May 29, 2015

"Ping Pong’s First Fantasy Novel a Smashing Read!"

Here’s the review from MH Table Tennis. Disclosure: It’s my novel!!! (And that’s why it goes first in my blog.) There’s also a 5-star review at Amazon:

“A fascinating story of an American wanting to be the best in the world of table tennis, going to China for some magical and intriguing training sessions, and how he eventually achieved his hard-earned success. The best part is in the journey of it - vivid, colorful descriptions of the matches, processes, psyches, and sometimes point-by-point analysis. This was a real page-turner, and was one of the best binges I've been on.”

As noted in my blog yesterday, there have also been news items at the below:

Foreigner publishes new ping pong-themed book The Spirit of Pong, with way-cool cover.

American author Larry Hodges has written a new ping pong-themed novel, The Spirit of Pong, telling a story of an American Andy "Shoes" Blue, who dreams to be a ping pong world champion, comes to China to learn how to play ping pong, where he inadvertently finds China's "ultimate secret."

This is a rather short novel, with only 100 pages and 14 chapters. However, Larry Hodges uses his imagination to the fullest extent to include many ping pong famous such as Rong Guotuan, Deng Yaping, and Waldner. Indeed, the so-called "secret" is the spirit of pong within their heart.

Serve Practice

I’m always surprised at how uncreative most players are when they practice serves. Rather than think about why a top player serves a certain way, many just blindly copy what they see, never really understand it or know which parts are important, and end up with only a pale copy of the serves they were trying to copy. If you see a top player doing something, don’t just copy it; figure out or ask why they do each aspect of the serve. Then focus on what makes the serve effective.

For example, here’s a video (3:10) from Brett Clarke that not only shows the forehand pendulum serve, but explains why each aspect is done the way it’s done. (I linked to this yesterday.)

On a related note, recently I seem to be teaching two specific serves to a lot of players: Reverse Pendulum Serves, and fast no-spin to the middle. Why? The first is a great variation to normal forehand pendulum serves, and you can hide which way the sidespin is going until the last second – and the serve is especially effective if you can use the same motion and go either short to the forehand or long to the backhand. (Also, my arm still won’t allow me to do my forehand pendulum serves effectively, but it doesn’t seem to affect my reverse pendulum serves.)

The second is simply a great point-winner. Want a couple free points every game, and see your “level” go up 100 rating points? Develop a very fast no-spin (i.e. flat) serve that goes right to an opponent’s middle (usually the elbow). How and when to do this serve will likely be next Monday’s Tip of the Week. (I thought I’d done a Tip on this already, but just discovered that I haven’t, I’ve just written briefly about it in related tips on serving long.)

Here are three tutorials on how to do the Reverse Pendulum Serve:

History of U.S. Table Tennis, Volume 16 (1988-89)

Here’s a recap, which I may put up each day, so ignore this paragraph if you’ve seen this already.

USATT Historian Tim Boggan moves in with me about once a year for 10-14 days to do his next volume of his History of U.S. Table Tennis. I do the page layouts and photo work for the roughly 450 pages in each volume. We’re now working on Volume 16, which covers 1988-89. About half the photos are by USATT Hall of Famer Mal Anderson, who scans and sends them to me on a CD. We start work each morning at roughly 7AM, and except for a short lunch break, work until around 2:30 PM, when I have to leave for the MDTTC afterschool program and other coaching. I usually get back after 8PM, and then have to do all my regular work, including the next morning’s blog, which I normally do in the morning, and usually a zillion other things.

On Day Four (Thursday), we did chapter five and less than half of chapter six. We worked from about 7AM to 2:30PM, with a one-hour lunch break that I mostly spent on other work. (Primarily the report on the Disabled Veterans Camp I ran last week, and a bunch of emails.) The book will have 24 chapters. 

Chapter Five was titled “1988: March Tournaments.” It ran from page 78-96 (18 pages), with 56 graphics. I have to pull each of these graphics into Photoshop, do all sorts of fixes to these often horrible and old pictures (Tim is picky about distracting things in the background, and I’m picky about making sure they come out as well as possible), then pull them onto the document, place them, and put in the caption and attribution.

Chapter Six is titled “1988: April Tournaments. ACU-I Championships.” We only did about six pages with 20 graphics.

Because I mistakenly admitted to Tim that I’d finally caught up on most of my other “emergency” work, he talked me into starting early tomorrow. So we’ll be starting around 5AM this morning (Friday).  Since Friday is my day off, where I only have to do afterschool pickups but no actual coaching (so I can rest my arm), I’ll be leaving around 2:30 PM, and returning by 4PM – meaning we might work from 5AM to 2:30 PM, and then 4-6PM. I may not survive it.

World’s Biggest Ping Pong Pool Party at US Open

Here’s the USATT article. “USA Table Tennis (USATT), THE LINQ, Joola and Uberpong announced today that the “World’s Biggest Ping Pong Pool Party” will be coming to THE LINQ pool in Las Vegas on Friday night, July 10th, in conjunction with the 2015 US Open. The party, which will run from 8pm to Midnight, will feature pool-side pong, a live DJ, and plenty of fun!” (NOTE –party is for ages 21 and up only. Sorry kiddos! It’s not in the article, but I believe this is because alcoholic beverages will be served.)

Ask the Coach

Episode #132 (23:25) – No Practice Partner.

Table Tennis School – Players Attack and Defense Exercises

Here’s the new video (39:50).

Inside the Life of a Chinese National Team Player: Exclusive Interview with Guo Yan

Here’s the interview from MH Table Tennis with the former world #1.

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.

Paralympic Table Tennis

Maybe I shouldn’t complain about my arm problems? (Here’s the non-Facebook version.)

Cats Playing Ping Pong

Here’s the video – it’s only 45 sec, but manages to pack in the best of the best of this surest of Internet lures!

Here’s a Pair of Penguin Pong Cartoons

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