June 2, 2015

Top Ten Craziest Shots I’ve Ever Done

Some of the kids I coach were talking about the craziest shots they’ve ever done. So I’ve compiled my Top Ten list. How about you?

  1. An opponent mishit a shot off the edge of his racket, popping it up high on my side with a crazy backspin that made it bounce back over the net to his side. I ran to the left side, and smashed it as hard as I could – straight down. The ball went down at great speed, the ball went down at great speed . . . and then just dropped. Because I’d hit it almost exactly straight down, it dropped back down over the table. I was stuck on the side of the table when my opponent pushed my smash back for a winner! I actually dived for the ball and got my racket on it, but couldn’t make the return.
  2. I was back lobbing when the opponent smashed weakly to my backhand. I chopped it back down the line to the opponent’s forehand. He pushed it right off the bounce at an extreme angle to my forehand, so that it bounced on my side of the table and crossed the sideline to the right. There was no way I could get to the ball the normal way by going around the corner of the table. So I dived under the table, inside the table leg on the near right, and managed to make the return by scooping the ball back up off the floor. I didn’t see it, but my opponent pushed it back for a winner as I lay on the floor on my stomach.
  3. A player popped a ball up to my very wide backhand at an angle so it went well to the left of the table. I stepped around and tried smashing it down the line. Instead, the ball hit the left net post. It bounced to the left, and hit the right side post (!), and bounced back sideways, where it hit the net, balance there for a second, and then dribbled over for a winner.
  4. An opponent dribbled the ball over the net at 19-all. (This was a long time ago, when I was 17 and games were to 21.) I lunged over the table, putting my left (non-playing) elbow on the table, and managed to scoop the ball up and return it. My opponent caught the ball and claimed the point, saying I’d touched the table with my non-playing hand. It so happened that the opponent was the tournament referee!!! I was in one of my first tournaments, and yet I knew he was wrong – the free hand is defined as from the wrist down. But he insisted that the elbow was considered part of the free hand, and claimed the point. So instead of being up 20-19, I was down 19-20. I won the next point (should have been the game), but lost in deuce. He won the second, and so won two straight. (I was about 1700 at the time to his 1900.)
  5. At the North American Teams in Baltimore one year I was at deuce in the third with Samson Dubina, who was around 2300 or so at the time. He smashed side to side several times, and I managed to run them down. Then he smashed really hard to my wide forehand, and I raced after it into the adjacent court. In almost one motion, I made the return while knocking over a 13-year-old and giving him a bloody lip. I won the point and the match – the last time I’d ever beat the future USA Men’s Singles Finalist.
  6. There used to be a rule that you couldn’t foot stomp on your serve. This was so players couldn’t hide which surface on their racket they were hitting with before the color rule came about in 1983. (This was circa 1981 or 1982.) I had an uncertified and inexperienced umpire for a match against a very strong player. As I’d find out later, the player told the inexperienced umpire that if I lifted my foot when I served, that was a foot stomp, and I should be faulted. Well, I always lift my foot when serving, it’s part of the motion, but it’s not a foot stomp, which was defined as an attempt to hide the sound of contact – and I didn’t make any noticeable sound in lifting my foot up and dropping it to the ground as I served. But the umpire fell for my opponent’s trick, and faulted me! When I found out why, I called the referee. The referee sided with me. But the opponent pointed out that foots-stomping is a judgment call, and correctly pointed out that an umpire can’t change a judgment call. After thinking it over, the referee reluctantly agreed, and awarded my opponent the point. It’s the only time in 39 years of play that I’ve been faulted – but I won the match.
  7. While playing Sunny Li when he was about ten years old and dominating the U.S. in that age group (rated about 2100), I was up match point – I forget the score. He served short backspin, and I opened my racket and did a backspin scoop, popping the ball up short with heavy backspin so it bounced right back to my court for the match-winner, as Sunny could only watch. (I think I was up around 20-12 at the time.)
  8. In a match with 1985 U.S. Men’s Champion Hank Teekaveerakit, I aced him down the line on the first serve of the match. He was a penhold looper who tried to loop all deep serves, but I had a very deceptive motion that looked like I was going crosscourt. I served fast down the line again, and aced him again. He shook his head, grumbling to himself. I decided to go for it again, and aced him again! Hank, who was about 2600, began laughing, and said (pronouncing the r’s like l’s), “Lally, Lally, nobody serves fast down the line three times in a row!” After that he returned most of my serves with his backhand, and easily won that game and took a big lead in the second. At that point he lined up way over on his backhand side for the first time since the first three points, and sort of smiled. The rest of the game I served fast to the corners and he was able to loop most of them with his forehand – a pretty good practice session for him!
  9. In the quarterfinals of the New Jersey Open I played David Zhuang. After he won the first two and was up about 17-10 in the second, I began to play exhibition, and he went along as we took turns lobbing and other tricks. But the umpire didn’t like it. I was blowing back balls, David was kicking them back, and the umpire was on his feet trying to catch the ball while yelling the point was over!!! Seeing this, David and I began hitting down the line, my backhand to his forehand, just out of reach of the umpire, who kept reaching for the ball. Finally I think he did deflect it and the rally ended. David got the point (since I’d blown the ball back before he’d kicked it), but we were yellow carded. David said he couldn’t risk getting red-carded, so we played it straight the rest of the way – or more specifically, we put on a lobbing exhibition the rest of the way with only legal shots.
  10. I was playing Dave Sakai in the early 1980s in a match at the Northern Virginia Table Tennis Club. (I was club president.) We were on table three. Top-seeded Eric Boggan (top 20 in the world, two-time U.S. Men’s Champion) was on table one. The tables were a bit crowded together, but he was still two courts away when this happened. I was back lobbing, and put the ball too short to Dave’s wide backhand. He did a backspin smash to my wide backhand at a crazy angle. But I saw it coming, and was off and running for it before he even hit it. No one was playing on table two, but the ball went all the way to court one. I not only got to it, I counter-smashed with my forehand – and then ran smack into Eric, knocking him down. He wasn’t happy. Dave, who hasn’t missed a block since the 1960s, of course blocked my smash back for an easy winner as I was also on the floor after the collision with Eric.

Reviews and Articles about “The Spirit of Pong”

More reviews are coming out on my fantasy table tennis novel, The Spirit of Pong. They’re pretty good! But I’ll let you judge. Newest ones are from Expert Table Tennis (which sounded like a 5-star review until the very end!) and a new one on Amazon. The book is selling pretty well!

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

I was exhausted before we started on Monday morning. On Sunday, I’d started work at 4:45 AM and finished at 8:30 AM. Along the way I did 6.25 hours work on Tim Boggan’s History of U.S. Table Tennis, and seven hours of private and group coaching. But it didn’t end there – I then stayed up late watching Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, and Veep – it’s my weekly “TV night” - and then staying still later to do the Tip of the Week and blog for Monday and other work. I went to bed Sunday night around 1:30 AM . . . and got up at 6:30 AM Monday to work with Tim. We worked from 7:00AM to 4:30PM on his book (with a long lunch break, fortunately), finishing chapters 13 and 14, pages 196-244, and well over 100 graphics. It’s slow going; we started last Monday (eight days ago), and expect to finish sometime this next weekend, so about two weeks total.

About 20 of the pages were direct scans from pages that Tim had glued on sheets of paper as collages of photos and articles. Alas, he didn’t realize that when you cut and paste articles with scissors, every cut shows up when you scan the pages. So I spent a huge amount of time painstakingly erasing all the paper cuts. I have now banned all scissors from Tim; he’s not allowed to come within ten feet of them.

I came close to skipping the blog this week due to complete exhaustion, but I’m determined to keep it going. At this point I think I’m living on Mountain Dew, the only thing keeping me going. But I’ll be off that as soon as we finish.

Having a First Game Plan

Here’s the new coaching article from Han Xiao. This is a great article that should get you thinking.

As to me, I always have a first game plan. On my serve, I want to attack, but I need to find out which serves will set me up to attack against this opponent. I also want to try out a number of my “trick” serves to see which work – and one I find ones that gives the opponent trouble, I want to keep going back to those serves periodically for “free points,” spacing them out so the opponent doesn’t get used to them. Then I’ll basically go into a cycle of varied short serves to set up my attack, sudden deep serves that will often force mistakes or weak attacks I can counter-attack against, and the trick serves that work.

On my opponent’s serve, I want to force rallies, and so my plan in the first game is often to topspin the serve back any way I can, usually deep to the backhand, and then rally. Often I backhand flip to force backhand-to-backhand rallies, taking the opponent’s serve out of the equation while challenging him to try to outlast my super consistent (though not very aggressive) backhand. I’ll also start pushing short against short backspin or no-spin serves, and try to find the right balance between short pushes and flips. If the serves go long, I either forehand loop or backhand drive. As the match goes on, if necessary I’ll get more aggressive against deep serves, looping them with my forehand whenever I can – but only if necessary; if I can disarm them and win with controlled backhand receives, I’ll stick to that.

Ask the Coach

Episode #133 (32:01) – How to do a Deceptive Topspin Serve and other topics.

To All the Kids Who Love Ping Pong

Here’s a new table tennis music video (4:18) from China.

Kenji Matsudaira vs. Enzo Angles

Here’s video of a pretty good match (4:02, with time between points removed), from the 2015 French League. Matsudaira of Japan is #102 in the world (formerly #34), while Angles of France is #174.

Arguing About Benghazi Talking Points

Here’s the political table tennis cartoon.

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In reply to by tom

Oops, I got the Matsudaira's mixed up - I did a quick search on the world ranking page and used the ranking from the first one I saw, forgetting there was a second. I'll make the correction - thanks.