September 12, 2016

Tip of the Week
The More Two Players Drill Together the Better They Drill Together.

Tactical Coaching Can Be a Wonderful – or Terrible – Thing
This past Saturday I ran the Butterfly MDTTC September Open. I’ll have a write-up and photos ready hopefully tomorrow, but here are the complete results. It was an exhausting weekend. On Saturday I was at the club at 7:45AM, and didn’t leave until about 9PM, over 13 hours later. I did manage to compile all the results and send to USATT that night, so they will likely be processed in the next couple of days.

During a short lull I watched a match between an experienced player who earlier this year had switched from a mostly looping game (with inverted on both sides) to chopper/looper (with long pips on the backhand). I watch him play against a young junior player, and the chopper won the first, 11-9, and so things looked good for the chopper. But between games the junior received some very good coaching. I didn’t hear the coaching, I simply saw the change in tactics the rest of the match.

First, the junior began to play a bit more patiently, pushing deep to the backhand, forcing the chopper to push with the long pips. It’s tricky pushing low with long pips – it can’t create much backspin to make the ball travel on a line, and the chopper had only started using it this year – and every few pushes would pop up some, and the junior would jump all over that. As noted, the chopper had gone to chopping only

Second, the junior began to attack the middle. That is important when playing choppers – it’s their weakest spot – but here it worked for a different reason. The chopper still had attacking instincts, and often counterlooped very effectively when the junior attacked his forehand. But when the junior attacked the middle, the chopper often tried to counterloop, but now he was rushed as he moved to his left (he’s a righty) – and so he made many misses and weak loops that the junior jumped all over, plus it put him out of position. (A more conventional chopper would cover the middle with the long pips, forcing the junior to go more to the forehand if he wanted to see the chopper’s forehand – which would make it easier for the chopper to counterloop.)

Result? The junior likely won because of the between-games coaching. The coaching helped both because of the two specific tactics above, and because it allowed the coach to keep stressing these things. Played without a coach, I’m pretty sure the chopper would have won.

Most of us accept this type of thing as part of the game, that players get coaching between games, and so some have an advantage in this way. It’s only between games, so the interaction is at least kept to a minimum. But as you probably know, this all changes on Oct. 1, when the new ITTF coaching rule comes into effect and coaches can coach players any time between points. Yes, it’s madness. I blogged about this on August 26, and about whether USATT should adopt this on August 19. I’ll likely blog about this more this month.

5 Steps for Mastering Service Deception in Table Tennis
Here’s the new coaching article from Matt Hetherington.

Balls: The Common-Sense Way to Adjust
Here’s the new coaching article by Samson Dubina. As he notes, we’re currently in a state of chaos where there are a number of different balls out there that play differently. This didn’t use to be a problem – it used to be that the differences between balls were minimal.

Reverse Pendulum Serve
Here’s the video (3:45) of a player demonstrating the serve, first in real time and then in slow motion. (It’s in Vietnamese, but you can watch how he does it.) Of especially interest is he does the two most important variations, with the same motion: deep to the backhand (at the start), and then short to the forehand (about 45 sec in). If you can master this (or any other good serve) where you use the same motion and then either go deep to the backhand or short to the forehand, you’ll be able to work many players over as it’s not easy covering these two extremes.

Belarus Open
Here’s the ITTF page for the tournament held this past weekend, with results, articles, pictures, and video. Here’s the latest article, Jang Woojin takes Men's Singles trophy after incredible comeback

Kickstarter for New Table Tennis Shirt
Here’s the page where Steve Worthington is doing a Kickstarter to put his table tennis design on a shirt.

Amazing rally at the ITTF World Tour Belarus Open
Here’s the video (24 sec).

Devos Makes History as Youngest Male Paralympic Table Tennis Champion
Here’s the ITTF press release.

Unbelievable Paralympic Diving Return
Here’s the video (23 sec) – the best part is the reaction of the opponent, who actually turns away thinking she’d won the point. See her face at the end when she realizes the ball came back!

Coaching Cerebral Palsy Table Tennis
Here’s the video (6:31). I think it’s in Hungarian – can someone verify? (Update: Bernard Lemal informs me it's in Russian.) 

Prince Harry Dons Angry Birds Hat for Table Tennis Match at Music Festival
Here’s the article and pictures of the English prince playing table tennis in a funny hat! (It’s from 2012.)

Yes, Martians Play Table Tennis
Here’s the picture! At least Marvin the Martian does in this pin. As of this writing, there are five of them on sale at ebay for $9 each. (Here’s another picture of Marvin playing table tennis.)

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