October 28, 2015

Coaching Tennis Players at Table Tennis
This keeps coming up. (I played tennis on the side for many years.) I'm coaching a ten-year-old who plays tennis and insists on using an almost tennis-style backhand. Whenever I get a new player who's played a lot of tennis, five things happen – one good, one sort of good, one bad, two very good.

  1. They have good forehands. Table tennis and tennis forehands are somewhat similar, though there are differences. In table tennis you stroke more from the elbow, i.e. arm snap, while tennis is more from the shoulder. (Both use body rotation about the same.) However, in tennis, players often raise the racket high during the backswing, a habit we have to fix for table tennis.
  2. They have good smashes against lobs. However, they often do them tennis style, with an overhead instead of turning sideways and doing a more conventional smash. Usually this isn't hard to fix, and tennis players are often a terror against lobs – they are especially good against any lob that lands a bit short, where they use their regular tennis overhead.
  3. They want to turn sideways for backhands. That may work for tennis, but not in table tennis for two reasons. First, you don't have time in a fast rally to turn sideways for both forehand and backhand shots. And second, turning sideways on the backhand moves the contact point well to the side, meaning there's a lot of distance between the forehand the backhand contact points – and so it's extremely difficult to cover the middle (shots at the elbow). Tennis players do pick up the backhand pretty quickly, but rarely have quick ones, and even years later you can almost always tell if a player started out as a tennis player by looking at their backhand stroke, where they will usually always turn a bit sideways.
  4. They are really good at putting topspin on the ball. They can do this on both the forehand and backhand – it's natural for them after playing tennis. This is sometimes difficult to teach a beginner, so it's always nice to have a tennis player who does this so easily.
  5. They move. In tennis, you have a full court to cover. In table tennis, you have less time but much less court. Tennis players are used to moving to stroke, and they do this in table tennis as well.

Pips and Anti
Here's the new coaching article by Samson Dubina. (He won the Millcreek Open – see below!) The article talks about the myths about these surfaces, and goes over how different players use these surfaces, such as Dan Seemiller, David Zhuang, Angela Guan, and John Wetzler.

Ask the Coach Show
Episode #181 (18:11) – Serving Styles (and other segments)

"I Never Thought It Would End This Way"
Here's an article from a soccer coach on the values we teach the kids we coach.

2015 ITTF World Cadet Challenge
It's taking place right now in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, Oct. 23-31. Here's the USATT page for the event, and here's the ITTF page with complete results, articles, pictures, and video. USA players competing (and representing North America, along with their Canadian counterparts) are Victor Liu, Jack Wang, Crystal Wang, and Grace Yang. The North American Boys' and Girls' Cadet Teams both lost in the semifinals to Team Europe. The NA Boys defeated Latin American for third, while the NA Girls lost to Asia in the playoff for third. Asia defeated Europe in the Boys' final, but in a shocker, Latin American Girls upset Asia in the semifinals and Europe in the final! Here's the Boys' draw and the Girls' draw. (Both show complete results of individual matches – click on team scores.)

World Championships of Ping Pong U.S. Qualifier Added to U.S. Nationals
Here's the USATT article. For those not in the know, this is for sandpaper table tennis. I'm a little flummergasted (yeah, I made up that word) because I want to play in this event but USATT is having a board meeting all day on Sunday, Dec. 13, and until roughly noon on Monday, Dec. 14. The Qualifier is Monday morning. I'm going to take a good hard look at the agenda and see if there's anything I consider important on Monday morning.

A Purpose for Ping Pong
Here's the article by Kim Gilbert on Ping Pong Charity events.

Women's Hardbat Events at the USA Nationals
Here's the USATT article.

Millcreek Open
Here's the USATT article by Sam Steiner.

How I Turn from Love to Hate Table Tennis
Here's the article. Some things to think about.

Top Ten Points at the Men's World Cup
Here's the video (6:16).

Savio College Exhibition with Mario Genovese

Incredible Shot by Michael Maze Against Ma Lin
Here's the video (37 sec, including slow motion replay) as he does an improvised running around-the-the net roll-on-the-table loop at the 2015 Tsingtao Tour. (Yeah, Ma Lin still plays, even if he isn't the best Ma anymore.)

Bouncing Ball on Racket Handle Challenge
On FridayMonday, and yesterday I linked to players setting records on this, and yesterday I wrote that 445 was the "ultimate record that will never be broken (yes, that's a challenge)." Well, challenge taken. Here's video (5:09) of 1109 in a row!!! Make sure to see the near miss and incredible recovery at 4:14. (I can't find the name of the person from the video or comments underneath.) Yes, a new record that will never be broken

Caesar Pong
Here's the picture! (Here's the non-Facebook version.)

Google a Gorilla
Here's some of what you get if you google "King Kong Ping Pong Pictures" and "Gorilla Table Tennis Pictures."

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