Tip of the Week

To Play the Middle and Wide Corners You Have to Practice to Them.

The Spirit of Pong

For years I've lived in two worlds - the world of table tennis and the world of science fiction & fantasy writing. I've sold 72 short stories and a novel - but the money from the latter totals only about $20,000 in income since 2006, i.e. a little over $2000/year. Guess which pays the bills?

So I'm happy to say I've found the perfect combination of the two! I'm now working on a novella called "The Spirit of Pong." (A novella is basically a short novel, but considerably longer than a short story.) The story is about an American player, Andy "Shoes" Blue, who goes to China to learn the secrets of Chinese table tennis. I've been planning and researching it for a while. Parts of the story get pretty dark as he learns the Body of Pong, the Mind of Pong, and the Paddle of Pong. You'll meet the mysterious Coach Wang, who guides him through the process of learning about Chinese table tennis - but is he who he says he is?

It's a fantasy, and when Andy goes to China he meets and trains with the spirits of past champions, including Ichiro Ogimura, Rong Guotuan (first Chinese world champion in 1959 and coach of their first women's team world champion in 1965, committed suicide under torture during Cultural Revolution, which fits into the story), and Hiroji Satoh. He also meets and gets advice from the spirits of others, such as Zhuang Zedong and many others. He'll also meet the "Spirits of what made them Champions" for Jan-Ove Waldner and Deng Yaping - both will have a major impact in the climax.

Ratings and Leagues

One of the things I've learned my years of table tennis is that ratings are both good and bad. There are some advantages to using ratings. For example, they give players a reason to play in tournaments and leagues, with the goal of trying to achieve a higher rating. But just as often they keep players from playing in events so they can "protect" their rating.

For tournaments, ratings are not so good because they cause a lot of problems. Here's my article Juniors and Ratings, where I talk about how ratings can be a cancer on junior table tennis. But much of the article applies to all players. Players can get way to protective of their ratings, and often avoid tournaments just to protect their rating.

For leagues it's more mixed. For a singles league ratings actually work pretty well, since players are playing for themselves. Because they play on a regular basis, they get used to their ratings going up and down, and so don't worry about them too much and don't focus on protecting their rating by avoiding play. Singles leagues are the only example I see were ratings are actually a healthy and good thing for table tennis. They are used all over the country in the USATT Singles League, which in February processed 7193 matches in 43 different leagues, and has processed 510,330 league matches with 22,601 players in 426 leagues since it began in 2003.

Backhand Development - A Time for Everything, and Everything in its Time

I've been keeping a secret from one of my junior students. He has a strong forehand loop, and is pretty good at moving about to attack with it, but his backhand wasn't as good. When he does play backhand, he pretty much topspins everything, but it's not consistent enough, and so opponents get him on that side. Part of the reason for this is that he's always thinking forehand, and so isn't always ready for the backhand.

In our sessions, we used to do a lot of random drills. But I stopped doing them a couple months ago, and he hadn't really noticed. Why did we stop? Because I've been focusing on his backhand. I didn't want him to play backhands as a second-tier shot, done only when forced, and with an inconsistent stroke. I wanted it to be an equal, or at least near-equal shot with his forehand, though the latter would continue as his primary put-away shot. And so we've been really focusing on backhand training these past two months, though we did plenty of the usual forehand work as well - I doubt he could have survived a session if he couldn't rip a few forehands. But he's been very good about it as well, often asking to extend a backhand drill. He's one of those stubborn types (in a good way), who doesn't want to switch drills until he feels he's doing it perfectly.

Tactical Thinking - Adjusting to Different Opponents

Recently at the end of a coaching session I played a practice match with a student. He often served short to my forehand, either backspin or sidespin, and over and over I flipped it aggressively to all parts of the table and dominated the point. Halfway through one game I finally put the game on hold and challenged him to give me his best short serves to my forehand. Over and over he served low with heavy, yet varied spin - and over and over I flipped them aggressively with ease, to his growing consternation. ("Aggressively" doesn't mean flipping for winners, but fast enough that if placed well, the server is usually put on the defensive.) Finally I challenged him to figure out how to deal with this. At first he said he'd stopped serving short to my forehand - and I said that would be a bad mistake.

So I challenged him to think about why I was able to flip his serves over and over with ease. When he served backspin, I used his own spin against him to create topspin, which allowed me to flip aggressively. When he served sidespin, it was even easier, as that's easy to flip, like a mini-counterdrive or mini-counterloop. So I asked him how he could keep me from using his spin - and that's when he figured it out! He served short, low no-spin, and miracle of miracles - or actually rather predictably - I had to slow down my flip. (I could still place it, but it was no longer the dominant shot it had been earlier.) 

Recipe for a Regional Team League

Here's the Capital Area Super League recipe, which will continue to evolve.

Tip of the Week

Playing in Poor Conditions.

USA Pan Am and National Team Trials

Here's the USATT Page with complete results and video. (Jiaqi Zheng and Yue "Jennifer" Wu were not eligible for the National Team, due to time requirements since representing another country, but as US citizens were eligible for the Pan Am Team.)

• Congratulations to Pan Am Team members: Jiaqi Zheng, Lily Zhang, Yue "Jennifer" Wu, Kanak Jha, Jimmy Butler and Timothy Wang
• Congratulations to US Team members: Lily Zhang, Judy Hugh, Prachi Jha and Amy Wang, Kanak Jha, Jimmy Butler, Timothy Wang and Yahao Zhang

Beginning/Intermediate Class and Junior Class

After missing two straight Sundays due to snow, we finally got back to these two classes. I taught both classes, with John Hsu assisting.

There are 14 kids in the 4:30-6:00PM beginning junior class, ranging in age from 6 to 11. Since we'd been away so long we focused on basics this session - lots of regular forehand and backhand play. We had one new player, so I spent some time getting him started. Then we did service practice, and then games. As usual, as soon as it was game time the cry went out for "Cup game!", and so out came the paper cups. It's the perfect game for the younger crowd, who love to build and destroy. So they built giant pyramids of cups, and then took turns smashing them to pieces as I fed multiball. We finished with the bottle game, where I put a bottle of "worm juice" on the table (a Gatorade bottle filled with either worm juice or Gatorade, depending on who you asked), and I had to drink it if they hit it. They did.

Playing Fair and a Rules Proposal

I read the following recently on a table tennis forum:  "It's the coach's job to teach a player how to win.  It's the parent's job to teach ethics to their kids. If a player resorts to cheating to win, then the parents have failed."

I was tempted to jump in and respond - harshly - but thought better of it. This is probably a somewhat common attitude, though I don't think most agree with it. The simple reality is that much of what is considered "good sportsmanship" comes from the coach. I'm pretty sure I can convince most parents that their kid should always play fair, including serving legally. I'm also pretty sure I can convince most parents that their kid should learn to serve illegally, since so many of his opponents will be doing so, and so he needs to do so to compete. These are contradictory positions. While parents can put their foot down, they are rarely as experienced in these matters as a coach, and so they rely on the coach for guidance in such matters.

How I Hurt My Back and How Not to Do Multiball

I think I hurt my back shoveling snow on Sunday or Monday. Because of snow and icy roads, I didn't do any serious coaching from Sunday to Tuesday, other than a one-hour multiball session on Tuesday, where I probably aggravated it. On Wednesday, when woke up, my back was in agony. I did a one-hour multiball session, but had to cancel a one-hour private session. Today I had 3.5 hours of coaching scheduled, but due to the snow (5-8 inches expected, it's coming down pretty hard) they are all cancelled. If not for the snow I'd have had to cancel them anyway.

I think my new mattress is also a culprit - it's not firm enough. Rather than buy a new mattress (again), I just ordered an extra firm mattress topper. Hopefully it'll be firm enough.

I'm probably going to cancel all my coaching on Friday as well. I'm not yet sure about Saturday - I have two hours of private coaching and a two-hour multiball session scheduled. I'm almost for certain going to cancel the private coaching for that day. We'll see about Sunday. Most likely I'll cancel all private coaching that day (four hours), but teach the two 90-minutes classes I have scheduled.

When I feed regular multiball, it doesn't affect my back too much. The problem is feeding backspin. When I do this I tend to drop my right shoulder and rotate my back into it - ouch!!! Right now I can't feed backspin without aggravating the back. I had to stop feeding backspin in the session yesterday.

Eleven Questions with Larry Hodges

Here's the USATT interview with me yesterday. Not a policy interview, but hopefully some interesting stuff. I had a lot of fun with it, but hopefully some of it is informative as well.

Upcoming Events and Back Problems

Tomorrow we have another 3-5 inches of snow scheduled to come in - yeah, these days we schedule these things. (So it's likely school and all coaching will be cancelled tomorrow.) There's also a USATT teleconference at 8PM where we appoint committee chairs. I have to go over dozens of applications. Alas, not a single worthy bribe. And then on Saturday there's a Super League Organizing Committee Meeting at 7PM. ESPN and USA Today just did interviews with Crystal Wang at our club, so those are coming out soon, plus the Washington Post is doing a feature soon on Crystal and Derek Nie, so more on those when they come out.

Mixed in with these, of course, is the usual private and group coaching, and several writing projects. I've also got the MDTTC March Newsletter to finalize. I normally send it out at the start of each month, but we decided to wait until after the USA Team Trials this weekend so I can put info from there in it, and send it out probably next Monday. Plus I have a dentist appointment today at noon, and see my tax accountant next Tuesday. Yeah, things are busy here.

The Sayings of Bruce Lee

I read over these quotes from Bruce Lee and was amazed at how many of them apply to table tennis. I picked out the 30 most pertinent to our sport, in no particular order. I guess you can say that Bruce Lee is ghost-writing my blog this morning. Which are your favorites?