To Dream the Impossible Dream
I’ve always thought that this should be the national anthem of table tennis. After all, aren’t we all dreaming of beating that unbeatable foe, and achieving that impossible dream of being a champion? And of course, along the way there are those bad losses, leading to unbearable sorrow? But if you want to be a champion, you have to face that and go where the brave dare not go.

Here’s the version (8:50), perhaps the most classic (or at least the most views on Youtube at over 3.2 million), from the 1972 movie “Man of La Mancha,” sung by Peter O’Toole. (Yes, the same O’Toole who, ten years before, was Lawrence of Arabia.)

NOTE - I've been advised by John Olsen that the truly iconic version is actually by Richard Kiley in the Broadway musical. Here is Kiley singing it at the 1972 Tony Awards (2:39). Listening to it, I think he's right. 

Tidbits

Tip of the Week
How to Play Doubles with a Much Stronger Player.

USATT Board of Directors Teleconference
The teleconference took place at 7PM last night, going until about 8:45PM. Attending were all nine members of the USATT Board of Directors, plus USATT CEO Gordon Kaye, USATT Chief Operating Officer Marc Thompson, High Performance Director Jorg Bitzigeio, USATT lawyer Dennis Taylor, John McFadden (representing the USATT Foundation), and USATT member Lee Kondo.

Meetings always start with a few formalities – roll call, welcome remarks from board chair Anne Cribbs, and a call for conflict of interest statements. There were none. Then we got to the approval of the minutes for the Sept. 10 in-person board meeting, and teleconferences on Oct. 9 and 19. I asked for a minor typo correction for the Oct. 9 minutes, and the addition of a clarifying sentence for the Oct. 19 minutes. There were no other calls for changes. Then we voted for each – I was rather active this call, and made all three motions for approval. They were each approved unanimously, and should go online soon.

Next came a long session on SafeSport. The USOC did an audit of our SafeSport policies and procedures, and asked that we add a part about requiring USATT staff to pass SafeSport. (Apparently this was included in one part, but not another.) Once again I made the motion to add the needed language to our policies. We’re in overall compliance, with Jan. 1, 2018 the target date for “full compliance.” Of course, there’s no such thing as true full compliance as any club or tournament could sneak in a coach, umpire, or other person who is not SafeSport compliant and we might not know about it. But there will be penalties for this.

Day Off
Oh boy, do I need a day off. Friday was Veteran’s Day, a federal holiday, and my normal policy is to take those as holidays as well – but I simply forgot, and ended up doing the blog and working all day Friday. Then came the even busier weekend where I coached all day and night. And now, after staying up late to watch the season finale of Star Trek: Discovery, plus The Walking Dead, The Simpsons, and Family Guy – yeah, late Sunday night is my weekly “TV” night – I have all the energy of a broken ping-pong ball. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m normally blogging Mon-Fri, while coaching long hours on Sat & Sun (as well as during the week), so I normally don’t have any days off. So I’m taking today off. (It’s not a total day off – I have a few things on my “todo” list I need to get done today, plus we have our monthly USATT Board of Directors teleconference at 7PM – I’ll blog about that and other things tomorrow.)

Meanwhile, here’s video of “The Diving Point” at the German Open, Timo Boll vs. Lin Gaoyuan at 7-6 in the first game. Who do you think wins the point? Here’s commentator Adam Bobrow’s explanation (60 sec) afterwards on why the umpires got it right and gave the point to Lin, despite Timo’s heroics. Here’s the home page for the event that finished this weekend in Magdeburg, GER, Nov. 7-12, with complete results, articles, and lots of video – and surprise, just like the Men’s World Cup, and with all of the top Chinese competing except for #1 Ma Long, the men's final was another all-German final!

Call for Nominations - Annual USATT Coach of the Year Awards
Here’s the info page. There are five categories:

• National Coach of the Year
• Mark Nordby Developmental Coach of the Year
• Volunteer Coach of the Year
• Paralympic Coach of the Year
• Doc Counsilman (Technology) Coach of the Year

Coaches can’t nominate themselves – so why not nominate some deserving coach from your club? See info on each category, linked above. Deadline is Jan. 1, 2018.

The Non-Playing Arm
I’ve been harping on the left arm a lot with my students recently. (I really should say “non-playing arm,” but at the moment all my private students are righties.) I do almost all of my coaching on the same back table at the club, next to the table tennis robot, surrounded by posters on the wall of world-class players. Right behind me are three pictures of players (also righties) in various playing positions, but all of them with their left arm up for balance. So I’m regularly pointing to them in succession and saying, “Left arm. Left arm. Left arm.”

The problem is that you can sort of get away with not using the left arm in many drills – either static ones, where you aren’t moving (i.e. working on basics with beginners), and often in moving drills where you know where the ball is going and so don’t have to make sudden unexpected changes in direction. And so players will sometimes get lazy and let their left arm just hang there like a dead snake. (That’s what I regularly call it – “dead snake syndrome.”) Often the consequences of a limp non-playing arm aren’t apparent as they affect your ability to recover from a shot – meaning it doesn’t so much affect the shot you are doing as much as it does the next shot. And then, rather than blaming the slow recovery on the lack of balance and fixing the problem, they call out, “I’m too slow!”

Visualizing the Serve
I think one of my most widely applicable Tips is A Journey of Nine Feet Begins at Contact. This has come up a lot recently in my coaching, both private and group. After a serving practice session with our Talent Junior Program (our best juniors, ages 7-13, about 24 of them), I gave a short lecture on this.

Let’s face it – most players really aren’t aware of what they are doing when they serve. Sure, they know the more obvious parts, like contact, and perhaps how it bounces on the far side. But they aren’t really aware of how high or low they contact the ball, where it bounces on their side of the table, the curve of the ball, not even how high it is when it crosses the net. They tend to notice only what’s happening on the far side, while ignoring what led to what happens on the far side. Without knowing and controlling what happens throughout the serve, including on your side of the table, you can’t really control the serve.

Seriously, if you want to have good serves, you need to be aware of every part of the ball’s journey, as noted in the Tip above. You should see it all in your head before you serve. If the serve doesn’t match what you saw in your head, then practice until it does. When you do this enough, it becomes second nature. Only when you can do that can you truly control your serves and make them do what you want them to do.

ITTF to Implement New World Ranking System in 2018
Here’s the ITTF news item.

Weekend Coaching and Coaching Correspondence
I was going to write about my weekend coaching yesterday, but then that thing about USA bidding for the Worlds came up, and, well, it was a tough call - what's more interesting, the World Championships or reading about Larry's coaching sessions? Of course you want to hear more about my coaching sessions, but I decided to save the best for later and write about the World’s first. 

As usual, I had three group sessions on Sunday. (I run two of them, help with the other.) In the Beginning Junior Class, Week 8, we introduced them to looping. Not world-class looping, not yet, but just easy spinning of a backspin ball on the forehand side. (We'll do backhand next Sunday.) About half the class was ready for this, while for others (mostly younger ones) we did more work on forehand, backhand, pushing, and footwork. We had 17 in the class, with four coaches.

In the Talent Junior Program, I fed a lot of multiball, much of it backspin so they too could work on looping, but now it was much more advanced players. I also spent time working with some of them on pushing. Two of the youngest were quite proud when they pushed 66 times in a row! (But I reminded them that at the 1936 Worlds, in the first point of their match two players pushed for two hours 18 minutes.) We had I think 24 in the class, with eight coaches and several practice partners/multiball feeders.

In the Adult Training Session, for the more advanced players we did the usual stroking and footwork drills, then some random drills, and finally serve and attack. For two who were more beginners, we did almost all stroking drills, including pushing. For the last 15 minutes I fed multiball to them so they could work on looping. (I did a lot of that on Sunday.) 

Tip of the Week
Become Your Own Feedback.

Three Cities Bid for 2020 ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships - Including San Jose, USA
Here’s the ITTF article. Yes, San Jose, USA is bidding for the Worlds against Ekaterinburg (Russia), Busan (Korea Republic). USA has never run the World Championships, but from I think we have a really good chance at winning this one. (I’m refraining from making any Russia/Trump jokes, and from hinting of the dangers of running anything in the Korean peninsula at this time. Oh wait, I just did.) Here’s a quote from the article:

“The bid from San Jose means that the USA is in the running to host only the second ITTF World Championships to be held outside of Asia and Europe. The first and only time that happened was in 1939 when Cairo, Egypt were hosts.  It’s positive signs for the global rise of table tennis, especially in North America, having successfully hosted the last two editions of the ITTF Women’s World Cup.”

And note the ITTF article from last week, ITTF Eyes North American Market. So you don’t really need any inside info to see that the ITTF would like to expand more into North America – and now we’ve run the last two Women’s World Cups, showing that yes, we can run these things. (Plus the World Veterans in Las Vegas next year.) The final decision on where the 2020 Worlds will be held will be made at the ITTF meetings at the 2018 World Championships in Halmstad, SWE, Apr. 29 – May 6.

Moving and Table Tennis
Once again I’ve run into the interesting fact that some players have better shots when they move, especially when moving to the wide forehand. I blogged about this on Sept. 22, where we discovered that Todd’s shots were much better when he did footwork.

Yesterday I coached a new player, Ron, and it happened again. He was an experienced tennis player but new to table tennis. His forehand was decent, but often a bit cramped, with the racket too close to the body, and the tip often tilted slightly up. We worked on this for a while, and then I noticed something. Whenever I went a little wider to this forehand, he’s reach out and hit a perfect forehand! He’d extend the arm so it wasn’t cramped, and the tip would drop down to where it should be. Often his shot would be very wide to my forehand, which was very obvious because, due to my ongoing shoulder problems, I can’t really extend my arm and so have less reach going that way.

I pointed this out to him, and had him shadow practice that “moving” forehand until he could do it (without the ball) from other parts of the table. Then we went back to hitting, and the stroke was much better.

When my shoulder is healthy, I’ve had the same experience. During my peak years it was very difficult for players to win the point going to my wide forehand as I covered that very well. (I was a bit weaker when they went very wide to my backhand, but that’s another story.) Part of the reason I covered it well was because I’d go into the shot (when hitting or looping) with my shoulders rotated back and arm extended, and so could rotate into the shot, giving the shot power.