August 18, 2011

MDTTC Coaching Camp - Day Eight

• Quote of the Day: "I don't know if you are ready to play 1400 players. Some 1400 players have trained in China or at least seen a Chinese person." (This is what I told one of our players who thought he was better than 1400.)
• Today we focused on backhand attack. In the demo, I did the "hard-soft" drill with Raghu Nadmichettu, 2400 player & coach. We had the rally of the week, where I alternated regular backhand drives and all-out backhand smashes, and he blocked back at least 15 smashes before I finally won the point with a net-ticking smash.
• We were going to play games the last 30 minutes of the session, but five junior players surprised me by asking if they could do more multiball training. So while the others played Brazilian Teams or King of the Hill, we did more multiball coaching.

Five steps to a great spin serve

Several players in the camp are using break to work on their serves. Here's what I several of them yesterday on the steps to developing good spin serves. (This might be expanded into a Tip of the Week.) You have to learn to do the following, in roughly this order:

1. Put great spin on the ball
2. Put different spins on the ball
3. Put great spins on the ball and control it
4. Put different spins on the ball with the same motion
5. Put different spins on the ball with the same fast, quick motion

Scott Boggan - back in action?

Yes, Scott Boggan, 1981 U.S. National Champion, USATT Hall of Famer, brother of fellow champion and Hall of Famer Eric Boggan, and son of Hall of Famer Tim Boggan, is entered in the New York City Open! He's one of the 258 entries (so far) in the tournament, Aug. 27-28, entered in the Open, Over 40, and Over 50. I expect to be there (just coaching), and look forward to seeing him after all these years. He's a retired New York firefighter and active pro poker player (really!), and has two kids who are actors, Taylor and Zak.

Victory dance

I'm guessing some of you have seen the famous Adam Bobrow victory dance after winning a point from Misha Kazantsev. If you haven't, here's the 71-second video - and make sure to watch to the end, where the camera pans over to the scoreboard! (Adam's a standup comic and actor, rated 2172, while former junior star Misha is 2365, though he's been as high as 2491.)

Non-Table Tennis - email from Something Wicked Magazine

As I've mentioned in my blogs, outside table tennis I'm a part-time science fiction & fantasy writer. Yesterday I received the following email about my 6000-word story "The Watcher in the Sky," from the editor of Something Wicked Magazine, a South African-based magazine that specializes in dark fiction. (The story is a superhero parody, where the superhero learns that he's just a character in a book, and that everything he does is dictated by the writer. Then his evil nemesis escapes from the book, kills the writer - me! - and becomes the writer, thereby ruling over the superhero and his world. How can the superhero overcome this?) Here's the email:

Hi Larry,
Thank you so much for a great submission. I loved this, it had me giggling all the way through - I totally loved the punchline. Unfortunately we've been inundated by a bunch of excellent stories and since I can only pick a handful of them I've had to shortlist your submission rather than accepting it outright. Please bear with us. Decisions on the shortlist will only be made at the end of the reading period (i.e. end of the month) so expect a response from us first week of Sep. Thanks again for a great read, it made a very long car journey bearable and fun. All the best,
Joe

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