August 12, 2016

My Thoughts on the Men's Gold and Bronze Medal Matches
Last night Ma Long went from being the best in the world to being an all-time great. He now does just about everything a little better than Zhang Jike. Zhang might have a slight edge on the backhand, but it's close. Ma Long has more power and consistency, and is able to rip forehands at will. Every decade or two a player comes along that simply raises the bar higher than anyone before - such as Wang Liqin and Jan-Ove Waldner. Ma Long might be doing that now. He completely dominated the gold medal match.

On the other hand, Zhang Jike simply didn't look as good as he used to be. Are his days near the top of the Chinese team over? He even struggled with Samsonov in the semifinals. I think that Zhang Jike at his best would have played Ma Long somewhat closely, though I do think Ma Long has passed him by and would have been favored, even if Zhang were at his best. I'm betting Fan Zhendong might be slowly moving into the #2 spot on the Chinese team, with Zhang and Xu Xin battling for #3. (And, of course, Fan is already #2 in the world, Xu #3, and Zhang #4 - but much of the time Zhang was winning the biggest titles he wasn't ranked #1 in the world either; he wasn't as good outside the big ones.) 

Did anyone notice how much the players used short receive? Players have so overused backhand banana flipping that servers are just too used to it, and can hang back and attack it. The best players are very good now at mixing in flips and short receives, as well as occasional long pushes. Samsonov sometimes likes to push serves out to the forehand so he can block into the server's backhand. The receive in these matches was almost a throwback to times past when short pushing was king. 

Watch Samsonov closely when he plays. Nobody scores more points with subtle changes of pace and direction than he does. He also has the most consistently disarming receive. Much of this is a lost art because of the powerful two-winged attacks of modern players, and yet I can't help but imagine the destruction someone like Jan-Ove Waldner would cause the first time out against these players - even more subtle play than Samsonov, along with a much stronger overall game. Those who think he'd get killed are wrong, at least the first time out. However, I agree Ma Long would start to dominate once he got used to this type of game and trained for it. It's like the old pips-out players - long after it was obvious the European inverted players had an advantage over the pips-out Chinese they still struggled with them because they weren't used to playing that style very often, while the pips-out players played inverted players all the time. The first time out Waldner would turn some of the current top players into pretzels. So would pips-out players like Liu Guoliang and Jiang Jialiang. But again, let me emphasize that this would only last until these other players learned to play these styles, which wouldn't take long.  

All four semifinalists illegally hid their serve. Ma Long does it most obviously - his serve is so blatantly illegal a child would call it, unless he were raised in the cheating culture we've developed in our sport regarding illegally hidden serves. Here are highlights of the Men's Final – watch the very first serve and see how the ball goes behind Ma Long's head, illegally hiding contact from Bo? From an umpire's perspective, either it's obviously hidden, or the umpire can't tell if the serve is visible – in both cases that makes it illegal. It's just mind boggling to me how these blatantly illegal serves are not called every single time.

Zhang Jike's serve is more subtle, since he almost faces his opponent when serving, but the ball usually goes behind his thrust-out head as he's about to contact the ball. Samsonov used to have one of the most legal serves, but even he now hides it, and I don't blame him since umpires are allowing all his opponents to do so. (Remember, good hidden-servers don't always hide the ball every serve; often they want the opponent to look for contact and try to read it off that, so they are thrown off when they don't see contact. But some hide it nearly every time, such as Ma Long.) 

But the top players have learned to read the ball from the air and bounce, which is more difficult, but the irony of umpires allowing illegal serves is that the top players face them all the time and so learn to return them. One reason Samsonov does so well at age 40 is that he developed his game before hidden serves became illegal, and so developed this skill early on. Others had to develop it in recent years as more and more players discovered they could illegally hide their serves and it wouldn't be called - and then the rest were forced to do so to compete. 

Note – Olympic Team Competition begins today!

Olympic Coverage

The Youngest Member of Team USA Aims to Be the Future of Olympic Table Tennis
Here's the article on Kanak Jha from The Bleacher Report.

USATT Insider
Here's the new issue that came out Wednesday.

Kung Fu Ping Pong 2016 AACCT
Here's the new six-minute movie that's basically Rocky (a girl) in table tennis.

Jian Fang Lay vs. Son in the Knock Down Mascot Competition
Here's the video (1:26)!

Ping Pong Champ from Bloom County
Here's the new cartoon! So which U.S. Olympic Table Tennis Team member most resembles "Yegor," the "juiced athlete from Rio"? Kanak Jha in 2020, after a few years of weight training?

Non-Table Tennis: Science Fiction Happenings
I've had a great month in my science fiction & fantasy world. Here's a summation:

  • My story "Leashing the Muse" (from Space and Time, May, 2015) was named a finalist for the 2016 Small Press Award by the Washington DC Science Fiction Association. (This is for the best story of 2015 that wasn't published in one of the three or four biggest markets.) Winner will be announced on Oct. 8 at the Capclave Science Fiction Convention, where I'll be attending as a guest and panelist. I was informed by email; the actual announcement on their site hasn't gone up yet.
  • My novel, Campaign 2100: Game of Scorpions is getting great reviews! The novel has lots of table tennis – here's my March 8 blog on that. And here are the reviews!
    • The SF Crow's Nest. "There are so many good things in this novel that I’m bursting to share them but that would spoil it for the first time reader." "Anyway, it’s a marvellous book. Easy reading, fast-paced, lots of surprise plot twists, likeable heroes, a loveable alien and a gripping climax that takes the election right to the wire. Highly recommended."
    • Abyss & Apex. "Larry Hodges is a master of irony and slips in enough humor that it’s a great ride."
    • Amazon (three 5-star reviews, one 4-star)
    • Goodreads (three 5-star reviews)
  • Sold two new stories this past month: "The Untold Christmas Carol" to Galaxy's Edge, and "A Snowball's Chance" to Space and Time Magazine. The first tells the story of what really happened during Scrooge's very long night – for it was Satan himself who was orchestrating events for his son, Tiny Tim, helped by his assistant, the spirit of Benedict Arnold – but nothing went right. The second is a fantasy battle between an evil elderly witch and a challenger – with a time-traveling twist!
  • My story "First Cat" came out in a new anthology, "Speculative Story Bites." (This is a resale; the story has now appeared in five anthologies, i.e. I've sold it five times. Interdimensional beings invade Earth through a portal that opens in the Oval Office, and it's up to the befuddled president's temporarily super-intelligent cat to save us! How does he become super-intelligent? You'll just have to read the story!)

***
Send us your own coaching news!