June 25, 2013

John and Kevin's Backhands, Forehands, and Receives

A couple of years ago John Olsen was a low-1800 player with a weak backhand but strong forehand. Kevin Walton was a 1750 player with a strong backhand but a weak forehand. Both had strong receives. I've been coaching and training them since then, usually a two-hour joint session every Saturday that focuses on multiball. John is in his mid-50s, Kevin his late 40s. Both are inverted shakehand players. (John can be "difficult" to coach as he has very good technique, and so not a whole lot to say to him, and mostly just needs practice and physical training.)

One of my coaching mantras is, "Practice everything, but focus on your strengths and weaknesses." In John's case, the focus has been on fixing his main weakness - the backhand - while making his strengths - forehand loop and receive - even stronger. Besides multiball, we'd play backhand-to-backhand games to force him to rally with his backhand, often putting boxes on the table to block off the non-backhand part of the table. We'd also play games where I served all the time so he'd make his receive even better. We worked on making his forehand even stronger mostly with multiball. The result? He often wins the backhand-to-backhand games that I once easily dominated, can mostly shut down my third-ball attacks off my serve, his forehand can be deadly efficient, and he is now rated 1999. In practice he plays even with the local 2100 players. (The initial backhand-to-backhand work had almost immediate effect, and brought him to a 1950 level about 1.5 years ago.) 

In Kevin's case, the focus was on fixing his weak forehand, while making his backhand and receive even stronger. Since he's left-handed, we often played crosscourt games, my forehand to his backhand or vice versa. We'd also play regular games so he could work on receiving my serve. The result? He now dominates in those my-forehand-to-his-backhand games that I used to win all the time, and like John, he can mostly shut down my third-ball attacks off my serve. His forehand looping still doesn't have penetrating power, but he can now play strong, aggressive rallies with it. His rating hasn't caught up to him yet because he hasn't played many recent tournaments, but I expect he'll be into the 1900s when he does. (At the Teams in November, his last tournament, he played on a stronger team and so mostly played much stronger players, but did beat a 1903 player, and was up 2-0 on both a 2224 and a 2034 player before losing to both in five. And he's improved since then.)

It's almost eye-opening how much stronger their backhands have become. John's always had a pretty good backhand loop but couldn't exchange backhands very well; now he can go bang-bang backhand to backhand with just about anyone. Kevin's always had that strong backhand, but now can both hit and topspin it, which makes it very hard to play against, and is why he can dominate those crosscourt rallies to my (or others) forehands. As to receive, let's just say that if other players returned my serves as well as they do now, I'd be in serious trouble.

MDTTC Camp Day One - Again

Once again we're into another five-day camp, the second of ten consecutive ones this summer, all Mon-Fri, 10AM-6PM. Our routine is fairly set; on day one we focus on the forehand. I gave short lectures on grip, ready stance, and the forehand. In the afternoon session I worked with the beginners. Last week we had about 30 players during most sessions; this week we seem to have even more.

ITTF World Hopes Team Selected

Here's the article. USA's Crystal Wang was among the five girls selected.

ITTF World Tour

Here's the article from Inside the Games, "Top Table Tennis Players Gear Up for Return to Lucrative ITTF World Tour." They will give out $2.5 million in prize money this next year. Here's the ITTF Calendar for it - note the U.S. Open, July 3-6.

Shadow of the Pong

Here's an inspirational table tennis image.

Ariel Hsing vs. Doo Hoi Kem

Here's the complete video (59:14) of their match in the Junior Girls' Final at the Egypt Junior & Cadet Open this past weekend. Spoiler Alert! Ariel is up 10-9 match point in the sixth and seventh games, and leads 6-0 in the seventh before losing 12-10 in the seventh.

Sidespin Serving Trick Shot

Here's a video of a serving trick shot (40 sec). I may add a version of it to my own bag of exhibition tricks.

Monster University Ping-Pong

Don't forget to see the movie Monster University - just for the table tennis scene! Here's a gif image of it. Here's more on it at Table Tennis Nation: "The website even mentions ping pong and school champ Zane 'Great Wall' Xiao who appears in the GIF above. PING PONG Multi-paddled behemoth Zane 'Great Wall' Xiao defends his singles title in his single year. Sports Monstrated called Xiao 'ruthless at the table, with his omnidirectional vision and octo-dextrous hand-eye coordination. He’s a force to be reckoned with.'"

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