It's Snowing
Yes, it's snowing - we're supposed to get 5-8 inches here in Maryland. But that barely affects us, an indoor sport, correct? Well, obviously it does affect us as players have to get to the club before they can take part in the world's greatest indoor sport. We had to cancel our Tuesday night league last night due to weather.

Except why do we insist on believing table tennis is an indoor sport? Do you really need walls around you to play? I once did an outdoor exhibition with Scott Preiss in the rain, with the wind blowing. (Okay, we looked like amateurs.)

Table tennis can be played anywhere. Don't believe it?

Doctors Over 2000
At the 1995 U.S. Nationals in Las Vegas, a player suffered a massive heart attack while playing. I was standing nearby when it happened, and was amazed at the response. Within minutes, he was surrounded by seven doctors and two nurses, all of them players or attendees at the Nationals. The patient survived. So now you know you are safe if you have a medical emergency at a big tournament! Here is a list of the doctors and nurses who saved the player:

• Dr. Mark Schaffner
• Dr. Robert Ho
• Dr. Jiing Wang
• Dr. Donald Geeze
• Dr. Grady Gordon
• Dr. Richard Poole
• Dr. Michael Scott
• Nurse Grace Matossian
• Nurse Mary An Geeze

So there are a lot of doctors who play table tennis. But how many have reached a high level of play, such as over 2000? I'm going to include anyone who is a medical professional referred to as "Dr." (So this includes dentists, and other titles, such as a DPM (Doctor of Podiatric Medicine.) I put together a preliminary list of all I could think of, and then asked the question on Facebook on Saturday, and here is the alphabetical list I came up with, with a few notes on some of them. I'm sure there are more, so feel free to post any I missed in comments, and I'll add them to the list. I'm guessing there are a number of former junior stars who went on to be doctors, such as the three listed below from my club (Chris Ko, Vivian Lee, Jessica Shen). I know of other former junior players who went on to become doctors, but they didn't achieve a 2000 rating.

Tip of the Week
Your Goal Should Normally Be to Win Playing the Style You Are Developing.

Serving Backspin, Tim's Latest History Book, the Flu, and an Irritating Writing Project
Let's go in order here!

USATT Hall of Fame
Every major sport has a Hall of Fame where fans can read about their favorite stars and learn about others. The USA Table Tennis Hall of Fame was created in 1979 - after a "false start" in 1966 (read about this in the History of the Hall of Fame). Steve Isaacson was the primary mover in its creation. The Hall honors the greatest table tennis players, officials, and contributors since USATT (then USTTA) was formed in 1933.

Now there are an even 150 members - 97 players and 53 officials/contributors. (Note that there were no inductions in 2016, the year USATT switched the Nationals from December to July.) Each year potential inductees are Nominated, and then the Hall of Fame Committee (President Sean O'Neill, Tim Boggan, Dean Johnson, Patty Martinez, Scott Gordon, Mal Anderson, Dick Hicks, Donna Sakai, and Yvonne Kronlage) adds their own choices, and then they vote. Anyone who gets a 2/3 majority is inducted.  

There is an Annual Dinner at the USA Nationals in July where that year's inductees are inducted, with a roughly 15-minute presentation on each of them, followed by an acceptance speech. There is also an annual Mark Matthews Lifetime Achievement Award. About a hundred people attend the dinner each year - if you are at the Nationals, you don't want to miss this! You'll get to hobnob with both the current and past inductees who attend. (Disclosure - I'm a 2003 inductee.) I'll be there - stop by and say hello!

A Monstrous Week
Wow . . . the sheer amount of stuff that's gone on this week is beyond mindboggling. Here's a rundown.

Power will be out in my house on Wednesday for outside electrical repairs (7AM-5PM), so Tim and I need to finish Volume 21 of his History of U.S. Table Tennis today. Translation: I worked practically all night Monday night, and we'll be working all day and late into the night on Tuesday to finalize everything. So no time for the blog. I'll be back on Thursday. Meanwhile, here are Strange Ping-Pong Tables and Other TT Stuff!

Tip of the Week
"Hot Anger" versus "Cold Anger."

Weekend Update - Coaching
In the Saturday Junior League & Camp (two hours, about 25 players), the focus was on serve and attack, and handling your opponent's attack. We had them play games where the server had to serve and attack (or counter-attack if the receiver attacked the serve), or he instantly lost the point. However, the receiver, if he won the point after the server attacked, won two points. It made things interesting!

In the Sunday Beginning Class (90 minutes, 15 players) - week nine out of ten this session - the focus was on serves, smashing, and smashing lobs. I was impressed with some of the kids who are really learning to spin their serves. Two kids were practicing serves on the same table, with one serving forehand pendulum serves from the backhand side, the other serving backhand serves from the forehand side, and since they often timed it so they served at the same time, it was interesting to watch their respective serves spin away from each other.

In the Sunday Talent program (28 players (two hours), I worked with a number of kids who are having trouble doing heavy backspin serves. I also worked with a number on forehand flipping, followed by rallying (with multiball). We also had contests to see who could do each drill the longest. Two girls who usually don't win these contests ended up winning the forehand-to-forehand footwork contest, to my great (but secret!) surprise. Hey, maybe they're getting better!

USA's Best: Past, Present, and Future
Here's a quick look at our best in the past, present and future. Here goes - and if you aren't interested in our history, skip ahead to the Present and Future!

PAST

USA's best heyday was 1936-1938. USA had stars like Ruth Aarons, Jimmy McClure, Robert Blattner, and Sol Schiff. During that period they won the following titles at the World Championships:

• Men's Teams: 1937
• Women's Teams: 1937, finalist in 1936
• Women's Singles: 1936, 1937 (Ruth Aarons both times)
• Men's Doubles: 1936, 1937, 1938 (McClure/Blattner 1936-37, McClure/Schiff 1938)

Not a bad record!

There were no World Championships from 1940-1946 due to World War 2. And then Team USA returned almost as strong as before, with a whole new set of stars - Dick Miles, Marty Reisman, Lou Pagliaro, Mae Clouther, Reba Monness, and the sisters, Leah Thall Neuberger and Thelma "Tybie" Thall Sommer. Here are their results at the Worlds right after World War 2:

• 1947: Finalist in Men's Teams, Finalist in Women's Doubles (Mae Clouther/Reba Monness), Semifinals in Men's Singles (Lou Pagliaro)
• 1948: Mixed Doubles (Dick Miles/Thelma "Tybie" Thall Sommer)
• 1949: Women's Teams, Semifinals in Men's Singles (Marty Reisman), Semifinals in Women's Singles (Thelma "Tybie" Thall Sommer)

Not a bad record!

So the "Golden Age" of USA Table Tennis was from 1936-1949, with that 1940-46 World War 2 gap. (Or call it two short "Golden Ages," 1936-1938 and 1947-1949.) But USA wasn't done - in the 1950s USA had a few last gasps:  

Alas, between the long hours working with Tim Boggan on his latest History of U.S. Table Tennis volume, and catching up on things last night, I wasn't able to put together a blog for this morning - and now I'm due to go back to work with Tim. So no blog this morning. Back tomorrow with a nice feature blog, tentatively about the past, present, and future of our national level players. I'll leave you with this quote, which I said to Tim after finally finishing a page after spending an hour on it fixing up problems and making numerous changes to it: "Our short national nightmare is over. Let's start the next one." And here's two minutes and nineteen seconds of cats playing table tennis.

Update on History of U.S. Table Tennis and My Shoulder
Yesterday Tim Boggan and I spent most of the day going back and putting in captions and photo credits for the 116 pages we'd done on Sunday and Monday. Between that and the many changes Tim had, we only got one additional chapter done. (This time we did the captions and credits as we did the pages.) So we've now done nine chapters and 132 pages. I haven't kept track of the graphics, but I'll get a count later on.

Volume 21 covers 1994-1995. Since this was during my first tenure as editor of USA Table Tennis Magazine, probably half of the material is direct from things I wrote. So I'm having some nostalgic times seeing my past words. (Yeah, I have a lot of articles - 1791 to exact, plus 13 books. As to USA Table Tennis Magazine, I did 91 issues, 1991-1995, 1999-2007.)

It looks like it's going to take a little over eleven working days to finish, so if all goes well, we'll finish next Wednesday or Thursday. We'll see. It's a big project, put together by three USATT Hall of Famers - Tim Boggan, Mal Anderson, and, um, me. (My profile is well out of date - I hadn't even started this blog yet - it started in January, 2011, along with the weekly Tips of the Week - and I'd only written two of my eight books on table tennis, plus I've done about 14,000 hours of coaching since that time.)