Blogs

Larry Hodges' Blog and Tip of the Week will normally go up on Mondays by 2:00 PM USA Eastern time. Larry is a member of the U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame, a USATT Certified National Coach, a professional coach at the Maryland Table Tennis Center (USA), and author of ten books and over 2100 articles on table tennis, plus over 1900 blogs and over 600 tips. Here is his bio. (Larry was awarded the USATT Lifetime Achievement Award in July, 2018.)

Make sure to order your copy of Larry's best-selling book, Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers!
Finally, a tactics book on this most tactical of sports!!!

Also out - Table Tennis TipsMore Table Tennis Tips, Still More Table Tennis Tips, and Yet Still More Table Tennis Tips, which cover, in logical progression, his Tips of the Week from 2011-2023, with 150 Tips in each!

Or, for a combination of Tales of our sport and Technique articles, try Table Tennis Tales & Techniques. If you are in the mood for inspirational fiction, The Spirit of Pong is also out - a fantasy story about an American who goes to China to learn the secrets of table tennis, trains with the spirits of past champions, and faces betrayal and great peril as he battles for glory but faces utter defeat. Read the First Two Chapters for free!

Tip of the Week

I had a nice Tip of the Week planned for this morning, and was all set to write it, but you know what? It's Labor Day. Nearly everyone else is taking the day off. You know what? So am I. I'll do it tomorrow, and vacation the rest of today (after I finish this blog). I have no coaching scheduled for today. (Also, I'm a little tired as I was up late last night as I got involved in an online political debate at a news forum, where some simply do not accept the basic idea that lying by omission is, in fact, lying. One of my postings actually showed up on Facebook, which I didn't realize until afterwards. If you are on Facebook, by the way, feel free to friend me, and I'll likely friend you back. However, I generally keep my table tennis and politics separate.) I normally plan well in advance what I'm going to write about for each Tip of the Week, but often write it early on Monday morning.

As for the subject for this week's Tip, well, I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise! (Confession: I actually have three Tips planned, and hadn't really decided which one: One on how to incorporate multiball training into your practice sessions; one on how table tennis is literally like chess at light speed as the opening moves of a rally are like the opening moves in chess; and one on when to loop on the forehand.)

Feel free to send in suggestions for Tips or Blog topics!

Neck Update

Yesterday was the first time in twelve days that I didn't wear the neck brace at all. I also did live play for the first time, though only lightly. I probably should do some easy drilling to get back in shape. But I can officially say that 1) the neck is mostly healed, and 2) I'm way out of playing shape.

MDTTC Tournaments

Due to a moment of unbelievable insanity, I agreed earlier this year to take over the running of tournaments at the Maryland Table Tennis Center starting with our September Open. And now our Sept. 22-23 tournament is rapidly approaching. I've run over 150 USATT sanctioned tournaments, but this'll be my first in over ten years. I spent part of yesterday putting together a checklist for everything so I'll know what things are ready and what things I should sputter about in panic.

MDTTC has been using the same software for tournaments since the early 1990s. It doesn't even run on modern computers - to use it, we have to use an old laptop computer. While I still have the old one I used to use and presumably can run the software on that, I've decided to enter the modern age. So I'm exploring new softwares.

I'm leaning toward trying Omnipong. A growing number of tournaments are being run on it, and I'm told it's pretty user friendly. The software's developer used it to run the LA Open this past weekend. Any comments/suggestions/dire warnings on tournament software before I make the plunge? (The other one I was considering is Zermelo.)

Because my laptop was old when Obama took office (circa 2005), and my netbook is really too small for running tournaments (as well as a bit clumsy for writing articles on with its small screen) I plan to head out to Best Buy today and finally get a new laptop. I'll use it for running tournaments, and for writing, checking email, and touring the Internet at the club and when I'm traveling. There's a good chance I'll get this one.

And since we're on the subject of tournaments, here's my Ten-Point Plan to Tournament Success, and my article Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Playing In Your First Tournament . . . But Didn’t Know Where to Ask!

North American Championships

Here are the results, write-ups, and pictures from the North American Championships this past weekend in Cary, NC. Note the feature write-ups on Lily Zhang and Jim Butler.

Table Tennis Paralympics

Here are the results, write-ups, and pictures from the Table Tennis Paralympics this past weekend in London. One thing they did that I liked were the bios and histories for the top four seeds in every event.

Table Tennis Charity Foundation

Here's a new web page devoted to table tennis charities, the Table Tennis Charity Foundation. (They also have a Facebook page.) From their home page: "The mission of The Table Tennis Charity Foundation is simple; it's to GIVE BACK!  We utilize the brain-stimulating sport of Table Tennis, and the THERAPEUTIC game of Ping Pong to increase awareness and to raise money for organizations that will directly benefit those facing Alzheimer's, Dementia, Depression and Mild to Moderate intellectual disabilities." On the lower left they already have two charities planned, in Virginia Beach and Norfolk, Virginia.

Zhang Jike Dropping Out of World Cup

Here's an article explaining why Zhang Jike won't be playing in the World Cup, plus other info on the reigning World and Olympic Men's Champion. The short version: "Zhang Jike said that there were too much activities after the Olympic Games and he hasn't been on training for that period so the team decided to let him give up the competition." He will be replaced by Ma Long, who will join Xu Xin as the Chinese representatives at the World Cup.

Non-Table Tennis - Another Sale!

On Saturday I sold a SF story to Every Day Fiction, "The Shaking Sphere," my 65th short story sale. The story hypothesizes that the ancient Greeks were right and that the moon, planets, sun, and stars are all carried about the Earth in gigantic celestial spheres, with Earth in the center. Humans have colonized the inner-most Moon sphere and even have elevators that take us right to it, 240,000 miles away - but now it's beginning to break apart, and it's up to our heroic engineer to figure out what the problem is.

The Human Chipmunk

I sometimes feel like I have too many balls in the air (i.e. too many activities and responsibilities), and worry what'll happen if I drop a ball. Here's what happens if you drop all the balls with an open mouth.

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Neck Injury Update

I'm still wearing the neck brace most of the time, but the neck is getting better. Tomorrow I've got a few hours of coaching, mostly multiball, but I also plan to do some "live" play during one of the sessions. I may wear the neck brace for that as an injury preventive. We'll see how it goes.

Hardbatters of the Past, Present, and Future

How good were hardbatters from the past? There's no way of really knowing, but we can make some educated guesses. However, there are some subtleties that have to be addressed.

First off, it's not fair to compare the skill level of players from the hardbat era against the skill level of current players by judging how past players would fair against certain modern techniques that they never faced, such as looping and deceptive spinny serves, not to mention modern sponges. For example, the first sponge player, Hiroje Satoh of Japan, couldn't compete with the best players in Japan because they had gotten used to his "strange" surface, but when he went to the 1952 World Championships (and managed to avoid playing his Japanese teammates), he won - not so much because of his skill level, but because his opponents weren't used to his sponge. His innovation won him the world title, but he quickly fell back in the rankings, unable to compete with his more skilled adversaries once they adjusted to his sponge racket.

And Satoh wasn't using modern sponge techniques. If I could go back to 1952, I'd likely also win the Worlds as players back then had never seen the types of serves and loops that an average 2200 player can throw at them. But it wouldn't be a fair comparison, and things could change quickly after they adjusted to me, just as they did to Satoh.

Once point comes up is that for a time, the hardbat players had to face the finger-spin serves of Sol Schiff and others before those were made illegal. It's true that once they figured them out, they were able to handle them. But the key points here are 1) that it was only after they adjusted to them - probably not the first time out - that they were able to handle them; 2) they could take the serve late and chop it back, allowing them more time to read and react to the spin. In the modern game, few players can afford to do that, since chopping a deep, spinny serve back gives the opponent the chance to loop, and since they had never seen such a shot before, it is unlikely they could have won against a competent looper. And 3), a modern player with a good spinny serve could serve it short (which the finger-spinners didn't do), so the receiver couldn't take it late. (Note that it's not just the spin of the serve they have to react to - it's also the deception, since nobody had developed the tricky deceptive serves that are now common even at the intermediate level where the racket goes through a very rapid semi-circular motion, making it difficult to pick up the direction of the racket at contact. According to Dick Miles, who questioned me about these serves, nobody did that back then, and he found it hard to believe that modern players could do it.)

However, a better question is how would such hardbat players of the past do against a modern player once they had time to adjust? That's where things get foggy. After spending a career playing hardbat-to-hardbat, many or most wouldn't adjust well. The very best ones would, since half of table tennis is adjusting to your opponent. For example, as confident as I am that I could beat, say, Dick Miles or Marty Reisman in 1952 the first time out (where I'm using sponge and they are using their hardbats), I am equally non-confident about what would happen after they had gotten used to playing me.

The next question is how good would a modern sponge player be using a hardbat in the hardbat era against the hardbat greats? First time out, of course, they'd get clobbered; not only do they have to adjust to playing with a hardbat, they have to adjust to playing against hardbat.  It's a different game! I remember the one time I played hardbat with Cheng Yinghua back in the late 1990s. He'd never really tried hardbat, and the first half hour as we just hit around I was pretty confident against him. Then a little light seemed to go off in his head, and after that he was like a buzz saw, attacking everything with ease and seemingly never missing. I still consider him the best hardbat player I've ever played or seen live, and I've seen and played pretty much all of the best current hardbat players. Cheng played an aggressive yet consistent backhand that rarely missed, while all-out hitting with his forehand - and also seemingly never missed. He never backed off the table, and he attacked every serve. I was nearly 2200 with a hardbat in those days playing against sponge, and my chances against him after the first half hour were zilch, and he won every game we played after that with ease. (I doubt if most sponge players could adapt to hardbat as fast and as well as Cheng did.) 

If Cheng practiced hardbat regularly for, say, a year (and we'll assume he's back in his peak, not in his mid-50s as he is now), how would he do against the best from the past? Very tough to say. He has two big advantages. First, he has modern serving techniques with a hardbat, which by itself would win him many matches at the start, and would later probably still give him the initiative as opponents would often return them defensively. Second, he's been training for table tennis nearly full-time since the age of five. While the training was with sponge, it has ingrained in him reflexes and attacking strokes that few in the hardbat era could match. In a counter-hitting battle, he'd beat anyone from the hardbat era. So to beat him, they'd have to do a lot of chopping and pick-hitting, something most of them are quite comfortable doing. How would Cheng do against the best choppers of the hardbat era? Tough to say.  

The best hardbat chopper I've faced was Richard Gonzalez of the Philippines, who I lost to in the Over 40 Hardbat Final at the 2011 U.S. Open. How good was he? The best chopper in the U.S. for many years was Derek May, a 2500 chopper, but when I played him hardbat to hardbat, I won rather easily as he was more used to chopping against sponge players. I've also played Steve Berger, who is also very good, but Gonzalez was a level better. How would Cheng do against Gonzalez, who also has a great attacking game? It's a match I'd love to see. The first time out, I'm guessing it would be close. However, my guess is that if Cheng were to play hardbat for a year during his peak years, he'd easily win against Gonzalez.

Another question comes up. How good could a player be in the modern game using a hardbat? Currently, the best hardbatters have ratings that max out around 2300. But it's a small sample size, and the best of them are mostly players already in their 40s who switched to hardbat after decades of sponge play. So it's obvious to me that players can get well past the 2300 level with a hardbat if they started out as hardbatters as beginning juniors at a young age, and trained that way just as sponge players do. Again, I'll turn to Cheng to see how good a player can be with a hardbat. After hitting with his hardbat with me, Cheng later played some practice matches against one of his 2250 juniors, who used sponge - and he won easily. Yes, after at most an hour of hardbat play, Cheng easily beat a 2250 junior player using sponge, and what I have to emphasize here is he did it easily, no contest, just hitting and blocking everything with ease. His level against sponge was already at least 2400. (He was rated about 2700 with sponge at the time, had previously been much better.)

How good would Cheng have been if he'd been training full-time with a hardbat against sponge players since a young age? Much better. However, at the same time there is the law of diminishing returns, since there are limits to what you can do with a hardbat against a world-class sponge player. My educated guess is that the very best would reach about 2600, but that's probably the upper limit. (The best players in the world are 2900+.)

Lastly, remember that in nearly every sport with measurable results that can be compared against future athletes, each new generation is almost always better than the previous ones. In table tennis, this is true as well, as modern players train for more hours with systematic training methods than players in the past. It's likely that if sponge had never been introduced or had been outlawed, and the game had stayed with hardbat, the same thing would have happened, and we'd have thousands of hardbatters training under top coaches from the age of five on (as they do in China), and hardbat would have been taken to a new level. (Even the best choppers of the past, as good as they were, wouldn't be as good as the best choppers coming out of a massive number of modern players training full-time as a hardbat chopper/attackers from age five.)

But hardbat was never developed to the highest levels because of the introduction of sponge, and so the hardbat game never reached the levels that it might have reached. And so it's likely that we'll never know just how good a player could be with a hardbat. But I'll stick with my 2600 guesstimate.

Paralympics

Here's the home page for the Table Tennis Paralympics, which are in London, Aug. 29 - Sept. 9. 

Pong Planet

The newest full-time professional table tennis center is Pong Planet in San Carlos, CA. They open tomorrow, on Sept. 1, 2012, with coaches James Guo Xi, Dennis Davis, Tibor Bednar, and Donn Olsen.

When Serving Short Becomes Important

Here's an article from PingSkills about serving short.

Zhang Jike's Tips On Winning the Olympic Title

Here's an article where the Men's Singles World Champion and Olympic Gold Medalists gives tips for success.

Ping-Pong Diplomacy's 40th Anniversary

Here's an article at Table Tennis Nation about the 40th Anniversary of Ping-Pong Diplomacy (this past Tuesday), with a link to a video of Henry Kissinger talking about it. Chairman Mao is quoted as saying, "The small ping-pong ball could be used to move the large ball of Earth." And here's a Chairman Mao/President Nixon Paddle.

Spanish Football Stars Play Table Tennis

Here's an article about and 13-second video of Spanish football stars (that's soccer to Americans) Cesc Fabregas and Gerard Pique playing table tennis. They're pretty good!

Waldner and Federer

Here's a 43-second video that shows Waldner and Federer both making almost identical moving, no-look cross-court miracle winning shots in their respective sports.

Wang Hao and Zhang Jike Exhibition

Here's a 33-second clip of Wang Hao and Zhang Jike doing an exhibition and playing with mini-rackets. At the end there's some sort of tug-of-war going on, but I have no idea who the participants are - it's all in Chinese. Anyone know? (I guess if I went over it carefully I might recognize if some of them are players, but I'll let others do that. Yes, you.)

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Blog on Hold Until Friday. "It's a pain in the neck" says blogger Larry Hodges

(Hey, that's me!)

This morning I was going to write about how I think top players of the past would do in today's game, how modern sponge players and hardbatters would do in the past, and address certain subtleties in such a comparison that some might not have considered. However, I've discovered that sitting at my computer aggravates the neck injury, even with the neck brace on. (Here's my Aug. 22 blog about the neck injury.) I've already cancelled all coaching this week, but hope to be able to coach again this weekend, but now I'm not so sure. (I should be able to do multiball training, but probably not live play yet.) Just typing this and the below is killing my neck and making it feel like a ping-pong ball in a match between a pair of all-out hitters.

So I'm putting my blog on hold until Friday so I can give the neck time to heal without constant aggravation. I'll get a lot of reading done, but no writing, alas. See you on Friday!

2012 USATT Hall of Fame Inductions

Here are the 2012 U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame Inductees - three players (Jennifer Johnson, Errol Resek, and Lan Vuong) and one contributor (Gus Kennedy). Dick Evans gets this year's Mark Matthews Lifetime Achievement Award. Here is the U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame Page (click on "Profiles" to see listing of players with links to their profiles). I'll probably be putting together the program booklet for the Hall of Fame Banquet held at the USA Nationals in December, as I have for the past few years.

Playing Against Defense

Here's an article from PingSkills on how to play choppers. I think the bullet points under "Placement in Rally" are the ones most tournament players often forget.

2012 China Harmony Open

Here are two videos of the Men's Singles Final at the China Harmony Open between Wang Liqin and Hao Shuai (the lefty). Here's the full version (18:29), and here's a shortened version (6:53) that skips over some points and time between rallies. Wang Liqin defeated Ma Lin in the semifinals, while Hao defeated Timo Boll, Vladimir Samsonov, and Xu Xin.

Racquetball Style Table Tennis

It's an off-the-wall idea, but why not allow off-the-wall shots?

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Tip of the Week

Movement in Doubles.

MDTTC Camp, Week Eleven, Day Five

The eleven week camp marathon is over - each camp Mon-Fri, with a total of 55 days of camp. We averaged over 30 players per camp.

On Friday, the final day, I gave lectures on flipping short balls, on equipment (inverted, short pips, long pips, antispin, hardbat) and on how to play certain styles (choppers, penhold, Seemiller grip). We ended the morning with the candy game, where I put piles of candy on the table (jolly ranchers and Hershey kisses), and the kids took turns trying to knock them off as I fed multiball, three shots each. There was a stack left at the end so I distributed that among everyone.

Then we had lunch, and then 17 of us walked to the 7-11 down the street. (They keep giving me free small Slurpees for bringing in so many customers!) In the afternoon we had a practice tournament. I also had an informal awards ceremony for Wesley Fan and Kyle Wang, who had won bronze medals at the Junior Olympics a month ago for Under 14 Boys' Teams, but had left without getting their medals (or even knowing they had won them!). The medals had been mailed to me to give to them. We also sang Happy Birthday to Daniel Zhu, turned ten that day.

Things I Learned This Summer

  • The human head weighs a lot. You don't know this until you have a neck injury. According to the kid in the movie Jerry Maguire, the human head weighs eight pounds. According to Wiki Answers, it's 8-12 pounds. My own subjective belief is mine weighs 100 pounds. (Here's that picture of me in the neck brace. Tong Tong Gong took the picture.)
  • The amount of Slurpee that a kid can fit into his stomach after a table tennis training session is larger than the volume of his stomach. (This is true even after he has eaten lunch.)
  • When you walk to 7-11 during break, you have to go outside, and it's HOT outside in the summer.
  • The most accurate forehand in the world is from a kid who's told he can have the candy on the table if he can hit it off.
  • If you eat Chinese food for lunch during camps all summer, you gain weight. I went from 175 to 183, and now begins the torturous journey back to 175. My diet starts today.
  • When driving through an intersection, watch for Metro Access Buses on the left that suddenly pull in front of you.
  • The grip and foot positioning are still the core problems with most bad technique. If both are done properly, everything in between tends to fall into place, though there are a few common problems that still persist - not using shoulder rotation, muscling the ball, hitting shots too flat, etc.

The Backhand Block

Here's an article by Tom Nguyen on improving his backhand, with tips from Steven Chan.

Tahl Leibovitz: Saved from Homelessness by Table Tennis

Here's an article in the Times of Israel about how table tennis saved Paralympic Champion Tahl Leibovitz from homelessness.

Chinese Training

Here's a video from two years ago (7:54) that shows the Chinese team in training.

1958 U.S. Table Tennis Nationals

Here's a video (9:59) with clips of matches from the 1958 Nationals (now usually referred to as U.S. Opens), with commentary by Marty Reisman, who also appears in many of the clips. (He would win Men's Singles.)

Bryan Brothers Play Table Tennis

Here's a video (1:23) of the Bryan Brothers (twins Bob and Mike, #1 tennis doubles team in the world and recent Olympic Gold Medalists) playing table tennis in a charity to benefit the Fire Department of New York (FDNY). Note the two-handed backhand by Mike! You also get to see Bugs Bunny (or a very large rabbit) playing. Really.

Real Table Tennis!

Here are six pictures of vintage table tennis as it should be played. (Click on each picture to see the next.)

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MDTTC Camp, Week Eleven, Day Four

Today's the final day of our eleven-week summer camp marathon. We had three new players join us yesterday (but three also left), giving us an even 40 players in the camp. I gave lectures on the backhand drive and flip against backspin (including banana flip, which I talk about in my February 15, 2012 blog), the backhand loop, and on third-ball attack.

In the lecture on third-ball attack I went over the serves different styles should favor. For example, a looper might want to serve a lot of short backspin and no-spin, with sidespin serves mixed in as well as occasional deep serves. A hitter might want to serve more sidespin and topspin, and challenge the receiver with more deep serves, especially breaking ones into the backhand. However, it's different for different players. For example, some loopers prefer looping against backspin (and so would serve more backspin), while others prefer looping against topspin, and so might serve more sidespin and topspin. I also spoke about depth - short serves, half-long serves (where the second bounce is right about the end-line), and long serves (where first bounce is near the end-line). Over and over I stressed that the purpose of the serve was to get the inniative, not just to get the ball into play. 

I also spoke about the importance of "trick" serves, where you have some serves you throw at opponent for "free" points. Your typical trick serve will work a few times before the opponent figures it out. If you don't have any such tricky serves, then you are giving away potentially free points; it's like spotting your opponent points. The problem with trick serves is once an opponent gets used to them, they are often easier to attack then other serves since most go long and can be looped, and so they should be used only a few times. (So focus on third-ball serves that allow you to get the innitiative.) Trick serves work best at the beginning and intermediate levels, but they are effective even at the advanced levels if used sporadically and at the right time. Examples of trick serves are a fast no-spin serve at the elbow or a tomahawk serve (a forehand serve with racket tip up) deep to the forehand so it breaks away from the receiver, causing him to reach for the ball and often miss-hitting off the end and side. 

I'm still in the neck brace. The most comfortable position is with my head back, nose in the air, which leads me to believe that stuck-up people aren't really stuck up; they just have whiplash.

Table Tennis Graphic Designers Wanted!

Uberpong is looking for graphic designers to create table tennis designs. "Are you a graphic designer, illustrator or just a wizard with crayons? Do you want your design to appear on an Uberpong ping pong paddle (table tennis bat)? We need you!!"

Clash of Titans

Here's a video (4:09) that contrasts Jan-Ove Waldner versus Ma Long.

As One

You can now watch the movie "As One" online, with English subtitles. It's the movie about the unified Korean women's team winning at the 1991 World Championships. Here's the IMDB info page.

New World Rankings

Here's an article on the new World Rankings, and here are the rankings themselves. The article includes a link to a video of the Olympic Men's Final between Zhang Jike and Wang Hao for those who missed it.

Ping-Pong with Giraffes

In honor of my neck problems, here are all the ping-pong and giraffe connections I could find.

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MDTTC Camp, Week Eleven, Day Three

There are 37 players in the camp, so it's somewhat hectic. Here's a camp photo from yesterday. (A few players are missing, alas.)

Yesterday I gave lectures on the forehand loop, on footwork, and on pushing. On looping, I spoke with three players in the 1800-2000 range on the importance of looping almost anything that comes long - or as I put it, "If you can see it, loop it; if you can't see it, block it or back up and loop it." You can go far with blocking and hitting, but the easiest path to a high level in our sport is to be loop-happy.

As noted in my blog yesterday, I'm wearing a neck brace now so I don't keep aggravating the neck injury. When I walked in with my neck brace, there were many stares as I said, "What, do I look different? Is it my hair?" Here's a picture of me with the neck brace.

When Derek Nie saw me with the neck brace, he said, "Larry, you look 90 years old!" Ten minutes later I interrupted my coaching and demanded that he repeat the statement so I could respond: "Yeah, but I don't feel a day over 85!" (Actually, I felt about 95, with the neck problems, hoarseness from too much coaching/lecturing, and general stiffness.) Don't you hate it when you come up with the perfect response ten minutes late?

Today was the day that the two new players in this week's camp really seemed to put it together, and began to hit real forehands and backhands, as well as pushing and serving with spin. They are even proficient now at knocking paper cups off the table. (If you haven't been following past blogs, don't ask.)

Channel 6 News, a local cable TV station, came in this morning and filmed us for a showing in September. They interviewed the coaches and many of the players, and filmed us during the morning multiball session.

USATT National Centers of Excellence

MDTTC is now listed as one of the seven USATT National Centers of Excellence.

Spider-Man Table

Want a Spider-Man table signed by Stan Lee? Here's your chance! "The SAEF is proud to present the sale of its a one-of-a-kind, Limited Edition Spider-Man table tennis table exclusively signed by Stan Lee and built expressly to raise funds for the SAEF organization and its Alzheimer’s Table Tennis Therapy Program." Here's a larger version of the picture of the table.

Table Tennis Inspired Patriotism

Here's a nice article from The Examiner about table tennis from a non-player's point of view at the Olympics. You can tell where it's going from the first line: "Here's one thing I love about the Olympics: watching people who are the best in the world at some incredibly niche sport, and seeing just how extraordinary at said sport it is possible to be." He also wrote, "It's the best live sport I've ever seen."

The Power of Block with Waldner

Here's a video (3:13) that showcases Jan-Ove Waldner's blocking skills.

Kids Training in China

Here's an interesting video of two kids training in China (0:42). Note the one on the table!

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USA Nationals Entry Form

Here's the home page for the 2012 USA Nationals, with a link to the entry form. I'll be there mostly to coach, though I'll probably enter one event - Hardbat Doubles with Ty Hoff, which I'll try to win for the 14th time, including ten with Ty. (I'd like to play other events, but there are just too many conflicts with all the junior events I'm be coaching in.)

Neck Problems

As I noted in my blog on Aug. 9, I was in a car accident on Aug. 8, two weeks ago. The other driver was at fault (she pulled right in front of me as I was driving to the club), and their insurance will be paying to repair my car. I also said no one was hurt.

Not so fast.

About a week ago (I'm not sure exactly when) my neck started bothering me. At first it was more an irritation, and I kept massaging the neck muscles, trying to get them to loosen up. But it got worse and worse. By Monday, the first day of the last MDTTC camp of the summer, it was painful, and by Tuesday morning it was excruciatingly painful just to hold my head up - meaning it was excruciatingly painful ALL THE TIME. I went to see a doctor during lunch break on Tuesday, but had to leave before seeing him when things ran late and I had to get back to the camp. But I found one who saw me that night at 7PM. The x-rays were negative, and there's no apparent nerve damage, so it's probably muscle and tendon problems.

I'm now wearing a neck brace, along with various medications (pain relievers and muscle relaxants). When I go to the camp this morning, there'll be some stares because of the neck brace, but it should allow me to at least do multiball and complete the camp through this Friday. The odds are I'm going to have to cancel all coaching for at least a week after that, though I may be able to do multiball - we'll see.

I'm starting to miss the back problems I had last year.

MDTTC Camp, Week Eleven, Day Two

Yesterday I gave lectures on the backhand, on receive, and on ball placement. For ball placement, I talked about the three or four placements for nearly all shots: to the forehand corner, to the backhand corner, and the middle. What's the fourth placement? Against a ball that goes to your wide forehand or backhand, you have an angle outside the opponent's wide corner, so you can go down the line, to the middle, to the crosscourt corner, or crosscourt wide outside the corner. You should normally go for such extreme angles only if you use lots of topspin to pull the ball down, or against a short ball. I also talked about moving players in and out, and how to be deceptive with your placement by aiming one way, and at the last second rotating your shoulders to change directions. (Here's a Tip of the Week on Forehand Deception with Shoulder Rotation.)

The afternoon session had me with two tables (one with a robot) and eight kids, and was excruciatingly painful - see "Neck Problems" above. Most of the kids understood what I was going through and were on good behavior - not only was the pain obvious, but I told them that today was not a day to give me any flak. (But you'll note I said "Most" above. Maybe my wearing a neck brace today will get through to the one or two not in the "Most.")

A relatively new ritual is the daily five-minute trek to 7-11 after lunch. Yesterday 15 of us made the trip; on Monday we had 13. The 7-11 manager gives me a small mini Slurpee each time I bring in all these kids.

Table Tennis Music Video

On Saturday, Sept. 15, we'll start (and hopefully finish) the band Edie Sedgwick will be filming a table tennis music video at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. The video will star 11-year-old Derek Nie, who will play and defeat the band members in the video. I'll be along as a consultant, and will be well paid in pepperoni pizza. Here's an example of another music video they did.

Team USA in London

Here's a video (1:50) of USA Olympians Ariel Hsing, Lily Zhang, and Erica Wu doing interviews, exhibitions, and promotional work in London.

Top 50 Points

Here's a video (18:36) that shows the "Top 50 Table Tennis Points."

Justin Bieber Playing TT in Commercial

Here's a commercial (2:01) starring Justin Bieber for a medicated cleansing bar that shows him playing table tennis. He says, "After a concert or playing ball I use the bar to shower." He's playing table tennis as he says this, for about two seconds starting at second 21.

Table Tennis Rules

Here's a video (6:26) from PingSkills that explains the rules - with a panda. Really! I like it.

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MDTTC Camp, Week Eleven, Day One

It's the first day of the last week. This camp is full - well over 30 players. I gave lectures on the forehand, on doubles, and on serving. Sometimes I only coach in the mornings at our camps, but because of the numbers, I'll be there all day all five days.

In the first half of the morning session I did multiball with seven players. One was a "blast from the past" - sort of. Back when I was in North Carolina from 1979-81 (when I was 19 to 21 years old), I used to hit a lot with Walter Wintermute, a 1900+ lefty all-out attacker, who was two years younger than me. (He's now rated over 2000.) He was a really nice guy, and we even played doubles together a few times. Now his son, David, 14, already rated over 1800, is at our camp and was in my group. He looks almost exactly like his father 30+ years ago! They even have the same long hair style. According to David, however, his dad is on him to cut it. Walter, by the power invested in me as a table tennis coach, I hereby give David permission to keep his hair long at least until the age when you cut yours!!! (That should bring him at least into his 20's.)

I spent much of the second half working with two new juniors. One was a lefty penholder who wasn't sure whether to play his backhand conventional or reverse penhold. I recommended he learn the reverse version, and he seemed to do it pretty well. On the forehand, however, he had this nasty habit of lifting his elbow and wrist as he stroked, and so his racket would close as he hit the ball. We spent a lot of time trying to undo that habit. We're going to focus on that for a while.

The other new junior hit forehands with just his arm, and had an awkward low grip, with a big gap between his hand and the paddle, and his finger almost straight down the middle. We fixed the grip, got him to rotate his shoulders, and his forehand really came alive - he was smacking in shots by late afternoon. On the backhand, however, he tended to sort of slap at the ball, often hitting with backspin. We fixed that, but he's still having trouble generating any pace - most of his backhands are pretty soft. But the technique is now sound, and I'm confident his backhand will really come alive in the next few days. One thought is to have him hit some with pips-out sponge, which forces a player to stroke more. But we'll see how he does tomorrow.

The Legend of "B"

"B" is a player whose name I'm not going to give out, but we're having a lot of fun with it. He's a little kid who started in a group session. He's doing fine. However, a couple other kids who knew him but were in different group sessions asked about him. I told them how "B" was incredible, how his forehand was already as good as the coaches, and went on and on. And so the legend of "B" began. Now we take turns talking about The Legend of B as we take turns exaggerating his greatness. We're at the point where the best players in the world can sometimes see his shots, but usually can only hear them as they go by for winners.

Drill Your Skills with the Chinese National Team

Here are a couple of nice coaching videos on serving. They are taught by Chinese National Team Member Xu Ruifeng.

Washington Post Feature on MDTTC on USATT Home Page

Yep, we're famous now! (Presumably we'll still be on the USATT front page when you read this.) Make sure to check out both the video and article.

Levitating Table?

Here's the picture. The online translation (Spanish to English) of the caption says, "Bureau in period of experimentation. Is installed with a remote control, and it picks up on the wall in the same way. The technique to keep it in a permanent state of levitation and leveled to the ground 0.76 cts prosecutable parallel to a agency to the NASA that has been inspired by the utensils used for their huge ships."

Outdoor Ping-Pong

Umpires - don't you need a free hand?

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Tip of the Week

Covering the Middle.

Table Tennis Busy

Today starts the last week of our eleven weeks of camps at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. It's going to be a pretty strong camp, with I believe eleven players over 2050, seven players over 2250, and six over 2330.

It's going to be a very busy week for me as well. Besides coaching at the camp and some private and group coaching, I've got a junior player from out of town staying at my house, so I have to take care of him. There's a local cable TV show coming in to film us on Wednesday. A local music group is doing a table tennis music video, and tentatively will come out sometime this week or next weekend. Plus this blog and other writing work. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to get back to work on the page layouts of my Table Tennis Tactics book.

By the way, if anyone has any suggestions for a cover for the book, let me know! I'm still not sure what the cover picture should be. (The book is tentatively titled "Table Tennis Tactics: A Thinker's Guide.")

I've gone through approximately 15 bags of candy (Jolly Ranchers and Chocolate Kisses) during the summer camps in my now expected Friday morning 30-minute candy giveaways, where I put piles of candy on a table and feed multiball, and if you knock one off, you get it. (You can trade for a different one on the table if you choose.)

Meanwhile, I'm still actively writing science fiction and fantasy - see segment below. In fact, I'm about to start work on one for an upcoming Halloween story contest. Hmmm . . . maybe I can do the first Halloween table tennis story? (I wonder if any kid has ever dressed up as a ping-pong player for Halloween?)

An Endangered Ping-Pong Species

Back in April during our Spring Break Camp we were running out of training balls. At the time we had only used orange balls for all of our twenty years. However, Butterfly (a club sponsor) was temporarily out of orange training balls at the time, and so we had to make due with white ones. We discovered the white ones actually showed up better against the new red flooring, and decided to stick with them. Slowly, very slowly, the orange balls have been breaking - we go through about 100 balls each week, with 5-6 full-time coaches plus group sessions and open play, seven days a week. We're now down to about five. The deathwatch has begun to the final orange ball, after which they will join the trilobite and the passenger pigeon and be extinct at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. (Perhaps we should send the last few to a zoo so they can breed them and try to recreate a viable population?) Perhaps I'll post pictures of the final aging orange ball as it struggles to survive in a club of young, up-and-coming white balls, and of course the final funeral pictures as we pay our last respects.

Ariel and the North American Championships

Here's an article about Ariel Hsing and the upcoming North American Championships in Cary, NC, Sept. 1-2. Includes links to videos of defending champion Mo Zhang against Ariel and Lily Zhang.

Bjorn Borg vs. Jean-Michel Saive

Here's a video (1:25) of the superstar tennis player versus the superstar table tennis player playing ping-pong for a hospital charity.

The Onion on Table Tennis

The Onion has done a few table tennis parodies. I did a search of their site, and came up with the following.

There were also these two excerpts from articles:

And Jerry Goldman emailed me about two pop-up headlines:

  • "Table Tennis Refs Will Rely on Replay to See What the Hell Happened."
  • "Table Tennis Final Delayed as Storm Floods Olympic Basement."

Non-Table Tennis - Email from Publisher

I wrote two novels in the last three years, a SF political satire/drama ("Campaign 2100") and a humorous fantasy ("The Giant Face in the Sky"). (Both feature table tennis, especially the SF one.) I was actually made an offer by a small publisher for the latter, but they gave me the okay to spend some time sending it to the major publishers first. I'm toying with just going with the small publisher offer, however, and just publicizing the heck out of it. However, the breaking news is an email I just received from a somewhat larger publisher about Campaign 2100. Here is what she wrote - I'm crossing my fingers!

"I've been reading through the manuscript you sent me, and so far, I'm liking what I'm reading! I've not finished making a first pass through the novel, and unfortunately I can't estimate when I'll have word back to you. CAMPAIGN 2100 continues to hold my interest, and it's far and away the best science fiction manuscript I've received thus far. I remain hopeful as I make my way through the novel. Please keep me appraised if you receive an offer from another publisher or if the manuscript becomes unavailable for any reason."

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Cover photo ideas

1. Rodin's Thinker holding a table tennis paddle

2. Partial shot of a chess board with a few pieces on it.  Instead of standard forms each piece is a table tennis paddle with an enblem of the piece it represents on the blade.

3. Two paintball teams facing off, but one team is holding TT paddles instead of paintball guns.

4. Something like one of those really complicated football X and O diagrams with all the dotted lines and arrows, but shown on a TT table.  Best done in simple black drawing on white cover.

Looking forward to buying a copy when it comes out.

Mark

 

In reply to by mjamja

Nice suggestions, Mark. I especially like the first one. Because we're in the last week of our summer camps, I'm going to wait until next before I go back to work on the Tactics book, and then I'll have to do some serious brainstorming about the cover. If I go with one of yours, you'll get a free copy of the book! 

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Weird Camp Happenings

Lots of strange things happen in regard to table tennis camps. Here's a sampling.

  • Someone once emailed interest in our camps, and asked if they could stay at my house to save money. I reluctantly agreed (since I didn't know the person). They thanked me profusely, and then asked me to arrange their travel and every other aspect of the trip. I emailed back agreeing to let him stay at my house, but that they'd have to make their own travel arrangements. I didn't hear back from them.
  • A player made all the arrangements to attend one of our camps, and only at the last minute emailed asking if we really were teaching table tennis. He thought he had signed up for a tennis camp.
  • Over the years I've received dozens and dozens of emails from Nigeria and other countries trying to arrange for large numbers of players to attend our camps. All involve me sending out invitations, after which they'd send payment. Of course they only wanted the invitation so they could get into the country. We went along with this a few times in the 1990s, then were contacted by the State Department, who asked us to stop.
  • Every few months we get an email from someone letting us know that a "top junior player" from some other country would like to attend our camps, and asking us how much we'd pay for the honor.
  • One 1800 player caused great havoc in our camp. He refused to do the drills, instead insisting on randomly hitting the ball all over the table with a hardbat while aggressively lecturing others about the wrongness of their using sponge and other apparent shortcomings. After two days of this, a delegation of players approached me and said they'd no longer hit with this player. I was going to have to talk to the player the next morning, but he didn't show up. I later learned he'd gotten into his car and driven halfway across the country to another camp, where he caused equal havoc.
  • During lunch at Lake Forrest Mall, one kid disappeared. After an hour we asked security to search for him. They searched everywhere, and couldn't find him. Finally, after several hours, we called his parents, who said "Oh, we didn't tell you? We picked him up at the mall."
  • At the end of one camp we arranged for a group to go to Kings Dominion. While there one player disappeared. After a few hours of looking for him along with security, I finally called his parents to ask if he'd called home. The mom went into hysterics. We finally found him - he'd wandered off and had spent the day on his own in the water park area, ignoring all the very loud announcements calling his name.
  • There are many more - perhaps in another blog. I have to go coach.

2006 vs. 2012

Yesterday I blogged about how much junior development has improved in the last six years, and compared the junior top 15 rankings from the Nov/Dec 2006 issue to the current one. Here's a chart that shows this even better, comparing the #1 and #15 then and now, showing just how dramatic the improvement has been since the advent of full-time training centers all over the country. It's amazing to me that, for example, the #15 junior in the country today would be #2 in 2006! The depth has exploded.

 

2006 #1

2012 #1

2006 #15

2012 #15

Under 18 Boys

2418 (would be #13 in current rankings)

2625

2159

2387 (would be #2 in 2006)

Under 16 Boys

2418 (would be #6 in current rankings)

2522

2087

2310 (would be #6 in 2006)

Under 14 Boys

2323 (would be #6 in current rankings)

2420

1870

2153 (would be #5 in 2006)

Under 12 Boys

2044 (would be #10 in current rankings)

2235

1440

1916 (would be #3 in 2006)

Under 10 Boys

2044  (would be #1 in current rankings, but the #2 was only 1495)

2008

(#2 is 1920)

620

1170 (would be #5 in 2006)

Under 18 Girls

2330 (would be #4 in current rankings)

2548

1811

2112 (would be #4 in 2006)

Under 16 Girls

2113 (would be #7 in current rankings)

2329

1620

2002 (would be #3 in 2006)

Under 14 Girls

2029 (would be #7 in current rankings)

2261

1432

1786 (would be #4 in 2006)

Under 12 Girls

2029 (would be #3 in current rankings)

2105

553

1213 (would be #9 in 2006)

Under 10 Girls

894 (would be #12 in current rankings)

2105

80 (!)

372 (would be #4 in 2006)

ITTF Coaching Seminar

Here's an ITTF article about the recent ITTF Coaching Seminar Richard McAfee ran in Austin, TX, the ninth one to be run in the U.S. (I ran one of them.)

Waldner - Through the Years

Here's a video (6:21) that shows Jan-Ove Waldner through the years, starting when he's a kid, including interviews and showing his development. (Doesn't actually start until 18 seconds in.)

Owen Wilson's Late-Night Ping-Pong

Here's the article from People Magazine.

Bryan Brothers to Play Table Tennis for Charity

Here's a very short article about the Bryan Brothers (world #1 tennis doubles team) playing in a charity ping-pong tournament at Spin NY on Aug. 23 to benefit FDNY.

Hardbat From the Past

Here are three clips I saw recently posted showing hardbat from the past.

The Movie Ping Pong

You can now watch the movie online - but it'll cost you 9.99 pounds (about $15.68). The documentary features "8 players with 703 years between them compete in the World over 80s Table Tennis Championships in Inner Mongolia." More info, and a preview, are at the link.

A Handy Table Tennis Racket

Let me re-emphasize - this is a Handy Table Tennis Racket!

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