December 31, 2014

Off Tomorrow - New Year's Day

See you next year, on Friday, January 2, 2015!

MDTTC Christmas Camp

Yesterday was a busy day. Besides the camp (10AM-1PM, 3-6PM), I had a 90-minute private session during the lunch break, so I was essentially coaching from 10AM-6PM non-stop except for a few short breaks. I've been on the go almost constantly for the past month, and am badly looking forward to a couple days off after today!

I posted a camp picture yesterday, but we were missing a number of players, so here's one from yesterday with nearly everyone.

During the 90-minute lunch session yesterday with Sameer we kept track of nets and edges for a while - and as usual, it was completely one-side as he beat me 22-6 in nets & edges. (I've blogged about this several times, such as here.) We spent part of the session practicing exhibition tricks as we're doing an exhibition for a charity event in late January. We'll be practicing these tricks more in January, and I'm sort of self-conscious that other coaches and players are going to see our sessions and think we're goofing off. By the end of January Sameer's going to be a great lobber!

I had my group do a lot of service practice yesterday. Besides spin serves we had a number of contests to see who could hit a bottle with their serves. The kids are pretty competitive. Several of the new kids are already learning to loop.

As we traditionally do at every Christmas Camp, we finished yesterday's session with "The Candy Game." I bought (at my own expense) several bags of Jolly Ranchers and Hershey Kisses (both plain and with walnuts - the latter are my favorites). I piled the candy near the back edge of the table, and the players lined up, taking turns (three shots each) trying to hit them off the table. Whatever they knocked off the table, they got to keep! (I allow trades - they can trade what they knock off with other candy on the table.) This went on for about 45 minutes. At the end, because (as usual) I had bought too much candy, each of them were allowed to take five free pieces.

We have one more session in the camp, this morning from 10AM-1PM, and then we're done for the year.

New MDTTC Players

We have two new players at MDTTC. One is our new player/coach/practice partner Sun Jianhao. He's 19, apparently about 2600 level. No Americanized name for him yet - how about "Sunny"?

The other is 13-year-old Klaus Wood. He's not really "new" - I'm told he started out in one of my junior classes about six years ago. But he's spent most of these past six years in Taiwan, returning to Maryland periodically. He's caused havoc at the last two USA Nationals, where his rating has gone from 637 to 1747, then 1747 to 2370. That's a gain of 1110 and 623 points, respectively, or 1733 in two tournaments! I'm fairly certain that's a record. As a 637-rated player he beat a player rated 2261, a 1624 rating difference - I'm betting that's also a record. (After the 2013 Nationals he should have been adjusted much higher than 1747, probably to around 2100. He had wins over players rated 2261, 2068, 1906, and 1892, and his worst loss was a five-gamer to a 2132 player - and yet he only went from 637 to 1747??? The USATT rating adjustment system needs adjusting.)

Professional Table Tennis in the U.S.

One of the five main issues I campaigned on in the USATT election was to professionalize table tennis in this country. In my Election Page the fifth main issue was, "Create a Professional Players Association and Professionalize the Sport," and I explained how I thought we should go about doing so. Since that time I've learned of at least five (5!!!) other plans to do this. Besides my own, there's the North American Tour, one from Jim Butler, two others I can't comment on right now, and this one (see "Professional League" near end) from ITTF North American President Tony Kiesenhofer, where he wrote:

"I would like to see us work towards a professional table tennis league; to start, we may explore to become a “farm team” operation of, say, the Chinese Super League or the German Bundesliga, in North America; then we will see where we can move from there”, continued Tony Kiesenhofer. “If we cannot get the interest from one or two of the major table tennis leagues, to explore a more modest start with North American teams; it is important that such a league serve the player development of North American players."

If elected - results will be announced on January 7 - I'll have to go over these plans with others and find the best one. We need to have some sort of professional tour or league going within four years as that's when the current incredible group of players in the roughly 12-14 age group will hit college age. I'm a big advocate for college, but if you're 18 years old and 2600 or so, why not take off a few years and see how good you can get? Otherwise you might spend the rest of your life wondering. Besides, it's a great way to see the U.S. and the world!!!

U.S.-Born Players Who Have Broken 2700

Here's a list of U.S.-born players who have broken 2700. Did I miss anyone? (Online ratings only go back to 1994. I have all the old magazines going back past 1976, but I'm not about to go through them all one by one!) For me (and hopefully most others), the list of players who have broken 2700 is only of academic interest, not an accurate evaluation of player performance, where winning titles is a bit more important than a few digits on a rating. 

  • Dan Seemiller several times (I think he was the first U.S. player to do it. Ratings have inflated since his heyday, so it was a lot tougher for him.)
  • Eric Boggan many times
  • Jim Butler many times
  • Eric Owens (four ratings over 2700 in 2002; highest 2712)
  • Todd Sweeris (2706 in Nov. 1995; had 15 other ratings over 2650)
  • Barney J. Reed (2751 in 2001. Reed went in rated 2528, and his best four wins were over players rated 2751 (Zoltan Varga, coincidentally Reed's end rating), 2516, 2465, and 2409 - and was mysteriously adjusted all the way to 2751. There are serious problems with the USATT rating system adjustment system.)

OTHERS:

  • Khoa Nguyen was 2727 in 1995, but while he was 100% U.S.-trained, he was born in Vietnam and came to the U.S. as a little kid before he ever played. 
  • Mark Hazinski reached 2695.
  • Sean O'Neill came close, but I don't think he ever went over 2700. His best ratings were from before the ratings went online in 1994. 

Table Tennis Tips by Jan-Ove Waldner

Here's the new video (2:20) from the King himself!

Coaching Articles by Samson Dubina

Here are recent ones. And here's his International Skills DVD!

Why You Don't Want to Be an Insect

Here's the video (33 sec) from PingSkills on brushing an insect off the ball.

Serving Secrets Introduction

Here's the video (2:31) from PingSkills that introduces their new video. You have to pay for the full video, but the intro has some good stuff to watch as well.

Forehand Looping

Here's a new video (3:27) that just shows top players looping over and over, including slow motion. How does your technique compare to these?

Ask the Coach

Episode #54 (14:25) - Farewell Wang Hao

  • Previous #PQOTD  - 0:32: What has been your personal Table Tennis highlight of 2014?
  • #PQOTD  - 2:10: What is your Table Tennis Goal for 2015?
  • Discussion - 2:35: Wang Hao's Career
  • Question 1 - 5:45: Is it ok to stretch the rubber (inverted) when gluing it onto the blade? Jared
  • Question 2 - 6:58: You can use sidetape that covers a lot of the edge of the racket. This will help a bit, but unfortunately a lot of the rubbers are fragile and will chip on the edges. Gary
  • Question 3 - 8:23: My problem is that my techniques of forehand attacking a topspin and backspin ball interfere with each other. I try to play a lot 5th ball drills concentrating on switching between those two strokes and regulating the swing, can I do anything else? Ilia
  • Question 4 - 10:52: One of my friends continuously hits to the backhand side then forehand side. This is becoming a big issue since he makes me quickly lose control and balance. How do I play against him so that he wont be able to place ball? Akash

ITTF News Feed

Lots of international news here!

Great Point

Here's the video (23 sec) with the "spin-round" finish.

Xu Xin vs. Fan Zhendong Highlights

Here's the video (1:26) of the two playing on the "Men's Road to Suzhou 2014."

Best Ping Pong Commercials of the Year

Here's the article and with links to the videos from Table Tennis Nation, showing their picks for the top nine of the year. Personally, I picked the Energizer commercial (their #9) as my #1.

Ten Absolutely, Totally Useless Things I Learned to Do Before I Was Twenty

  1. Tie and untie knots with my toes. When I was a kid I read a biography of escape artist Harry Houdini and learned that he could do this. So I spent months practicing. I'd challenge other kids to knot up my shoelaces as tight as they could, and I'd untie them with my bare toes, and then retie the shoelaces with a perfect bow knot!
  2. When I was a kid I also learned to pick every lock in my house. Once at the USA Nationals the janitor didn't show up, and we were all stuck outside the playing hall - hundreds of us. I picked the lock, to the cheers of everyone!
  3. Shoot the Moon. That's this game - when I was a kid I spent months practicing until I could do it every time. I kept track on paper. I finally stopped after getting Pluto 500 times in a row. Forty years went by. Then, this past summer I saw it at a store and bought it, practiced up again, and brought it to the club. At MDTTC it's now our favorite break time pastime - and I can still get Pluto nearly every time, even blindfolded and behind my back!
  4. Play music with my hands - like the guy on the left here.
  5. When I was about twelve I memorized every Orioles baseball stat from 1973, and every World Series game ever played (teams and scores). No, I no longer remember most of this, though I still remember that Al Bumbry, Rich Coggins, and Tommy Davis batted .337, .319, and .306, respectively.
  6. When I was around ten I memorized the first two chapters (25 pages) of "The Forgotten Door." It was my favorite book for years and my introduction to science fiction.
  7. Learned three ways to "prove" that 2=1. (One with algebra, one with simply arithmetic involving complex numbers [square roots of -1, where that was mostly to mislead with the real trick elsewhere], and one with simple calculus.
  8. Learned to juggle ping-pong balls, including under the legs and bouncing off the floor.
  9. Blowing a ball in the air at an angle. I do this by spinning the ball by blowing under it, with the spin keeping the ball floating in air.
  10. Learned to rally in table tennis by blowing the ball back - my record is 33 in a row. Here's a picture from an exhibition.

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