March 19, 2015

New Table Tennis Terms and Why This Blog is Short

Below are some new table tennis terms that we've invented at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. Yes, we are constantly innovating!

Today's blog is a little short as I was up late working last night and so got started on this late, and I have to leave shortly for a rare morning coaching session. I'm sort of jumping back and forth between 1) preparing the French translation of Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers for publication; 2) writing the fantasy table tennis novella "The Spirit of Pong"; 3) writing a feature but temporarily top-secret table tennis article; 4) responding to approximately 314,159 emails; and 5) various USATT activities, mostly regarding regional associations and leagues. And then I've got five hours of coaching plus driving around to pick up players in our afterschool program, so it's going to be a bit busy.

• "Daniel" - a net or edge. (Note - Daniel is a 10-year-old student of mine who gets an unreal number of nets and edges. He uses inverted on both sides.)
• "Double Daniel" - a net-edge.
• "1% Daniel" - a ball that barely nicks the edge.
• "You have no chance" - You can do this.
• "Dang" - what an older player (or at least me) says when he misses a shot or can't get to a ball that he could get to when he was younger.
• "Cup Killers" - anyone with a deadly accurate forehand, as it allows them to knock cups off a table in multiball.
• "Worm juice" - any liquid in a bottle that the coach has to drink if they hit the bottle while he's feeding multiball.
• "Nuclear bomb" - any ping-pong ball under a cup that players have to knock off the table to defuse.
• "Larry" - the claim that the shot you just did was the greatest shot of all time, or the greatest shot of its type.

NCTTA Three-Player Rule and Petition

I was emailed the link to this petition, and the following info: "The NCTTA has a rule that a team of 3 players must automatically forfeit all of their team's potential doubles matches. (The format for each tie is four singles, followed by a doubles tiebreaker if the singles contests is tied at 2-2.)" Some are trying to change this, on the grounds that "…it's contrary to the mission of actually making the sport accessible and unfair to smaller schools." The argument for the rule is to encourage teams to bring four people, in the interest growing the sport. (But this could lead to bringing "dummy" players, whose only purpose is to give a team a fourth "player" so they don't default the doubles.) I'm not involved closely enough to have a strong opinion on this, though my first thought is just let the teams play, and if they are short a player, default the match that player would play.

Smash TT Round Robin

The new Smashtt club in Sterling, Virginia, is holding its first tournament this Sunday, March 22, a big round robin event, run by club owner, coach, and referee Michael Levene. Here's the entry form and info page. Michael wrote, "Accepting scanned entries with PayPal payment to michael@smashtt.com."

Ask the Coach

Episode #99 (22:35) - Forehand Finish Position (and other segments)

USATT Insider

Here's the new issue that came out yesterday.

Incredible Rally in Under 13 in Australia

Here's video (33 sec) of this wild and crazy rally - and note that it happened, like so many great points, at deuce. (Score is 10-10, with player on left up 2-1 in games.)

Run Forrest Run!

Here's the picture taken at a Forrest Gump themed restaurant.

Holy Polygon Pong?

Here's the picture of this new version of table tennis that's sweeping the world of geometry.

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