July 8, 2016

USA Nationals
I wasn't planning to blog for a few more days, but had to put down some thoughts after watching the Men's and Women's Singles Finals. First I'll give the facts, then I'll give a little analysis. 

Table tennis can be a cruel sport. In the Men's Singles Final, we had defending champion Yijun "Tom" Feng (top seed at 2722) against junior star Kanak Jha (second seed at 2655, coached by Stefan Feth). Here's the short version: Tom went up 3-1 in games, and was up 12-11 championship point in the fifth. That was the first of three turning points. Kanak was to serve, but first he did a simple thing: he tied his shoelaces. Now you can't get away with tying your shoelaces every point, but Kanak picked the right time - it allowed him to clear his mind. And it worked. They'd been having surprisingly long rallies, but this time Kanak basically ripped three forehands to win the game. He's still down 2-3, but he'd win the next game 11-7. 

Next thing we know it's 4-4 in the seventh - and we had our second turning point. Tom scored five straight points, and leads 9-4. As Kanak later said, "I thought it was over." And as I said above, table tennis can be a cruel sport - and this was the third and final turning point. Kanak scores the next two points to 6-9. Then he gets a net ball to make it 7-9, with Tom to serve. You could see Tom taking his time, focusing, knowing these would be some of the most important points he'd ever play. And then the serve went slightly long, Kanak loops it in, and it's 8-9. And then Kanak gets another net - an unreturnable net dribbler - and it's 9-9! With Kanak to serve - and two points later, he's completed the 4-9, 11-9 comeback (-10,-6,10,-5,12,7,9), and is the new USA Men's Singles Champion. 

Think about it - Tom had a match point in game five, then led 9-4 in the seventh. Kanak pulled off the gritty comeback, but with the help of two net balls. What are the chances of one player getting both? One in four, or 25%. So Kanak got the 25% and five other points as well. (For a little more math, assume both players are even. Then the chances of scoring seven in a row is two to the seventh, or 1 in 128. But it wasn't all even at the end, with Kanak dominated at the end, especially in backhand exchanges.)

This isn't the first time Kanak's made such a comeback. As posted by Bruce Liu, "Kanak is no stranger to the 7th-game comeback. The most notable one was probably earlier this year at the North America Olympic Trials when he was down 0-5 and won 11 points in a row. Not only did he earn himself a seat in the Singles event in Rio, he also made Team USA eligible for the Team event." (That was against Canadian Pierre-Luc Theriault.)

Now a little analysis. Tom's a penholder, but with reverse penhold backhand, and so the two play surprisingly alike. Tom's more power, Kanak more control and willing to block more, but subtleties aside, they are very similar. But if you watch the match closely, it could be seen as basically a cat-and-mouse game of serve and receive. Both have extremely good receives - it drives me crazy watching up-and-coming players spend hour after hour developing strokes and footwork and not also have a coach serve to them over and over so they can develop this part of the game as well. (Every rally starts with a serve and receive, right?) These two have receives that are just ahead of most of the field. In particular, both have great short pushes and great backhand (banana) flips. 

If you look at the match from the beginning up to the point where Tom was up 3-1 in games and 12-11 match point, the primary reason Tom had the edge over Kanak was because of his reverse pendulum serve from the middle of the table. Most players are robots, serving from the backhand corner over and over. They may do this serve short to Kanak's or some other player's forehand, but only down the line, which allows players like Kanak to step over and receive backhand. By serving from the middle, Tom had an angle into Kanak's short forehand, meaning Kanak had to either receive with his good (but not great) forehand receive, or had to step over with great backhand receive - but then be way out of position for the next shot, something Tom took advantage of. 

And it worked to the point where Tom had the match point. But the problem with something that works is that you tend to use it over and over, and Kanak was getting better with his forehand receive against this serve all the time, often dropping it short to Tom's forehand, or flipping it either forehand or backhand. And so the serve became less effective - and that was a primary reason why Kanak pulled himself back into the match. Along with a well-timed shoelace tying. 

Here's a prediction: Next year's Men's Singles Final will be an all-junior final. We've never had so many up-and-coming kids, especially in the 14-15 age range, and it's going to be difficult for players like Tom (2015 champion), Timothy Wang (champion in 2010, 2012, and 2013) and Jimmy Butler (absent this year, but champion in 2014 . . . and 1990, 1992, and 1993!) to hold off this massive charge, led by Kanak. There was a time when we might have one or two juniors over 2400, and rarely any over 2500. (Why? We didn't have many full-time training centers back then; we've gone from about 8 to 86 in the last ten years.) 

Here's the current listing of players over 2400 from the Cadet Boys (under 15 as of Jan. 1): Sharon Alguetti (2558); Victor Liu (2534); Gal Alguetti (2504); Nikhil Kumar (2503); Michael Tran (2451); and Derek Nie (2427). Then we add in the other players over 2400 from the Under 18 list: Kanak Jha (2655); Kunal Chodri (2601); Krish Avvari (2597); Jack Wang (2537); Adar Alguetti (2535); Allen Wang (2526); Nicholas Tio (2481); Aarsh Shah (2455); Felix Gao (2444); Roy Ke (2437); Newman Cheng (2418); and Shivansh Kumar (2417). That's an incredible group!!!

For Tom, Timothy, and Jimmy, of course, it's a challenge - and perhaps reading this will give them added incentive. They are already great champions, but if they win next year, they'll be even greater champions. 

On the women's side, there was less drama - but drama there was. Lily Zhang led defending champion Jiaqi Zhang 3-0 in games and served up 9-7 in the fourth - just two points from being the champion. She would have to go into the sixth game before winning, 12,8,7,-9,-5,6. It was Lily's third - she also won in 2012 and 2014. 

All four of these finalists, along with Timothy Wang and Wu Yue, will be leaving soon for the Rio Olympics. 

As to me, I mostly coached at the Nationals (plus some meetings), but I was in three events - Over 50 Men's Doubles (with Ty Hoff), Hardbat Doubles (also with Ty; I've won it 13 times, nine of them with Ty), and Over 40 Hardbat (which I've won four times). Result? Three semifinals. Alas, my feet and body just don't move like they used to. Plus, I have an entire page in my notebook labeled "Problems," with nine different problems that have come up here (mostly by people coming up to me and saying, "Larry, can you look into this problem?") that need to be resolved, and all these things led to a lot of tension - making it hard to loosen up for matches. Perhaps I'll blog about some of them later. 

Here are results for the USA Nationals (with one more day of play on Saturday). I fly out late on Saturday night, arriving at BWI in Maryland at 7AM on Sunday, then I drive home, do some more updating on Tim Boggan's recent History of U.S. Table Tennis volume (yes, he's found more changes needed...), pack, and then drive up to New Jersey to manage and coach at the USATT's two-week Supercamp for 26 of our top juniors. I'll blog about that probably starting on Tuesday. (Some of those attending include the three Alguetti brothers, Allen and Amy Wang, Michael Tran, Tina Lin, and Klaus Wood. Coaches include myself (I'm also manager), Sean O'Neill, Dan Seemiller, Han Xiao, Samson Dubina, Richard McAfee, Lily Yip, Wang Qing Liang, and Cory Eider.) 

World Series of Beer Pong
Guess what they are holding right next door to the USA National Table Tennis Championships, at the Westgate Hotel? The $65,000 World Series of Beer Pong!!! 

Some Breakfast Table Tennis at the Nationals!
Here's the video (65 sec)!