOLJA

Other Articles and Video

• WTT 2020 Macao! May This Be The Future Of Modern Table Tennis? (7:37), from Jules Apatini. "The WTT Macao 2020 event is a NEW Electric Modern Era for our Sport to come. A mainstream perspective of the WTT 2020 Table Tennis Competition. You can see and hear what Robert Gardos says to Jules Apatini of nyctvlive.com—coming directly from a participant's mouth. What is going on in our Sport of Table Tennis? Good Or Bad. Is our Sport ready for PRIMETIME like other racket sports? Hear it from the eldest competitor Hungarian born Austria's Robert Gardos, a friend, as he presented a pretty good analysis of the WTT Macao 2020 event."
• WTT’s Inaugural Event in Macao, by Steve Hopkins
• German Table Tennis Association Voices Governance and Transparency Concerns Surrounding WTT, from Inside the Games.

USATT Coaches Meeting
The Zoom meeting was on Friday, Nov. 27, at 11AM. Here's video of the meeting (83 min), hosted by Sean O'Neill. The meetings usually take place the second and fourth Friday of each month, and usually last about an hour - and ALL USATT coaches are invited to attend to ask questions and give their thoughts. (Info on each meeting is posted in advance in the USATT Coaches Facebook page.) Discussions included Coaches feedback on their latest activities; Coach of the Year award; SafeSport/Background Checks; Articles for the USATT website; National Development Team; World Table Tennis Feedback; and perhaps of most interest to viewers, a great discussion of coaching between games that starts at 16:56 where all five of us give our thoughts on this. There were five of us attending:

• USATT High Performance Director and five-time US Men's Singles Champion Sean O'Neill
• USATT High Performance Manager and long-time USA Women's Team Coach Doru Gheorghe
• USA National Team Coach and 8-time US Women's Singles Champion and former world #3) Gao Jun
• USATT Certified National Coach and 2018 USATT Volunteer Coach of the Year Mike Lauro
• Me

Champion and Great Entertainer, Jacques Secretin passes (1949-2020)
Here's the ITTF obit. He was a big star in the 1970s and 80s, reaching #3 in the world, 1976 European Men's Singles Champion, 1977 World Mixed Doubles Champion (along with four silver medals), and completely dominating French table tennis for decades. (Here's his Wikipedia page.) Besides his lefty topspin attacking, he was also known for his lobbing - when I started out in 1976, I was told he was one of the "Big Three Lobbers" - Secretin, Surbek, and Hasegawa. However, he was best known as half of the famous "Secretin-Purkart" exhibition team - he was the brilliant and incredibly skillful straight man to Vincent Purkart's clowning. Here's video from their exhibitions (8:20). Here's another article, Jacques Secrétin, the legend of table tennis, is dead, from World Today News, with more pictures and great video.

PongNow: Ty Hoff
Here's the video (20:17) by Steve Hopkins. Ty and I have a long history. I was one of his original coaches. His first coaching came at the 1980 Perry Schwartzberg Camp in Wilson, NC, where I was Perry's assistant coach. Later, Ty hired me as a private coach for I think three days in New Bern, NC. Still later, Ty and I teamed up to nine US Open and Nationals Hardbat Doubles titles. (I also won singles twice, while he won I think four times. I normally use sponge.) We also made the quarterfinals of Men's Doubles at the Nationals one year. In 1990, when I became the director of the Resident Table Tennis Program at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, I brought in Ty as the dorm manager, where he also acted as a practice partner.

Table Tennis Took Angie Bengtsson Around the world, Letting Her Share Her Native Heritage
Here's the USATT article. 

New from Samson Dubina

• Sarah Hazinski Interview (8:51)
• Presper Financial Architects Open Photos
• Presper Financial Architects Open Results
• Chopper Simulation Training (55 sec)
• Backspin-Topspin Transition Balls (64 sec)
• Excessive Celebration

Table Tennis VOD Review #5 - Need to Be More Stable
Here's the video (32:50) from Louis Levene, where he analyzes a match.

World's Best Table Tennis Server Par Gerell vs Dan and Tom
Here's the video (7:39) from Table Tennis Daily.

How to Reverse Serve from Basic to Professional and Tips of World Stars
Here's the video (19:55) from Ti Long.

Windshield Wiper Serve Tutorial | Short Deadball
Here's the video (9:24) from Joey Cochran at Table Tennis Junkie.

Basic Skills is the Key
Here's the video (6:28) from Table Tennis TV.

Ding Ning Full Training Session WTT MACAO 2020
Here's the video (25:14). She's the three-time World Women's Singles Champion and reigning Olympic Women's Singles Gold Medalist.

Reflections on Excellence by Michel Gadal
The book is now on sold as a Kindle book at Amazon. I reviewed the digital book in my November 9 blog.

Move Like a Table Tennis Player
Here's the article from Coach Jon.

Table Tennis Returns Thanks to You!!
Here's the ITTF video (3 min).

New from the ITTF
Here's their home page and news page.

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

ProSpin95 Table Tennis Trick Shots
Here's the video (53 sec).

Blue Funny Face Table Tennis Paddle
Imagine playing someone with this paddle!!! Wouldn't it be great if you could use rackets like this, instead of the all-one-color surfaces required?

International Political Table Tennis Cartoons
Here they are, one on climate change, and one on Greece, Turkey, EU, and Refugees.

AJAX Retro Comic Book Cover Full Fun PING Pong Black Art Print
Here's your chance to order this table tennis poster - I think it's a dog playing a kangaroo and its baby joey!

Broken Table
Here's the cartoon!

Happiness is . . .
Here's the cartoon.

New from Pongfinity!

• Glow Trick Shots (3:19)
• Do It Yourself Ping Pong Racket Challenge (11:13)

Spider-Man into the PingPongverse - Basic Table Tennis drills with Spider-Man
Here's the video (5:49)!

Legos Table Tennis!

• Women's World Cup Final: Chen Meng VS Sun Yingsha (4:09)
• Men's World Cup Final: Ma Long vs Fan Zhendong (3:27)

Non-Table Tennis - "The Untold Christmas Carol" and "Pinning the Egg"
Tangent, one of the big science fiction reviewers, did a very positive review of a current story of mine in Galaxy's Edge, "The Untold Christmas Carol," the behind-the-scenes expose of what really happened to Tiny Tim - with Satan and Benedict Arnold involved. The review finished with this: "The prose was well-paced and told in a whimsical style. A nice nugget to pass a few minutes with a smile." Here's the review. On Wednesday, I sold a humorous science fiction story to the Sci-Fi Journal, "Pinning the Egg." (It involves an alien invader and Excalibur, but in a SF fashion.)

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Tip of the Week
The Forehand Down-the Line Block and Counterloop.

USA Table Tennis Executive Directors, CEOs, Presidents, Board Chairs, and Editors
Here is the comprehensive list, which I put together for the heck of it. I've published partial lists in the past, but now they're all there!!! I'm in it for my two tenures as editor, totaling 12 years and 71 issues.

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

=>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

=>Other Table Tennis Books Published in 2020

• 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
• Ping! A Personal Perspective on Table Tennis by Graham Frankel

Weekend Coaching
On Sunday I mostly worked with three kids in the group session, with a huge focus on footwork and serves. For much of the session the three rotated, one with me, one practicing serves, one on ball pickup. (Halfway through I gave them the option of doing either serve practice or hitting with the robot, and they all chose more serve practice.) The down side - my neck started bothering me, and I could barely turn it by the end of the session. I'd told two high-level kids I'd play practice matches with them after the session - something I hadn't done in a while - but had to drop out because of the neck problem. It seems better this morning, but still stiff.

On Saturday I had my usually weekly session with Navin Kumar. His strength is still his backhand block (with long pips, no sponge), but his forehand is improving. During this session he started hitting harder at one point, and made some good shots, though the consistency went down - mostly because he sometimes didn't recover fast enough from the previous shot, and so was vulnerable on the next, especially if my return went deep on the table. Here's video (62 sec) of him hitting harder, and doing some footwork. (I'm retired from private coaching, other than the sessions with Navin, to get him ready for the next World Parkinson's Championships.)

Regarding weekend coaching, I was taking next weekend "off" to go coach two of our junior teams at the Westchester Teams in New York. Alas, for some strange reason (what could it be?), it got cancelled. One of the things about table tennis is that it's best if you have something to look forward to - and that usually means tournaments, whether playing or coaching at them. At this point, I'm just looking forward to the day when we all this is over.

Published Article #2000
This morning, when my Tip of the Week went up, both here and at Butterflyonline, it was an historic moment for me - it was my 2000th published article. This is in addition to 1795 blog entries (including this one) - with my 1800th blog entry scheduled to go up on Monday, Dec. 28. (If you include blog entries, that's 3795 published articles.) The articles include 1765 on table tennis; 63 non-fiction/non-table tennis (including 33 on the Baltimore Orioles, several science articles, and one in a math journal back in my math days); and 114 short story sales (plus 39 resales, 4 novels, and 15 "twitter" sales). I also have a total of 17 books, which include nine on table tennis, eight science fiction/fantasy, and one travel book. (That adds up to 18 because the novel "The Spirit of Pong" counts as both table tennis and science fiction/fantasy.) Here's a complete listing of my published work. I normally update it at the end of each month, but went ahead and updated it this morning to including all 2000 articles.

USATT High Performance Committee
The new, updated minutes are up. I blogged about this in my November 2 blog. They've taken the emails to the committee out of the minutes - but you can compare the new version with the old one, which is linked in the Nov. 2 blog. I haven't checked to see if there are other changes.

ITTF Grand Finals
Here's the info page for the event held Nov. 19-22 in Zhengzhou, China, with complete results, articles, pictures, and video. On the women's side, Chen Meng won for the fourth year in a row, after also winning the Women's World Cup two weeks before. On the men's side, Ma Long defeated Fan Zhendong in the final, reversing their result from the week before at the Men's World Cup. Here is coverage by Steve Hopkins from Butterfly:

• Ma Long Wins Sixth
• A Fan/Ma Final Repeat
• Another Day, Another Woojin Surprise
• Day 1

Stupa Analytics
On Fri & Sat, Nov. 20-21, Stupa Analytics did online Zoom seminars for Clubs and Coaches, hosted by USATT and Sean O'Neill. I attended the Coaches seminar at noon on Saturday, which lasted exactly one hour, with eleven participants. Here's a screen shot. They have some really sophisticated software with a lot of features that can really analyze your table tennis game. (They currently specialize in table tennis, but plan to branch out to other sports.) The software first detects the table, ball, and players, and then analyzes the rallies - it can even distinguish between a block and a topspin stroke. For example, in one video, I wrote down its seemingly accurate analysis of a player's shot: "Not making enough space between elbow and body while playing FH topspin. Right leg weight on heel and unstable." Their front page advertises, "Get Your 1st Match Analyzed For Free!" So why not give it a try? Their services include (with the first three perhaps of greatest interest to most players):

• Match Analysis
• Training Analysis
• Athlete Profiling
• Broadcasting & Creative Media
• Fit Tech

New from Samson Dubina

• The Talent Trap - Fixed Mindset vs Growth Mindset
• Lucky Balls - Learn about returning nets and edges!
• Anonymous Donor - Thank You Barbara Wurster

New from Joey Cochran at Table Tennis Junkie

• Shovel Serve Tutorial | Short Backspin (7:21)
• Third Ball Attack Tutorial (10:01)
• Windshield Wiper Serve Tutorial | Fast Topspin(11:25)
• How to return serves and read spin (14:23)

Epic Sidespin Serve Tutorial
Here's the video (19:10) by Tom Lodziak.

New from Louis Levene (Looeelooee)

• Table Tennis VOD Review #1 (26:51) - Good Strategy, Poor Shot Selection and Execution
• Table Tennis VOD Review #2 (06:39) - Tips For More Consistent Backhand
• Table Tennis VOD Review #3 (28:06) - Good Technique but Not Enough Point Generation

How To Win A Point In Table Tennis
Here's the video (2:43) from ProSpin95 Table Tennis

Tomokazu Harimoto Practicing Serves at World Cup
Here's the video (4:07). At 17, the Japanese star is already #4 in the world. Note how much care goes into each serve - none of that rushed "serve and grab the next ball and serve again" thing that many players do, with the apparent theory that quantity is more important than quality. He also has not one, but two coaches watching over him! Interesting side note - 20 seconds in you'll see former MDTTC coach (my club) Jeffrey Zeng Xun in the foreground, briefly picking up balls and then talking on his cell phone. He shows up a few more times. (He coached Lily Zhang at the last two Women's World Cups - semifinals and quarterfinals.)

Antecedents and Consequences of Outward Emotional Reactions in Table Tennis
Here's the academic paper from Frontiers in Psychology, where "researchers analyzed footage from the finals of the youth National Championships in Greece and categorized all of the outward emotional displays as either positive, neutral, or negative. They then examined the antecedents and consequences of these displays to see if any patterns emerged." Some of it is techy; some is very readable and relatable to our own table tennis experiences. Here is the key takeaway from Kevin Finn at In the Loop ("Your concise monthly guide to the latest research pertaining to all things table tennis").

Key Takeaway:
There's a decent chance you are showing more negative emotions to your opponent than positive. When the stakes are high and the score is close, know there is a good chance you will react emotionally after the point. You should have a plan for how to handle losing a point in these situations and work on perfecting that table tennis "poker face." If you win the point, you can celebrate (you don't have to go full Harimoto), but learning to react a little more stoically when you lose the point might be a good idea. Easier said than done, I know! Note: In a recent video on mental strength, Timo Boll made this exact recommendation.

New from Steve Hopkins
(See also his coverage of the ITTF Grand Finals above.)

• PongNow: Tahl Leibovitz (32:51)
• WAB Club Feature: Table Tennis Minnesota
• ITTF Announcement: Continued Effects of COVID on Tokyo

Making the Best of Being a Blocker
Here's the article by Coach Jon.

Table Tennis Referees
Here's the USATT article, by Wendell Dillon

The Pursuit of Belonging, Part 2
Here's the article featuring Anderson College and August College in the early 1990s, and including a link to Part 1 (which I linked to when it first came out).

TTLive Software
Here's the info page. "At TTLive.app, we have software with complete tooling for running leagues and tournaments with the ability to create pools, teams, and brackets for tournaments with the click of a button."

New from the ITTF
Here's their home page and news page.

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

Archival Footage

• 1937 Newark, N.J. National competition (45 sec) - actually an exhibition, with Sol Schiff on left, Coleman Clark on right, both lefties.
• 1946 US Table Tennis Championships (65 sec)
• 1947 Worlds Finals - Bohumil Vana d. Ferenc Sido (48 sec). Vana would win in 1938 and 1947 (and likely more if not for the eight-year break because of World War 2), and lose in the final in 1948 and 1949. Sido would win in 1953, while losing in the final in 1947 and 1959. Sido was the last player to win men's singles at the Worlds with a hardbat, and the last to make the final with all hardbat. (Eberhard Schöler would make the final in 1969 with hardbat on the backhand only.)

The Best Ping Pong Movies of All Time
Here's the article, including preview videos. It's from 2019, but I don't think I've linked to it before. While we're at it, where's the Table Tennis Films Wikipedia page.

Great Hand-Switch Shot
Here's the video (10 sec) - that's a nice lefty off-the-bounce counterloop! And he did it at 9-6 in the fifth. Even the opponent clapped. There's another interesting thing about this - note how the opponent barely reacted to the lefty loop. He's obviously a good player, but table tennis reactions are done by the subconscious - and since it wasn't expecting or prepared for a sudden lefty loop, it barely reacted, and so the opponent barely waved his paddle at the ball going by. If it had been essentially the same shot, but done righty, he probably would have either returned it or made a good effort.

Fancy Ping-Pong Paddles
For the Table Tennis Nerd. Now if they only came in Tenergy...

Test Your Ping Pong IQ
Here's the video (8:49) from Adam Bobrow.

Table Tennis Prank
Here's the video (9 sec)!

Baby vs. Table Tennis Balls
Here's the video (2:13) from Tom Lodziak!

Well, Kid, Ya Beat Me - Best Table Tennis Cartoon Ever
Here it is! And here's a related one that might have come just before it. Both are from The Far Side.

New from Pongfinity!

• Real Life Ping Pong Game (3:20)
• Weirdest Ping Pong Match (6:18)

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Tip of the Week
Use Both Sides of the Body When Forehand Looping.

ITTF Men's World Cup
Here's the home page for the event, which finished yesterday in Weihai, China. Here are news articles, videos (or see them directly on Youtube), preliminary RR results (including USA's Kanak Jha's two seven-gamers), and the single eliminations results. The big news - Fan Zhendong won for the fourth time, including his third in a row! Here are some videos, with time between points removed:

• Final: Ma Long vs Fan Zhendong (15:48)
• Semifinal: Ma Long vs Tomokazu Harimoto (10:41)
• Semifinal: Fan Zhendong vs Jang Woojin (7:54)
• Fan Zhendong checking balls before the final (1:34)

Here's Men's World Cup coverage from Steve Hopkins at Butterfly:

• Fan Tops Final Day
• Semifinals
• Final Four Are Set
• Main Draw Underway
• Group Play
• Group Draw Revealed
• Preview

Kanak Jha at the Men's World Cup and Some Analysis
The results for USA's Kanak Jha (world #27) could be called a well-played disappointment. He was in a preliminary group of three, top two advancing, with Liam Pitchford (ENG, world #15) and Chuang Chih-Yuan (TPE, world #30). Coaching Kanak was Jörg Bitzigeio, former USATT High Performance Director. (See also the interviews with both by Steve Hopkins below. Also, I'm told that Kanak here and Lily Zhang & Wu Yue at the recent Women's World Cup were funded by themselves and sponsors, not by USATT, primarily due to Covid-19 health and safety concerns.) The group started with Pitchford defeating Chuang, -9,6,8,11,11. Then Kanak played Pitchford and Chuang . . . and they were both wild ones, but both ended in seven-game losses for Kanak. Here are the two matches:

• Liam Pitchford d. Kanak Jha (9:03), -7,4,-13,5,5,-10,4
• Chuang Chih-Yuan d. Kanak Jha (13:32), -10,7,3,7,-6,-8,12 - with Kanak fighting off five match points, starting at 7-10 in the seventh, and at 10-11 and 11-12.

I haven't watched the Chuang match, but I watched the entire Pitchford match. He won the close ones (he always seems at his best when it's close), but when he lost, he lost big, averaging 4.5 points in those four games - primarily because Pitchford had adjusted to Kanak's tactics. Kanak won game three from down 4-8, 8-10.

I was impressed with Kanak's tactics and game plan against Pitchford, especially on receive. (I'm also impressed by his continual improvement over the last few years.) Like most world-class players these days, Kanak (and Pitchford) has a nice backhand banana flip, and could probably attack all of Pitchford's serves. But Pitchford is at his best about half a step back, counter-attacking off these shots. If Kanak attacks the serve, it almost plays into Pitchford's game. So Kanak avoided the temptation to attack most serves, and instead pushed most serves short, bringing Pitchford in over the table and out of his comfort zone. This allowed Kanak to often control play, even on Pitchford's serve. However, it might have been slightly overused. By about the fourth game, Pitchford was so expecting and used to these receives that they became less effective. I think the next time they play, Kanak should use the same tactic, but go ahead and attack more serves to keep Pitchford off balance, especially as the match goes on. If Pitchford has to guard more against the attack, then he won't be as ready for those short receives.

When attacking, I think Kanak attacked the corners too much. I think he often attacked the forehand to get Pitchford out of his two-winged pocket, where he's strong attacking from both wings. However, this usually led to Pitchford counterlooping cross-court to Kanak's forehand, and unless Kanak was able to counterloop the first one aggressively (and hopefully for a winner), Pitchford dominated the forehand-to-forehand counterlooping duels, since he's a natural off-table player, while Kanak plays closer to the table. When Kanak attacked the backhand, he let Pitchford play his strong backhand while staying in that pocket.

Instead, when attacking, I think Kanak needs to put a target on Pitchford's elbow and just go after it aggressively, over and over, rarely going to the corners until he sees Pitchford out of position, with a corner open. By going to the middle, it forces weaker shots (as Pitchford has to both choose between forehand and backhand and then move to the ball, and without a big angle to go for), but it also draws Pitchford out of position, and then Kanak can go for the open corner. I think Kanak knows all this, but in the heat of a rally, when he had a strong shot, he too often went to the corners. Sometimes he did this because crosscourt is usually more natural and easier (more table), but too often that gave Pitchford the chance to regain the initiative.

The other problem I saw was that by the fourth game, Pitchford was so used to Kanak's serves that he often controlled play there. Kanak pretty much served every time from the backhand corner, while Pitchford would often serve from the middle (with his reverse pendulum serve). I think Kanak would do better if he developed serve and attack patterns that start with a serve from the middle or even forehand side. This doesn't leave him in as strong a forehand position as he'd like, but the added variation makes up for that. It forces Pitchford and other opponents to adjust to a ball coming from a different angle. Serving like this and perhaps following with a backhand attack would give him more variety that the opponent would have to adjust against.

Regarding Kanak's overall game, he has a quick, aggressive topspin backhand (like Harimoto), and a quick, close-to-table forehand (also a little like Harimoto, though that's Harimoto's "weaker" side). On the forehand side, I was impressed at Kanak's ability to end the point quickly while close to the table, but he doesn't have world-class point-ending power. So he has to loop from close to the table to make up for this. When he backs up, he's not nearly as strong. Hopefully, he's doing a lot of weight training and multiball to develop power, working with an expert trainer - I'd be surprised if he's not already doing this.

If he wants to truly challenge the best players in the world (and go for medals at the 2024 Olympics - perhaps 2021, though that may be too soon) - then he needs to develop something (or somethings) that really challenges the best players. There are many possibilities - forehand, backhand, footwork, serve, receive, steadiness, etc. But here's the catch - to develop something that's so strong that it challenges the best players in the world, he can't just practice it a part of each session, and then move on to the next technique. If he does that, the techniques will likely get a little better, but not to the point where they challenge the best players. Instead, once he and his coaches decide what it is that he can develop to challenge the best players, he needs to focus on that for half or more of EVERY session, day after day for months and years, with the goal to be the best at that technique IN THE WORLD. For example, he could learn to dominate with quick, aggressive topspin backhands (like world #4 Harimoto, who is only 17 and already challenging the best Chinese), or perhaps quick forehands, or maybe receive. But it has to be something that he focuses on and strives to make the best in the world. (It's just an advanced form of Saturation Training.)

For Kanak, he might be best dominating on the backhand, with a quick, point-ending forehand when he gets the right shot. Which means, if he really wants to challenge the best, then he should spend much of every single session working on that dominating backhand (along with sudden point-ending forehands).

He might also turn receive into an over-powering strength, since this already seems a relative strength. The latter means a coach should be serving to him, over and Over and OVER, maybe 30-40 minutes at a time, maybe twice a day, while he works on developing the best receive IN THE WORLD. Most of that would be without playing out the point, so the focus is on the receive itself and to maximize the receive practice. Then he'd go on to where a practice partner/coach serves and plays one shot, so Kanak gets feedback on how strong the receive was. He'd also play out some points, but players do that way too often when working on receive, and so don't get the repetitive practice needed to make a technique GREAT.  

But Kanak and his coaches know his game better than I do, and they are the ones who should decide just what it is Kanak can turn into an overpowering strength. And then they should focus on that in every session until it IS an overpowering strength - something so strong the Chinese will study videos of it to prepare to play him!

Weekend Coaching
On Sunday I worked with the kids in the MDTTC junior program. As usual, lots and lots of stroking and footwork drills. We also did some pushing games to work on that, and a lot of serve practice.

On Saturday I had my weekly session with Navin Kumar. We spent a lot of time on his backhand "bump," where he attacks a push with his long pips (no sponge) with a quick block, i.e. aggressive pushblocking. Even though he hits the ball with an open racket, with a pushing motion, the backspin rebounds back as topspin! (See second video below.) Ideally, eventually he'll be bumping the ball like the woman in this video.

• Forehand smashing (22 sec) - I didn't make him move here since we were just finishing the last balls in the basket and we'd already done some footwork.
• Forehand hit, backhand "bump" (40 sec).

USATT Coaches Meeting
USATT has a USATT Coaches Meeting twice each month on Zoom, normally on the second and fourth Friday. (Info is posted in the USATT Coaches Facebook page.) Most meetings have been at noon (Western time, so 9AM Pacific time), but the time sometimes varies, to accommodate various coaches' schedules. The meetings are hosted by USATT High Performance Director Sean O'Neill. Last week they met at 10:30AM Eastern time (7:30 AM Pacific time), and the meeting lasted just under an hour. Attending were eleven coaches (a twelfth joined near the end). Here's a group shot. Topics covered:

• Coaches introductions
• Stupa Sports Analytics (someone asked, "Is our sport stupafiable?"!)
• T2 Challenge Season 2 (which I've recommended they call "T2 Thursday Night Challenge")
• American Development Model (ADM): "Best practices to run your sport." Here's the About page and the Stages page.
• Covid-19

USATT Election
The USATT election began Oct. 29 and continues until Dec. 13. I wrote about this in my Oct. 26 blog, where I strongly endorsed Khoa Nguyen and Thomas Hu, and also endorsed Will Shortz for Club Rep, though both candidates for that spot were good, the other being Mike Babuin. Susan Sarandon, the actress and founder of SPiN Table Tennis, endorsed Thomas Hu! He has 47 testimonials on the Thomas Hu for USATT Board of Directions Facebook page.

Stupa Analytics to Hose Product Presentations
Here's the USATT News item. They will be doing three presentations:

• Clubs Presentation on Friday, November 20
• Coaches Presentation on Saturday, November 21
• Players Presentation on Sunday, November 22

USATT News

• Call for Nominations for Annual USATT Coach of the Year
• USATT and Stag Re-Join Forces for US National Championships
• USA Table Tennis Announces Athletes' Advisory Council - interesting that four of the seven are Paralympic players
• USATT and T2 Announces Season Two of "T2 Challenge"

Tactical Review: How Lily Zhang Stunned Feng Tianwei in Weihai
Here's the ITTF article.

New from Samson Dubina

• 6 Types of Footwork Drills - Six Types of Footwork Drills
• Beat the Lobber - Learn 8 elements to beating this opponent
• Chance Friend doing multiball (54 sec) - Samson feeds backspin anywhere, Chance has to forehand loop. This was one of my primary drills, way, way back!

Proper Footwork During Serve & Attack
Here's the video (2:52) from Zhou Xin.

Top 5 Tips To Return Impossible Table Tennis Serves
Here's the video (12:25) from Table Tennis Daily.

How to Lob Like a Pro
Here's the article by Alex Horscroft at Expert Table Tennis (which includes video of Xu Xin doing some monster lobs).

Pendulum Serve Like a World Superstar
Here's the video (15:56, in Chinese with English subtitles) from Ti Long. Also see his past videos.

New from Tom Lodziak

• 29 table tennis shadow training ideas + FREE workout sessions (with numerous videos)
• Tom in training #2 … Help me improve! (12:44)

Dimitrij Ovtcharov Backhand Loop
Here's the video (25 sec) as he prepared for the Men's World Cup. "Rah!"

Match Analysis with USATT Rank No. 17
Here's the video (12:19) from Panda Pong.

Remembering George Brathwaite
Here's the video (George is on the first five minutes) from NYC TV Live and Jules Apatini.

DHS Top 10 Points at the ITTF Women's World Cup
Here's the video (6:04) - "Vote your favourite point!"

New from Steve Hopkins and Butterfly

• Behind the Curtain: Life in the ITTF Bubble with Joerg and Kanak (article and video 23:16)
• PongNow: Kanak Jha (5:44)
• WAB Club Feature: Sunny Culture & Sports Center
• Jenson Van Emburgh – Unique Skills – Part 2 Videos
• In Memoriam: Johnathan Humbles
• Women’s World Cup – China Finishes Strong

A Whole Lotta League
Here's the article from Coach Jon.

Ping Pong Beast
Here's a site that does lots of equipment reviews.

New from the ITTF
Here's their home page and news page.

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

Butterfly Racket Outdoors Contest
Here's the info page. It's simple - you  take a photo of Butterfly racket or rackets (with or without rubber) OUTDOORS and send it to Butterfly by Nov. 30 - and you might win a Harimoto Innerforce ALC Autographed Blade!

Ping Pong Legend Shirt
Here it is!

Chen Meng Visits New Zealand - in 2001!
Here's the video (1:22) showing the world #1 woman Chen Meng (and recent Women's World Cup winner) already dominating when she was seven years old!

Cat Ping-Pong in the 50s
Here's the video (38 sec) because we haven't had a cat video in a while.

Fuzzy on Table Tennis
Here's the cartoon! Apparently credenza golf and toilet bocci would be better.

Types of Ping Pong Players
Here's the video (6:17) from Pongfinity!

Table Tennis Trickshots, Outdoor Edition
Here's the video (4:08)!

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Tip of the Week
Think Tactics, Then Let the Shots Happen.

Major Topics This Issue

• Women's World Cup
• Weekend Coaching
• Chop and Smash by Virginia Sung, and Unanimous Consent
• Reflections on Excellence by Michel Gadal
• Business and Table Tennis
• USATT Election
• And Lots More!!!

Women's World Cup
Here's the ITTF home page for the event in Weihai, China, Nov. 8-10, with preliminary group results, single elimination results, news articles, and video (including Lily Zhang and Wu Yue matches). USA's Lily Zhang (world #27) made the quarterfinals, upsetting world #9 (and #5 seed) Feng Tianwei of Singapore in the round of 16. She was down 4-8 and 8-10 in the last game! Here's the ITTF article on the match, First round upset, Lily Zhang comes of age. Alas, she lost in the quarterfinals to world #1 Chen Meng of China. Here are her complete results. She was in a three-way tie in the preliminary RR with Diaz and Pesotska, with all three 2-1 in matches, and all three 6-6 in games among themselves! It went to points, with Lily advancing in first, Diaz second. (Lily was coached in her matches by Jeffrey Zeng Xun, a former co-coach of mine at MDTTC!)

Here are Lily's results:

• RR#1: Lost to Margaryta Pesotska (UKR, world #34), 13,6,5,-7,-3,10
• RR#2: Defeated Adriana Diaz (PUR, world  #19), -11,-7,9,9,10,5
• RR#3: Defeated Mo Zhang (CAN, world #34), 9,-9,10,-9,8,-7,11
• Round of 16: Defeats Feng Tianwei (SIN, world #9, seeded #5), 7,8,9,-8,-8, 11 (down 4-8 and 8-10 in the last game!)
• Quarterfinals: Loses to Chen Meng (CHN, world #1), 8,6,3,9

USA's Wue Yu (world #32) also advanced out of her group of three, making it to the Final Sixteen. Here are her results:

• RR#1: Defeated Petrissa Solja (GER, world #20), 5,4,7,-9,-8,-3,9 - she was up 3-0 before pulling it out, 11-9 in the seventh!
• RR#2: Lost to Chen Szu-Yu (TPE, World #26), 5,-3,4,4,-9,-9,11 - yes, from down 1-3, she lost deuce in the seventh.
• Round of 16: Lost to Cheng I-Ching (TPE, world #8), 5,4,4,3

In the semifinals it will be Chen Meng (CHN, world #1) vs. Han Ming (GER, world #25), and Sun Yingsha (CHN, world #3) vs. Mima Ito (JPN, world #2).

Here is Steve Hopkins coverage of the Women's World Cup. (If you want to read it in order, then read from bottom to top.)

• Lily Zhang’s Run Ends in Quarters
• Lily Zhang Into Quarterfinals
• Group Stage: Both Americans Advance
• Zhang over Diaz
• Wu Pulls Early Upset
• Women’s World Cup: Preview

Here's USATT coverage. 

Weekend Coaching
On Saturday I had my regular session with Navin Kumar. We're really doing a lot of work on his forehand smashing and aggressive blocking. However, we're also doing a lot of work on his backhand blocking, which is his strength. Why so much time on something he already does well? Because you can't beat "stronger" players unless you have something that threatens them, and that means developing overpowering strengths. And so we are trying to turn that into an overpowering strength.

I had a recent discussion with the father of one of the top players in the US, who is striving to improve. I pointed out that if he trains like most players, that means he'll work at all aspects of his game roughly equally - so in each session he might spend 15 minutes on one thing, 15 on another, and so on. If you train that way, your overall level should improve, but you probably won't develop any overpowering strengths that can threaten the best players. To do that, you need to really focus on developing that strength (or strengths), which means, for many months or even years, spending perhaps half of your session completely on that technique and things that set it up. I gave a whole bunch of examples, from Istvan Jonyer (backhand loop) to Todd Sweeris (receive).

On Sunday, we had an odd number of players in our junior group session. So I volunteered to be a practice partner while Coach Wang ran the session. I got a lot of exercise!!! I only fed multiball a few times, did 90% live play, mostly the usual stroking & footwork drills. I did introduce one kid to something she hadn't done much - attacking forehands down the line (to my backhand). She was so used to going crosscourt that at first her "down-the-line" shots kept going to my middle, so I finally put a box on the table to force her to put the ball right down the line to my backhand. (This also involved turning the shoulders back more.) After a few minutes she was smacking the shots!

Chop and Smash by Virginia Sung, and Unanimous Consent
USATT CEO Virginia Sung has started a new USATT blog, "Chop & Smash by Virginia Sung." Most of the first one covers her side in the National Team Selection arguments that have been going on. I was fine with most of it, even parts I disagreed with.

However, in the last paragraph, she defends taking down the minutes of the last two High Performance Committee meetings. (I went over this in my November 2 blog last week.) It says, "In addition, there is no such thing as 'unanimous consent' to approve minutes under our Bylaws or corporate law in the way the HPC acted." (Italics mine.) This is an example of argument by assertion, similar to the assertions made in the USATT Statement that I pointed out in my blog last week. Robert's Rules of Order makes it clear that "unanimous consent" is the standard way to approve minutes, saying, "The correction and approval of minutes is an example of business that is normally handled by unanimous consent." So, if one is going to argue against what is explicitly stated in Robert's Rules, then you have to give a reason WHY. This was not done.

I emailed Virginia last Wednesday, Nov. 4, explaining the above and writing, "May I respectfully request that you cite the bylaw or corporate law that makes the HPC's use of Unanimous Consent improper?" She chose not to answer. I guess I'm now persona non grata. :) 

I am not Virginia's or USATT's enemy, but anyone who knows me knows I can't let something like this go. Tim Boggan, in his Hall of Fame profile about me, wrote that I was "compulsive about truth and accuracy, can’t stand what he thinks is an injustice," and "argues his views rationally and persistently, rationally and persistently, rationally and per—for god’s sake, Larry, Enough!"

Imagine if I were to make similar vague accusations against USATT or someone else, claiming their actions were improper, but didn't specify why they were improper. I'd lose credibility pretty fast. Similarly, if the USATT CEO is going to order the minutes of the High Performance Committee taken down and justify it by saying they used "unanimous consent" and claim that is improper, when that's contradicted by Robert's Rules, then she needs to specifically say what was improper about it, not just make the vague claim. 

Reflections on Excellence by Michel Gadal
I just read the "excellent" table tennis book, Reflections on Excellence by Michel Gadal. It is only available in digital format - and it's definitely worth it! 

Gadal was the long-time national coach for France and Canada, the Director for Performance for England, and the National Technical Director for France. Most famously, he was the coach of 1993 World Men's Singles Champion Jean-Philippe Gatien. He is also the author of the 1997 book, "Train to Win," which was almost a table tennis bible to many.

I'm going to start off by quoting something from the very back of the book, in the Conclusion: "The search for excellence is a passion that has guided me since my beginnings as a coach…" The book is basically an incredible expansion of that passion.

It starts off with a foreword by Gatien, who Gadal coached since he was a kid. Much of Gatien's technique was ground-breaking at the time, such as his close-to-the-table looping.

Then comes a section on what defines excellence. For example, "In terms of results, the definition [of excellence] is quite simple: it is about winning medals in major competitions, Olympics Games, World Championships." But then it goes on and defines it in more ways. There's an entire chapter on The Three Fundamentals of Excellence. They are: 1) How easy it looks [i.e. how easy top players make the game seem, their "fluidity of movements" - there goes my changes!]; 2) Sustainability [repeat performances]; and 3) Agility [which is really Mental Agility, the ability to adapt]. 

He covers the Four Pillars of Excellence: Passion, Patience, Perseverance, Project. ("Project" means "Winning should not be a dream but a project.") Under passion, he asked three-time world women's singles champion Deng Yaping (who also won 4 Olympic golds, 2 singles, 2 doubles), what she thought of the girls she had observed in training, expecting a technical answer. Instead, she answered with a question: "Do they love table tennis? If not, it will be very difficult because repeating the same gestures, the same exercises can be a pleasure or a nightmare." And that pretty much explains how anyone gets to be the best!

He covered Four Areas to Connect for Success. They are Vision, Strategy, Tactics, Technical, and then he explained them and their connection. As an example of vision, he remembered suggesting to the junior Gatien that he learn to take the ball earlier, as the Chinese did, at a time when most European coaches taught players to take the ball later (for consistency and to produce more topspin). Gatien jumped on the idea and made it his own vision, developed a style around it (looping from close to the table), and became the best in the world. (And ironically, most modern players have adopted much of what he and Gadal developed.)

He also wrote about The Three Criteria For Quality Training: Volume + Focus + Feedback. Here he talked about the idea you may have heard about the 10,000 hours (and ten years) it takes to achieve excellence, but makes clear that you can't just put in the hours, it has to be "deliberate practice," where the player is the "actor of his training" and not just executing instructions given by the coach. There were charts showing what age many top players started, and how many hours per week they trained at various ages - the book is worth it just to see that! (The charts are based on a questionnaire given out to 28 of the "greats" of our sport, including the best of the Chinese, Swedes, and so on.) He also discussed concentration (focus) and how to achieve it, and how to give good feedback.

Under Coaching to Win, he wrote about things good coaches do, including: Take a step back; Be patient; Be flexible; Anticipate (the future of your player and sport); Enjoy taking on new challenges; Knowing one's strengths and weaknesses; Be passionate; Be a Leader; Form a team around you; Create a network; and Coaching is not only teaching. (He expands on each of these.)

There was also:

• The Four Meta-Skills: Looseness (oops, once again I'm out…), Rhythm, Skill Zone, and Use of the Hand.
• The Five Parameters: Effect, Placement, Direction, Speed, Height.
• The Four Pillars of Learning: Active Engagement, Attention, Feedback, and Consolidation. The Four Pillars of Competitive Play: Self-knowledge, Self-confidence, Intuition, and Creativity (such as the development of the backhand banana flip).
• Managing Towards Excellence

I could go over each of these, but that would turn this review into a book itself, and so why not just read the book and find out?

Business and Table Tennis
I was interviewed on the phone on Friday for over an hour by someone who is doing a book on business lessons you can learn from table tennis. We went over a number of them, many of them situations from my book, Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers, which he'd read - he's a serious player.

I don't want to give too much away, but here are some examples we went over:

• Misleading a rival. In the book I went over a match where my opponent was equally good attacking or chopping. As an attacker, he could challenge me, but he had little chance playing defense - I used to be very good against choppers. So what did I do? When he played defense, I pretended to struggle, often grunting and groaning as I "struggled" to lift his chops, missing shots on purpose, and basically putting on an academy award performance. He stuck with chopping, and never realized I could have eaten him alive if I'd wanted to. In business, apparently you also want to mislead rivals!
• Thinking outside the box. The table tennis lesson is from two matches I played where everyone was losing to a pair of junior stars from Canada. When I played them, I did a simple thing - when serving, I took two steps to my right and served forehand pendulum serves from my forehand side, which almost nobody does. This didn't put me in a good position to follow with my forehand (which I wanted to do), but they had so much trouble with this that it didn't matter. The business lesson is that sometimes you have to think outside the box.
• Finding something that threatens an opponent. If you don't have something that stands out as a threat to an opponent, he has nothing to fear. Similarly, a business needs to have something that stands out, something they do better than others, so people have a reason to come to them.

USATT Election
The USATT election began Oct. 29 and continues until Dec. 13. (I'm not sure why they needed six and a half weeks for an email election, but that's the way it's set up. I think there's some other election happening tomorrow.) I wrote about this in my Oct. 26 blog, where I strongly endorsed Khoa Nguyen and Thomas Hu, and also endorsed Will Shortz for Club Rep, though both candidates for that spot were good, the other being Mike Babuin. One big piece of news - Susan Sarandon, actress (Academy Award Winner, five nominations) and founder of SPiN Table Tennis has endorsed Thomas Hu! He now has 46 testimonials on the Thomas Hu for USATT Board of Directions Facebook page.

USOPC Opens Ethics Investigation of Former USATT Chair
Here's the news item about former USATT board chair Anne Cribbs. Yikes! I'm glad I got off the board when I did - a lot of bad stuff seems to have happened afterwards. We'll see how this turns out. And try to remember - innocent until proven guilty. (This was in last week's blog but went up a day late.)

USATT News

• USATT Announces Cancellation of the US Hopes 2020 National Finals. This was understandable but disappointing. The event was for the best 12 and under players in the country, and my club (MDTTC) is strongest right now in this age group for boys. I (and Coach Wang Qingliang) were going up with six players, who would have been seeded #1,4,6,7,9,11,12. (The one's seeded 6&7 are actually both ten, with two more years of eligibility!)
• Kanak Jha v. Kirill Gerassimenko (5:34) - a big German league match! Gerassimenko from Kazakhstan is world #46; USA's Jha is world #27.

New from Samson Dubina

• Pips and Anti - Should you use "junk" rubber?
• Role Model - Sarah Jalli has now reached the top 10 in the US for Women's Rankings
• New Videos - Check out this weeks' action!
• New Power Pong Video - Backspin/Topspin Transition
• Denethi Wijegunawardana Videos - Smashing with PIPS and TT-SERVE Review

How To Reverse Pendulum Serve With Ojo Onaolapo
Here's the video (1:36).

Ma Long Serve (and Follows) at Three Speeds
Here's the video (6:49) from TableTennis BelgiumTV.

Timo Boll Serve (and Follows) at Three Speeds
Here's the video (8:15) from TableTennis BelgiumTV.

How Loose Should the Grip Be?
Here's the video (2:07) from Jun Feng.

How To Do A Backhand Topspin In Table Tennis
Here's the video (4:03) from ProSpin95.

Is It Too Late?
Here's the video (56:02) from PingSkills.

Training a Chopper/Attacker
Here's the video (54 sec) with Coach Samson Dubina and student Chester Taylor.

Table Tennis Serve Disguise - Different Contact Point
Here's the video (20 sec) from eBatt.

Interview with Nandan Naresh
Here's the video (42:20) from Kevin Table Tennis.

Best Table Tennis Shots of October 2020
Here's the video (13:49).

Adam vs. World #8 Female
Here's the video (11:39) from Adam Bobrow. "This is the 3rd and final video from my 3-part with Cheng I-Ching and her coach Jiaqi."

New from Steve Hopkins
(See also his articles in the Women's World Cup segment above.)

• WAB Club Feature: Bridgeport Sports Club
• PongNow: Tao Wenzhang (31:24)
• OxNation: USA’s Kanak Jha- Latest with Ochsenhausen

Opening Pandora’s Box of Table Tennis Accessories
Here's the article from Coach Jon.

New from the ITTF
Here's their home page and news page.

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

Table Tennis Training Part I . . . Rocky!
Here's the video (1:26) from Mods Ullah.

Toddler's Table Tennis Game Takes Internet by Storm
Here's the video (66 sec) . . . from CNN! Note the platform on the far side that the three-year-old kid is standing on. (The table is pushed up against the edge of the platform.) We need this type of thing in the US so we can start players out younger.

Insane Table Tennis Touch by Xu Xin
Here's the video (7 sec) of the world #2 from China!

Waldner Shows Off Soccer Skills
Here's the video (21 sec) - let's see Ma Long do this! (There's also video of Waldner doing the trick Xu Xin demonstrates above, but I can't find it.)

Fun with Mr. Falck and Mr. Persson!
Here's the video (29 sec) as Swedish stars Jorgen Persson (1991 Men's Singles World Champion, on right at start) and Mattias Falck (2019 Men's Singles World Championships Finalist and current world #9) play an exhibition point. Note that Falck has short pips on the forehand.

Banana Practice
Here's the video (34 sec) - literally!

The Craziest Table Tennis Jump Shot You Will Ever See
Here's the video (43 sec)!

Does Wind Affect Ping Pong?
Here's the video (8:01) from Pongfinity!

T-Rex Playing Table Tennis
Here's a picture of me wearing my T-Rex playing table tennis baseball cap, taken at ITTF headquarters last September in Lausanne, Switzerland. It's normally on sale at Amazon, but it's currently unavailable, though you can get the "Christmas" version (see below). But you can also get one of the following! (I have no financial interest here, I just like the idea of a T-Rex playing table tennis - it sort of combines my TT and SF interests.)

• Christmas baseball cap
• T-Shirt
• Pandemic mask
• Can Cooler Bottle
• Hand Towel
• Tire cover
• Knit cap
• Sticker

Non-Table Tennis - "The Untold Christmas Carol"
My fantasy story, "The Untold Christmas Carol," just came out at Galaxy's Edge. This tells the REAL story of Tiny Tim, Uncle Scrooge, Benedict Arnold (you didn't know he was involved?) . . . and Satan, the "protagonist." It's my 17th story in Galaxy's Edge. I'm proud to share a TOC with such greats as Mike Resnick (RIP), Joe Haldeman, Jack McDevitt, Gregory Benford, Michael Swanwick, and Nancy Kress! (If you are a science fiction/fantasy reader, then those names are like reading names out of the world's top twenty ranking list in table tennis!) Here's the cover with all those big names . . . and me!

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