October 1, 2018

Tip of the Week
How to Punish those Slow, Spinny Loops.

History of U.S. Table Tennis, Volume 22
This morning USATT Historian and Hall of Famer Tim Boggan moves in with me for about 12 days so I can do the photo work and page layouts for the latest volume of History of U.S. Table Tennis. This one covers 1996-1997, and will be in the 450 page range, with about 1700 graphics. Actually, every page is technically a graphic, since Tim creates the volumes by mostly cut & pasting articles from the past. He arranges them into 8.5x11 pages, which are scanned by another USATT Hall of Famer, Mal Anderson.

Then comes the "hard" part, for me, as I have to place each page into the layouts, and then fix up all the graphics - and there are a LOT of fixing up. For one thing, all of Tim's scissor cuts show up and have to be removed; for another, most of the work is scanned from gritty newsprint, and that takes time to fix up. Plus Tim is very picky about backgrounds, and regularly has me Photoshop "distracting" background items or people out. We also have to add lots of captions. Tim also always has a large number of separate photos for me to scan to put in.

Tim will be arriving promptly at 9AM, as he always does, driving down from New York during the night. He keeps strange hours, getting up each morning at around 4AM and going to bed around 8PM or earlier. For the next 10-12 days we'll be working from 7AM to 5PM. If all goes well, we'll be done by Oct. 12, so I can set up for the MDTTC October Open that weekend, Oct. 13-14, which I'll be running.

Sunday Coaching
I had two junior group sessions on Sunday. The first was the Beginning Junior Class, 90 minutes, which has 12 students this time around. (Assisting me were coaches John Hsu and Lidney Castro, and practice partner Todd Klinger.) The focus was on serving, especially spin serves. After that we did more forehand and backhand review. The last half hour we broke into two groups, with the older players playing Brazilian Teams, and the younger players with me, doing "target practice" games - first a competition to see who could hit Froggy the most times in multiball, then the usual cups game, where they build pyramids and forts from cups, and then knock them down in multiball.

In the advanced Talent program (2 hours), I spent most of the session either doing multiball, or working with them on serves. We did some work especially on fast, deep serves. I worked with a few of them on a problem where some of them reacted to these fast serves by rotating their body to the shot instead of stepping. And then I went out for dinner with the other coaches (Japanese food), where we went over each player, one by one.

Capclave Science Fiction Convention in Rockville, Maryland
(Mostly non-table tennis.) This past weekend I was at the Capclave Science Fiction Convention as a panelist. (Here's my convention bio.) I moderated two panels - one titled "Flash Fiction: Writing for the Short Attention Span Generation" (stories under 1000 words), and another, "Political Dynamite," on addressing current issues in your work. I was also on the panel Science Fiction of Political Resistance, where we discussed our political writings - here's a picture. (I do a lot of science fiction political satire.) I also had two autographing sessions - here's one of them. I have 13 books, but here I'm only selling and signing my science fiction ones, not my eight table tennis books - but one of the novels here is "The Spirit of Pong," a table tennis fantasy. The one featured in the banner, Campaign 2100: Game of Scorpions, my best novel, also features a lot of table tennis as one of the four main characters is a professional table tennis player who runs a worldwide campaign for president.

Women's World Cup
Here's the home page for the event held this past weekend in Chengdu, China, with results, articles, photos, and video. Congrats to Ding Ning, her third! Here's the Day 3 Review (2:09), and here's the Ding Ning - Zhu Yuling final (9:53, time between points removed).

2018 US Youth National Ranking Tournament
Here are the results from Sacrament this past weekend (Sept. 27-30, Thu-Sun).

New from Samson Dubina

New from Eli Baraty

How to Get Topspin Serve
Here's the video (3:37) of an advanced side-topspin serve. 

Bangkok Camp Footwork Training
Here are three videos from Richard McAfee.

Liu Guoliang is Back for Tokyo 2020
Here's the article from EmRatThich.

Liu Guoliang Appointed New Role in Chinese Table Tennis Association
Here's the article.

Tenergy 05 Hard: Reviewed by Current US National Team Coach, Stefan Feth
Here's the review. (I rarely do equipment articles, but this could be a "game-changer." Note - I'm sponsored by Butterfly.)

Salaries of Top Players
Here's a posting at mytabletennis.net and about the salaries of top players in Europe and around the world. (Note - a euro is 1.16 dollars.)

Kanak Jha Joins 87-Strong US Team for Buenos Aires 2018
Here's the article.

USATT Nominates Players for 2018 Pan American Championships
Here's the USATT article.

WAB Featured Club: The Topspin Table Tennis Center
Here's the article by Steve Hopkins.

Microsecond Multitasking in Table Tennis, and Other Things You Can Do in Less Than a Second
Here's the article from Coach Jon.

Ping Pong: The Best Brain-Sport Tickles Your Brain
Here's the article

Rated Best Ever, Cuenca Raises Standards
Here's the ITTF article on the coaching course in Ecuador taught by Christian Lillieroos.

Former Rock Publicist Paddles Through Life's Back and Forths
Here's the article featuring Carol Klenfner

Liu Guoliang Appointed New Role in Chinese Table Tennis Association
Here's the article.

Ma Long vs. Jun Mizutani
Here's the point (20 sec)!

Sheldon, the Big Bang Theory, and an Egyptian Table Tennis Silver Medalist!
On the Big Bang Theory TV show, on Sept. 27 (Thursday), the main star, Sheldon Cooper, was talking about what an "I Love NY" shirt could stand for, and said it could refer to Egyptian Table Tennis Silver Medalist Noha Yssry - a silver medalist in Women's Teams at the 2007 All-African Games! (Here's video of an older episode (2:37) where they play table tennis on the show.)

Lily Zhang and Kim Gilbert Exhibition Point
Here's the video (7 sec)!

Solo Mini-Pong
Here's the video (35 sec)!

Around the World
Here's the video (43 sec) - I once had that much energy!

Around-the-World to Music
Here's the video (43 sec)!

Classroom Mini-Table Pong
Here's the video (60 sec)! 

Firefighter Pong
Here's the video (15 sec)!

Serve and Stroking Tricks
Here's the video (38 sec)!

Junior Girl Trick Shots
Here's the video (44 sec)!

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The dollar/euro conversion is inverted. Euros are currently worth more than dollars.