December 28, 2015

Tip of the Week
You're Your Yore.

USA Nationals (and Hidden Serves, Alas)
It's been an incredibly busy two weeks – USATT board meetings, USA Nationals, USA Team Trials, 29.5 hours at San Francisco Airport (see segment below), Christmas in Eugene, and catching up on everything since I returned two days ago. Here are some highlights.

I flew to Las Vegas the morning of Saturday, Dec. 12. And then – I had the day off! Well, sort of. I ended up working on a new science fiction story I'd been planning. (That's what I do when I'm not doing TT.)

The USATT board meeting was noon – 7PM on Sunday, Dec. 13, and 9AM-1PM on Monday, Dec. 14. A quick rundown of the agenda: committee reports and discussions; SafeSport discussion; USOC update; High Performance discussion; lots of time on the budget; TV; USATT events; ratings; marketing and sponsorship; strategic initiatives; and the problem with hidden serves.

This last one – illegal hidden serves – would irritate me the rest of the week, and still does. [Begin Hidden Serve Rant – skip ahead if not interested.] As I've blogged about many times with lots of video and pictures, cheating is rampant in our sport, with the large majority of major titles decided by illegal hidden serves, with the key factor in most matches whether the umpire will enforce the rules. Our sport rewards those who cheat and punishes those who do not. After some discussion the night before, where board members seemed favorable to resolving the problem, it was suggested I make a motion that the board wishes these rules to be followed. So I made the following motion, assuming it would be a no-brainer that'd pass unanimously:

"It has come to the attention of the USATT Board of Directors that illegal hidden serves are being allowed, and that when umpires are not sure about the legality of a serve they often do not call them. This is unfair to their opponents. The Board would like to see the rules enforced as they are written."

Once this was passed, we could then use it to encourage referees and umpires to enforce the rules. Specifically, we'd approach the referees of future U.S. Nationals and Opens and ask if they would abide by the board's direction. Except . . . the motion lost by a vote of 1-6-1!!! I was the only one who voted for it. I'll wait until the minutes go up on this to blog more about this, but just think about this for a few minutes. It's mindboggling. As one wit emailed me about it, the motion might as well have been this:

"It has been brought to the attention of the USATT Board of Directors that illegal hidden serves are being allowed. A majority of the Board encourages this, and would like umpires to continue to ignore the rules as they are written."

I wrote a long email to the board over this travesty. At some point I'll likely post it here. (This definitely has dampened my enthusiasm for USATT.) Meanwhile, as predicted, match after match was won or lost by illegal serves. I watched two top cadets play, where one hid his serve over and over in the first match, and easily won as his honest opponent struggled with his illegal serves. The second time they played an umpire warned both that he would be enforcing the service rule, and so both cadets served legally – and this time the other cadet won easily. (And guess what? Before the match, to encourage that umpire to enforce the rules, I showed him printouts of the opposing cadet illegally hiding his serve. It worked, as it should. However, in most cases, it doesn't work.)

Or just watch this women's singles quarterfinal match between 13-year-old prodigy Crystal Wang and Wang Chen (video starts halfway through game two), where the latter hid nearly every serve the entire match, but was not called for it a single time. Crystal led 3-2 in games and was two points away from winning at 9-7 when Wang Chen served these two hidden serves, and Crystal puts one in the net, and weakly returns the other. The problem here is that some would think this is an isolated incident. Pick any random point in the match, even at the very start (here's Wang Chen's first serve in the video), and you'll see the same hidden serves.

Most top players these days hide the ball with their head by throwing the ball backwards and thrusting their head forward at the last second, contacting the ball behind the head (but often following the ball down below their heads to make it appear the contact was under the head), but Wang Chen is old school, blatantly and illegally leaving the non-playing arm out in front, despite the rule that says, "As soon as the ball has been projected, the server’s free arm and hand shall be removed from the space between the ball and the net." This is so blatant that most umpires will call it, which is why fewer players do it, but this time around I didn't see it called a single time. The rules also say that hiding the ball during the serve is illegal, and that it is the responsibility of the player to serve so the umpire can see the serve is legal, and that the umpire is supposed to call any serve where he's not "sure" the serve is legal (i.e. the ball visible throughout the serve). But the rules were not followed, and so the match was decided by this. Enforce the rules, and Crystal wins for sure. Who wants to explain to her why her opponent was allowed to break the rules?

I don't mean to pick on Wang Chen since nearly every top player was hiding their serve, either on their own, or in reaction to opponents being allowed to do so by the umpires – otherwise, they couldn't compete fairly. (But I can't show videos of illegal serves without picking one.) Whoever does it first is cheating, but I don't blame those who do it in reaction to the umpire allowing an opponent to do so. At that point, they are no longer playing by the rules of table tennis, at least in regard to the hidden service rules. Whoever hides his serve first is doing so to gain an illegal advantage, and that is cheating. Whoever does it in response to the opponent doing so is not gaining an illegal advantage, but is simply evening the playing field since the umpire isn't enforcing the rules, and so I don't consider that cheating.

While changing the rules will help, the culture also needs to change. Our current culture of cheating will continue until we change the culture, and that has to come from the top – but at the moment, those at the top don't seem interested in changing the culture. They have forgotten the U.S. Olympic Oath (bolds below are mine), which is for all athletes in Olympic sports, including ours:

"In the name of all competitors I promise that we shall take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules which govern them, committing ourselves to a sport without doping and without drugs, in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of sport and the honour of our teams." 

We've fallen a long way from this. [End Hidden Serve Rant.]

The Nationals itself started Monday morning. The tournament ran smoothly on 126 tables with 771 players. Here are the results.

But perhaps more interesting than the tournament itself on Monday was what was happening at the Westgate Hotel, where many stayed. As I walked to the playing hall I couldn't help but notice about a thousand people mostly wearing "Trump" shirts – it turns out Donald Trump was having an election event there that night, and people were going crazy!!! I spent some time watching – not Trump, who I never saw (and presumably would arrive later that day), but the actual Trump supporters. What was going through their minds that they would support Trump? I could write a lot about what might happen if such an egotistical bombastic sociopath were elected president – what could possibly go wrong? – but I won't.

On Tuesday night we had the USATT Assembly, where a somewhat small but animated group discussed USATT issues. On Thursday night we had the Hall of Fame induction banquet, where Jack Huang (from my club!), Eric Owens, Tahl Leibovitz, Wang Chen, and Dean Johnson were inducted, and Si Wasserman was awarded the Mark Matthews Lifetime Achievement Award. I think five inductees (six if you include Wasserman) is a record – most years it's two or three.

This year I entered more events than usual, since I'm primarily a coach. I was in five events, and made the semifinals or quarterfinals of all five:

• Hardbat Doubles with Ty Hoff: Semifinals (I've won this event 13 times, 9 times with Ty)
• Hardbat Over 40: Quarterfinals (I've won this event four times)
• Sandpaper Singles: Semifinals
• World Ping-Pong Trials (Sandpaper): Quarterfinals
• Over 50 Men's Doubles with Ty Hoff (sponge): Quarterfinals (where we lost in five to the top seeds)

I was also entered in Hardbat Singles, which I've won twice, but had to drop out to run the National League Finals (also called the Club Championships). My arm, left knee, and back were all hurting, and so it might have been for the best.

I did less coaching at this Nationals than at any Nationals probably in the last 25 years – we now have seven full-time coaches at MDTTC, and they were all here coaching away. I spent some of my nights doing video analysis for our players, often messaging them bullet points on their upcoming opponents. I wish I could write more about this, but it's top secret! I tend to do a lot of advance scouting of opponents, either live, by watching videos, or asking around. For example, in the semifinals of the minicadet boys, we faced a player that neither I nor our player had seen before. So I asked around, and ended up with a pretty good scouting report – and it helped as our player (Ryan Dabbs, rated 2175 to the opponent's 2262) pulled off a nice 3-0 upset to make the final and make the USA National Minicadet Boys' Team. Derek Nie, also from my club, also made the Cadet National Boys' Team, also finishing second.

After the Nationals was the USA Team Trials. And then I was off to Eugene for Christmas with family – but first I had to get through San Francisco Airport….

29 and a Half Hours at San Francisco Airport
Shortly after lunch on Monday, Dec. 21, right after the USA Nationals, I went to the Las Vegas airport. I flew to San Francisco Airport, and was supposed to transfer to another flight to Eugene, OR, where I'd spend Christmas with family. Instead, my flight was postponed over and over, and finally cancelled at around 1AM. I ended up spending over ten hours at SF airport that day before taking a shuttle to a hotel, arriving around 2AM. It was pouring rain outside, and the shuttle shelter was jammed with others from the cancelled flight, and so I ended up standing outside in the freezing rain for 25 minutes, and so was soaking wet and frozen cold on the shuttle ride. Since the cancellation was "an act of God" (technically, an "air traffic controller problem," whatever that is), United wouldn't pay for it, so I had to pay $113 for the room. The earliest flight available was 5:57PM the following night. The hotel let me stay there until 1PM, then I took the shuttle back to the airport. Then that flight was delayed over and over – nine times to be exact, before finally taking off at 8:15PM. I ended up spending twenty-nine and a half hours at San Francisco Airport (including time at hotel). Isn't table tennis fun? 

Amazingly, this wasn't nearly as bad as my experience at San Francisco Airport last year – see the seventh segment in my blog one year ago, "My Seven Years at San Francisco Airport." I don't think I'll ever go through that airport again.

The Power of Practice
Here’s the new coaching article from Expert Table Tennis.

Coaching Articles from Coach Jon
Here are two new ones.

• Twiddle Me This…The Table Tennis Twiddler
• Table Tennis Muscles

Articles from Samson Dubina

• Interview with Samson with Pong Talk with the Stars
• Team Spirit – the Alguettis
• The Details of Pushing

How To Do A Backspin Serve - Part 2
Here’s the video (2:28) by Eli Baraty. Here’s Part 1 (1:25), which I previously linked to.

Podcast with Nick Ryder: Making a Comeback After 20 Years
Here's the podcast (36:41) from Expert Table Tennis. In this episode you’ll learn:

• How Nick first started playing table tennis back in the 80s.
• Why he decided to quit playing as a junior.
• What he learnt from training with future England star Mike O’Driscoll.
• Why he chose to make a comeback to the sport in 2012.
• How he has consistently improved his level over the last three years.
• The types of training and drills he’s implemented.
• What his goals are for the next couple of years, and beyond.
• TOP TIP: Develop a special serve to win you cheap points.

TableTennisDaily Podcast #4 - Par Gerell
Here’s the podcast (36:42).

USATT News Items
Since I've been away two weeks there's an accumulation of USATT news items – so why not browse over them?

National Collegiate Table Tennis December Newsletter
Here it is.

Ma Long Becomes Most Successful World Tour Grand Finals Player Ever
Here’s the ITTF press release.

Ding Ning in Slow Motion
Here’s the video (1:56) of the reigning world women’s champion.

Ma Long Chop Block
Here’s the video (5:17). I have students who insist that “nobody” does this! (I do it all the time, to their chagrin.)

Zhang Jike: Topspin and Flick Backhand
Here’s the video (9 sec).

Vladimir Samsonov Serve Practice - World Tour Grand Finals 2015
Here’s the video (4:14).

Top 10 Table Tennis Points of 2015
Here’s the video (8:39).

Table Tennis - Best of 2015
Here’s the new highlights video (9:35).

Table Tennis Target Practice for Prizes
Here's the video (78 sec). I do this type of thing somewhat regularly in my group sessions, usually with bunches of candy.

Super Sidespin Power Lob
Here’s the video (8 sec) of this lob by Adam Bobrow.

Santa vs. Reindeer Table Tennis Cartoon
Here’s the cartoon!

***
Send us your own coaching news!