Tip of the Week
Top Ten Guidelines for Playing the Unconventional Style.

USATT Board Meeting
This past weekend I attended the USATT board meeting at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Sept. 21-23. (I attended both as a member of the board and as chair of the coaching committee.) Friday was travel day, plus an informal dinner at the OTC dining hall. I flew on the same flight as USATT legal counsel Dennis Taylor. Others attending the meeting included fellow board members Anne Cribbs (chair), Rajul Sheth, Ed Hogshead, Carolyn Savini, and Erica Wu (who just took a job at Facebook), with Gary Schlager and Tara Profitt attending via e-conference. Also attending were USATT CEO Gordon Kaye, COO Mark Thompson, High Performance Director Jörg Bitzigeio, and High Performance Committee Chair Carl Danner. Also attending for a few hours were new...

Tip of the Week
Develop Ball Control by Playing with Different Surfaces.

Shortened Tables
There seems to be an obvious way to develop great players that we're almost all missing. Because of the height of the table - 30 inches - kids can't really play until they are about five or six years old, and even then it's rather awkward. (It's especially hard hitting backhands at that age, until their elbow is over the table.) However, there are many stories about how top players started playing much younger, as young as two or three, on shortened tables. They then move to regular tables around six or seven. 

For example, the Japanese whiz kid, Tomokazu Harimoto, who is world #8 (and #6 last month) at age 15, started when he was two years old. Here's video of him playing on a shortened table, where he's at most three years old. (Video should take you ten seconds in, where you see this for about six seconds.) Is it any wonder...

Today's Labor Day, so I'm off today - I plan to spend the day reading in bed! Blog and Tip of the Week will go up tomorrow by noon or else I don't get to be part of NAFTA, Google gets to continue their biased coverage of me, and I won't get invited to any weddings or funerals. 

On a side note, if you have newly tried to register, there might be a delay. For nearly eight years I've managed spam by requiring all those who register to mention "table tennis" in their registration. I'd get about ten a day and quickly go through them. However, in the last few days I've received over 600 spam emails. There are likely a few legitimate ones mixed in, but it's too many for me to go through one by one. For technical reasons I haven't been able to set up a proper spam filter here yet with Drupal. 

Tip of the Week
How to Quadruple Your Chances of Winning Those Five-Game Matches.

Hidden Serves - the Ma Long Serve
I've recently gotten into some discussions about Ma Long's serve. He's the reigning World and Olympic Champion, and while his world ranking has dropped to #7 due to lack of competition (plus his recent loss at the Bulgarian Open to Liam Pitchford), he's still generally considered the best player in the world.

But the simple reality is that he, like many other world-class players, rarely serves legally. Most of his serves are forehand serves where he throws the ball high and towards him, and as it comes down, he thrusts his head forward and down. The ball illegally goes behind his head, and he contacts it behind his chin, so the opponent can't see contact. Then his racket follows the ball, making it appear that he contacts the ball below the head. That's one of the main advantages of this technique. 

But ask yourself this - why would he and so many other top players spend so much time...