April 22, 2016

USATT National Coaching Program Update
Here's the USATT news item on these big changes to our national team coaching system. If you are interested in applying as a coach for one of the National Teams – I believe these would include Men, Women, Junior Boys, Junior Girls, Cadet Boys, Cadet Girls, Paralympic - you need to apply by this Monday. I'll blog about this probably next week. (I'm putting this first because of that deadline. I may move this down later on.)

USATT Board of Directors Minutes and Illegal Hidden Serves
Our long national nightmare is over . . . the minutes to the USATT Board Meeting at the USA Nationals in December is finally up – four months later! So are the minutes to USATT Board Teleconferences in January and April. They are all linked from the USATT Minutes page.

Readers of this blog and anyone who's been paying attention to the sport knows about the problem we're having with illegal hidden serves. Our sport has developed a culture of cheating, where umpires allow players to illegally hide their serves, making receive very difficult, and giving the cheating player a big advantage. (Yes, hiding your serve to gain unfair advantage is cheating, and if you don't see that, you are in denial.) Nearly every major title at the USA Nationals, U.S. Open, and major events around the world are decided by illegally hidden serves. Because players cannot fairly compete when the umpire allows an opponent to hide their serves, nearly every top player, and now nearly every top cadet (under age 15) has been forced to learn to cheat hide their serve.

I've blogged about this many times. Here's my Dec. 28, 2015 blog where I both argued the case and gave examples, such as how 13-year-old Crystal Wang was cheated out of her quarterfinal match in Women's Singles at the Nationals because umpires allowed her opponent to blatantly hide her serve, even very publicly leaving her non-playing arm out to hide the serve – while Crystal serve very legally throughout. How can anyone watch this and not be sickened I'll never understand. But these are not isolated matches; it's happened in nearly every top-level match. This won't change until the leaders in our sport show leadership and fix the problem.

When a player learns to read the serve by watching contact, and then an opponent illegally hides contact and the umpire allows it, guess what? The player will struggle to read the serve, and will often look like an amateur. Or worse, they simply make very defensive returns, giving the illegal server an easy attack or put-away, and spectators get the false impression that the server isn't getting much of an advantage since the player is at least getting them back.

As I've argued many times, if an opponent cheats on his serve and the umpire allows it, then it's not cheating if you then do the same. Your opponent is serving illegally to gain an advantage, which is the definition of cheating; you are serving illegally only to nullify that advantage, plus the match in question is no longer being played under the laws of table tennis anyway. Some may nitpick this, but the gist is that we need to solve this problem so neither player is cheating.

Not every serve is hidden – most players learn that if you do that, then the opponent gets used to it. So they often go back and forth, hiding the serve perhaps a few times early to make sure the umpire will allow it and to build up an early lead, and then holding back until key points. Others do it nearly every point. Spectators often think the serve is visible because contact appears visible, when in fact the server often hides contact with his head, and then fakes contact underneath the head. The ball must be visible to the receiver throughout the serve. (Others just leave their non-playing arm out there and hide it with that, not even attempting to hide the cheating and practically challenging the umpires to call the blatantly illegal serve – and they rarely do. See Crystal match above, and many other matches at the last Nationals and the recent North American Olympic Trials.)

I've presented the board and officials numerous pictures and links to videos showing them the obvious, but our leaders have not shown the leadership to solve this problem. We could change the rules, as I've proposed with the Net Visibility Rule (which has an entire gallery of illegally hidden serves, and was presented to the USATT Board, Officials Committee, and Rules Committee to show examples of all the cheating going on), but even more important is the will to actually do the right thing, and enforce the rules. Until we do that, we'll reward the cheaters and cheat the non-cheaters.

What does all this have to do with the USATT minutes? If you go to the December minutes, and page down to page 8, you'll see where I made a motion:

Motion 6: 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.

Please read the minutes about the motion, and note that it lost by a vote of 1-6-1. Yes, I was the only one to vote for it. The plan was that with this motion (assuming it passed, which I thought was a no-brainer – silly me), was that we could then ask the referee of the upcoming Nationals to fulfill the Board's will, and let umpires and players know in advance that the rules would be enforced as they are written. Instead, we will have another Nationals where the rules will not be enforced, and cheating will continue to dominate our sport.

The night before the meeting I ran this by several board members, and they all seemed to agree with it. But then came the meeting. After I made the motion, a number amazing things occurred that are not in the minutes. Several USATT people argued that there is no evidence that players were hiding their serves or that umpires were not enforcing the rules. That's just astoundingly silly. I'd presented the board with lots of photographic evidence, but even that should not be needed – this has been an ongoing problem for several years, and for table tennis people to deny the very existence of the problem was bizarre. I once again presented to the board numerous pictures of prominent players hiding their serves at major tournaments – not cherry-picked serves, but in almost all cases their very first serve of the match – and these objections slowly went away.

Another argued that it didn't matter if the serves were illegal, all that mattered was what the serves looked like from the umpires' point of view, and that I hadn't presented those pictures. I pointed out that I had presented four pictures of hidden serves from the umpires' point of view. I then pointed out that if a player is cheating and the umpire doesn't see it, it's still cheating – it simply means he hasn't been caught. More importantly, the problem isn't that the umpires don't see it, it's that they aren't enforcing it. When a player hides his serve, umpires often point out that they can't really see if the serve is hidden or not, and so don't call it. That's the problem – the rules are very clear that if the umpire can't tell if the serve is legal, than the serve is illegal! (See rules below.)

Others argued that hiding one's serve isn't really cheating, that if the umpire isn't calling it, it isn't cheating. Please! (Do I need to dignify this with a serious answer? Among other things, see the Olympic oath from my Dec. 28, 2015 blog.)

I could write a book on the arguments against some of the points raised against the motion. For example, the argument that "this motion is unnecessary because umpires are already directed to fault all illegal serves as part of their job" is simply wrong. To start with, we know they are not calling the serves, so we know we need to act on this. Giving it lip service and then looking the other way doesn't help hard-working and conscientious umpires who face the fact that if they are the only ones enforcing the rules correctly, they will be singled out and ostracized. What's needed is for those in charge to make it 100% clear that umpires not enforcing the rules will not be acceptable, and let both umpires and players know in advance of the tournament that this will not be tolerated. I've proposed this to the Officials committee last year, suggesting that they notify umpires and players in advance of the Nationals (via email and info flyers in player packets) that the rules will be enforced, but no action was taken. With the board vote here, no action will be taken for the upcoming Nationals as well, alas.  

I mean, seriously – if the role of the umpire is to enforce the rules, is it too much to ask that they enforce the rules???

But it's almost unfair to ask an umpire to enforce the rules until they all do it, as a group. And that won't happen until they are directed, as a group, to do so – and then enforce it by calling out those who do not enforce the rules. This means action needs to come from the top – but that's not happening.

I could go on and on, but it's just too frustrating, seeing such blatant wrongs and knowing that the leaders of our sport will do nothing to resolve the issue. And so coaches, parents, and up-and-coming kids will continue to face the problem of whether to learn to cheat to compete. After the December board meeting I pretty much dropped all USATT activities for a month in disgust.

Often players who complain about illegal hidden serves are called hypocrites because they have been forced to do the same to compete. Sorry, I don't consider that hypocrisy, since they are trying to solve the problem while trying to compete in the culture of cheating they are forced to survive in. But the accusations are often enough to shut them up, and then those who don't want to deal with the problem have fewer people complaining.

What are the rules that are being broken? Pretty much all of the following:

2.06.04: From the start of service until it is struck, the ball . . . shall not be hidden from the receiver by the server or his or her doubles partner or by anything they wear or carry. 

2.06.05: 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. 

2.06.06: It is the responsibility of the player to serve so that the umpire or the assistant umpire can be satisfied that he or she complies with the requirements of the Laws, and either may decide that a service is incorrect. 

2.06.06.01: If either the umpire or the assistant umpire is not sure about the legality of a service he or she may, on the first occasion in a match, interrupt play and warn the server; but any subsequent service by that player or his or her doubles partner which is not clearly legal shall be considered incorrect. 

One other clarification. Some officials have argued there is too much gray area in the rules to enforce. That's nonsense. They seem to believe that if they aren't sure if the serve is legal, then there's gray area, and they can't call it. WRONG!!! There is no gray area there, none whatsoever. The rules say if the umpire isn't sure about the serve, then the serve is illegal. Gray area occurs when the umpire is almost certain that the serve is legal (in this case visible), but not absolutely 100% sure. When players are hiding the ball behind their head or illegally leaving their arm out to hide the ball, there's no way an umpire can be "sure" these serves are legal. At most they can say they aren't sure, followed by a call of "Fault!" (Or a warning the first time.)

You can see other arguments made in the minutes, but only the bare gist of what took place as we argued for something like an hour over this - pretty much me against everyone else in the room (plus a few who simply didn't get involved). And so not one other board member would vote that we should follow our rules. It's pretty much the same as the steroids era in baseball, where everyone knew what was going on, but many still denied it or swept the problem under the rug, hoping it would go away on its own. Now we despise those who allowed it. How is that different than this? (The health issues of steroids is one difference, but not relevant. People don't despise Barry Bonds and other steroids cheaters because they risked their health; they despise them because they cheated for advantage, and they despise those who allowed it.)

I've been emailing with ITTF officials, and they are slowly working toward resolving the problem. Meanwhile, how many more kids and other players will train full-time, only to have their dreams – national titles, national teams, Olympic team – taken away because we allow their opponents to openly cheat? How many kids will be taught to cheat? Some argue that USATT should just stay out of it, that it's an ITTF problem. Sure, that's one way to deal with a problem, but ignoring it and hoping someone else deals with it. That's not how I operate. USATT should be a leader, not one that looks the other way and hopes others will fix our problems.

Oh, and just to be clear, just because I and many others believe we should not allow cheating doesn't mean we aren't trying to train players to deal with the problem, such as learning to return the illegally hidden serves they will inevitably face, due to umpires allowing it. Trying to end the cheating and teaching players how to deal with it are not mutually exclusive. (But it's not easy learning to return hidden serves unless you are in a club where the coaches openly teach such serves to their players, and so there are many players to practice against them.)

Now for the most sickening part. When USATT people were arguing that there is no evidence that players were hiding their serves or umpires not calling it, it was blatantly obvious to most in the room that this simply wasn't true – any serious table tennis person who has been paying attention knows this is a problem, with the only serious question as to how or whether to deal with it. So faced with these obviously false statements, how many others at the meeting other than myself spoke up against these false statements?

Zero. And I welcome any of them to comment below. And I'll finish with these words, often paraphrased in different ways and attributed to Edmund Burke, Plato, and others:

"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing."

​The Ultimate Guide to Beating Your Workmates at Ping Pong
Here's the new coaching article from MH Table Tennis. Includes links to numerous videos.

Coaching and Tips from MyTableTennis.net
Here's their coaching section – a huge collection.

Ask the Coach Show
Episode #256 (18:35) - Training v competition (and other segments).

A Puzzlemaster's Pastime – Your Brain on Ping Pong
Here's the video (59 sec) featuring Will Shortz, New York Times Crossword Editor and Westchester TTC owner. "I'm fanatical about table tennis."

Table Tennis Notebooks
Here are pictures of these notebooks with TT racket pictures. And here's where they are on sale – in England, alas.

Playing Table Tennis with Special Items
Here's the video (2:35). (Yesterday I linked to a shortened version of this with just the shovel.)

Real Beer Pong?
Here's the picture!

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