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

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

Here's what USATT CEO Gordon Kaye posted on Facebook: "I am truly moved by what is unfolding in front of my eyes in table tennis, and more importantly, the world. A few moments ago, the teams from North Korea and South Korea, due to meet in the quarterfinals of the 2018 ITTF World Team...

Articles and Newsletters and Pulitzers, Oh My!
I quietly reached a few milestones recently, though I didn't realize it until last night. On April 20, USATT and Butterfly both published my article, $2700 3-Star Butterfly MDTTC April Open. It was my 1800th published article. (I count that as one article, though it was published in two places.) I've had two more articles published since then, for a total of 1802. Why is that number important? (Other than, of course, being the year the Treaty of Amiens was signed between France and the United Kingdom, ending the War of the Second Coalition, and the establishment of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the U.S.)

This morning's blog is my 1802nd blog entry since I started tabletenniscoaching.com in January, 2011, so I've now had as many blog entries as published articles, or 3604 total. Since I blog Mon-Fri, the number of blog entries will soon far exceed the number of published articles. (I don't count blog entries as published articles.)

I keep a running list of my...

Regional Hopes Camp and Trials
This weekend I'll be coaching at the Hopes Regional Camp at MDTTC (Fri & Sat), and then running the Hopes Regional Trials on Sunday. There's going to be a lot packed into the next few days - we're gonna need a bigger weekend!

This afternoon I'm picking up Coach Pieke Franssen at Dulles Airport at 3:32 PM. He was supposed to come in earlier but his flight was delayed, and so he's on a different flight. It's going to be a tight squeeze as the camp starts at 4:30PM, and the airport is about 45 minutes away without traffic - but we'll be driving during rush hour, which means it could take anywhere from 1-2 hours. We'll see! But Coach Wang Qingliang will run the camp until we arrive.

Coach Pieke is the USATT head coach for the camp. He's from the Alameda TTC in California, and has already run several of the regional Hopes camps. Assistant coaches in the camp will be Wang Qingliang, Jeffrey Zeng Xun, Lidney Castro, Mike Lauro, and myself. Wen Hsu and I are the local organizers. There are 38 kids in the camp, most of them in the 11- to 12-year-old range, but there a number...

Frozen Shoulder Syndrome
I've been seeing a physical therapist three times/week, 90 minutes/visit, for two months, where I go through rigorous massage and shoulder stretching routines. I also do a 20-minute stretching routine twice a day.

Yesterday I saw the doctor again for an update. He put me through a number of tests. The good news was that my shoulder flexibility has gone from 50% normal to 70%. The bad news is that the shoulder hurts just as much as before - no improvement there. I can play with the pain - it's not that bad - but I'd just be injuring the shoulder further.

I'd already been diagnosed with a frayed rotator cuff, tendonitis, and bursitis in the shoulder, and with an extreme lack of shoulder flexibility due to muscle stiffness. Yesterday the doctor gave me a final diagnosis - Frozen Shoulder Syndrome. If I were to quit table tennis completely and only do normal things with the shoulder, it would gradually go away in 1-3 years - but that's not really an option, is it? So here are my real options.

OPTION...