April 2, 2015

No Blog on Friday

Why? Because:

  1. It's Good Friday.
  2. Everyone else is off work, so why not me?
  3. We have a one-day camp at MDTTC.
  4. I'm working on several big projects.
  5. I need to take my car to the shop in the morning for some minor repairs that I've put off for a long time.

European vs. USA Question

In the U.S., the first thing a player is often asked at a club is, "What's your rating?" But in Europe it's different. Stefano Ratti emailed me the following  after he recently visited his brother in the Netherlands and played a tournament there. Note that 18,000 players in the Netherlands equates to about 340,000 in the U.S.! (Stefano has been instrumental in helping set up the Capital Area Super League.)

I spoke to a number of local players (remarkably few people of Asian origins, compared to the U.S. TT population) and it was very interesting to see how the team leagues are the backbone of the sport. If you ask somebody what level they are, their answer is “I play in Division x for xyz team”, not “my rating is X”. They seed players based on their percentages in the team league, which basically puts players in a certain “class” – for example, if you play in the National Division 2 and have a 60% win percentage, you may be considered class B.  There appears to be a rating number (again, calculated ONLY on the basis of team league matches), but it is not widely used (my brother was barely aware of its existence).  Also, tournaments don’t seem to count towards any sort of rating (the opposite of what we have here!).  They have 4 National league divisions, and 7 regional league divisions. If I get my numbers straight, there are about 16 million people in the Netherlands and 18,000 registered players (I am one of them now!).

Wednesday Happenings

  • Behind-the-Back Craze. Seems like everyone is trying to do this shot, including players at my club. In one private session one of my students was so determined to do the shot that we devoted five minutes to practicing it. (On March 25 I linked to videos of a number of these shots.)
  • Segregated Balls. For coaching we have about a 50-50 mixture of white and orange Butterfly training balls. (Celluloid, though we plan to make the switch to Butterfly plastic training balls when they become available, which should be soon.) When doing multiball I subconsciously tend to feed all the white balls first, then the orange balls. In a multiball session yesterday, the player I was working with was forehand looping crosscourt from the forehand side. About halfway through the box (about a gross of balls), we switched and had him loop backhands from the backhand side. After we finished, we looked back - and since I'd fed all the white balls first, all of the white balls were sitting in one corner, all the orange balls in the other. Ping pong segregation!!!
  • Friday Rest. For the last couple months I've been coaching nearly seven days a week. This has led to extreme exhaustion. As of yesterday, I've worked it out so that on Fridays I only do pickups for the afterschool program, but after dropping them off at the club, I'm done.
    There's a chance I might finally catch my breath. (The only complication is that Coach Cheng Yinghua will be going to China for a month on April 15, and during that time they'll need me on Fridays. So I'll go back to exhaustion and grumpiness during that time.)
  • Barrier for Back Tables. My long ongoing quest to get another barrier for the back left area of the club has finally been answered, and yesterday I put the barrier there, to great acclaim. (Well, I applauded it.) We're always short about a foot back there where I do much of my coaching (especially group sessions), and so I'm always moving the barriers about trying to find the best way to cover for this.
  • Sports Team Championships. I had an interesting email discussion yesterday with some "people in high places" about an idea I've toyed with for a while: trying to get all the major sports franchises (baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, etc.) to have club table tennis tournaments, and then we set up a Sports Team Championships for the champions of each club. Each of the champions would be assigned a top local coach. (I have dibs on JJ Hardy of the Baltimore Orioles!) Ideally, it would be in Las Vegas, with ESPN, prize money, etc.

Hidden Serve Rule

I've blogged before about the problems with the current rule. The current rule is (roughly speaking) that the ball cannot be hidden from the opponent throughout the serve. The problem is that umpires cannot usually tell if the serve is hidden or not. (I watched 16 different players on video at the recent USA Team Trials, and 14 of them hid their serves at least some of the time.) The rules state that it is the responsibility of the player to serve so that the umpire is satisfied that he is serving legally, and if an umpire can't tell if the serve is visible or not, then he cannot be satisfied that the serve is legal, and should warn or fault. In reality, few umpires do that, and so many or most of our national titles go to players who abuse this rule and hide their serve.

My suggested solution has been to change the rule so that throughout the serve the ball cannot be hidden not only from the receiver, but to both umpires or where they would sit if there is only one umpire or no umpires. However, some think this is too extreme, since the umpires may sit well off to the side. So I'm now proposing we just use the net, and require that the ball cannot be hidden from the entire net and the area directly above it. This would make it impossible to hide the serve from a receiver without it being somewhat obvious he was hiding it from at least part of the net. (Remember that the net not only goes over the table, but six inches out to the sides.)

Here is my suggestion on how to change the rules, with my addition in brackets. We would have to propose it to the ITTF.

Current rule 02.06.04: From the start of service until it is struck, the ball shall be above the level of the playing surface and behind the server's end line, and it shall not be hidden from the receiver by the server or his or her doubles partner or by anything they wear or carry. 

Proposed rule 02.06.04: From the start of service until it is struck, the ball shall be above the level of the playing surface and behind the server's end line, and it shall not be hidden from the receiver[, or the net and the area directly above the net,] by the server or his or her doubles partner or by anything they wear or carry. 

Table Tennis on The Big Bang Theory - Tonight!!!
In tonight's episode of The Big Bang Theory, "The Skywalker Incursion" (8PM eastern time on CBS), they play ping pong! Here's the description: "When Leonard and Sheldon are invited to speak at UC Berkeley, they take a detour to try and meet one of their idols. Meanwhile, while cleaning out Mrs. Wolowitz's house, a ping pong battle ensues when Howard and Bernadette argue over the fate of his TARDIS." Here are twelve pictures from the episode, six of which include ping pong. Yes, it's Big Bang Pong!

Ask the Coach

Episode #108 (27:36) - Short Topspin Serve (and other segments).

Backspin Serves into Net

Here's a video (1:36) of a player serving backspin so ball after ball comes back into the net. This is a good exercise in spin and ball control. Can you do this? If not, then practice it. Perhaps put targets on the net and try to make the ball bounce back and hit them!

USATT Insider

Here's the new issue that came out Wednesday.

International Table Tennis

Here's my periodic note (usually every Friday) that you can great international coverage at TableTennista (which especially covers the elite players well) and at the ITTF home page (which does great regional coverage). Butterfly also has a great news page.

Ask a Pro Anything: Dimitrij Ovtcharov

Here's the interview (6:10) by Jorgen Persson (subbing for Adam Bobrow).

How to Make Table Tennis Sponge

Here's a video (4:38) from Andro Table Tennis showing how they make table tennis sponge. It's in German but with English subtitles.

Table Tennis Fire

Here's a new table tennis music video (1:28) showing all aspects of the sport.

2015 Cornilleau 740 Open

Here's the USATT article on this tournament held March 21 in Springfield, Missouri. Sina Asadallahi of Houston, TX, won both the Open Round Robin and Open Singles.

Ma Long and Zhang Jike in Music Video Sing off

Here's the video (23 sec). So who's better?

Table Tennis Through Time (a Brief History of Ping Pong)

Here's the article.

April Fools' Day Postings

Here are links to my annual April Fools' Day postings - it's sort of a tradition! (In 2012 I had to do it on April 2 since that year April 1 was a Sunday, and I only blog Mon-Fri.)

Table Tennis: Not for the Timid!

Here's the artwork!

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