Playing Lefty – and Reading vs. Reacting
Yesterday, at the end of a 90-minute session, my 12-year-old 1700 opponent challenged me to a game where he lobbed, while I played lefty. He was overconfident, and he was serving down 6-8. (I had perfected sort of a lefty "jab-smash.") But then he "cheated," and started throwing spinny sidespin serves at me – and I was suddenly helpless, unable to read spins that I normally would read with ease. It went to deuce, but my inability to return his sidespin serves led to his fist-pumping victory. (He even did the "infamous and controversial fist-pumping walk around the table" of Jiang that I'd described to him earlier – see below.)

But it got me thinking – why was I unable to read the spin on serves that I could easily read when playing right-handed? And the answer was obvious. You don't read spin. You react to it – subconsciously.

Think about it. When an opponent puts spin on the ball, do you consciously think to yourself, "The ball's spinning at 2133 RPM, so I need to put my racket angle at 62.5 degrees"? Of course not. From lots and lots of playing time, your subconscious automatically reacts to it. It may not always get it right, but it's usually in the ball park. But what's actually happening? Your subconscious reads the spin and tells your muscles how to react, i.e. racket angle and so on. Consciously, there's no reading of spin (except as an afterthought) – you just react at a subconscious level. But the subconscious has been trained to tell your playing arm what to do, not your non-playing arm, where everything is essentially reversed. It doesn't know what to do. And so, instead of reacting instinctively to the spin, as I'm used to when I play righty, I just stood there, waiting for my subconscious to tell me what to do, and it just sat there, unable to do so. Dang you, subconscious, where were you when I needed you???

Tip of the Week
How to Develop a Quicker Forehand.

Youngest Table Tennis Players
Here's a picture of Shia Williams, age 5, playing his first tournament. (Here's the non-Facebook version.) He's playing in the Robopong October 2016 Broward TTC Open. Here's the video (2 min)!

He achieved a rating of 994 – not bad! Anyway, this raises the question of who was the youngest player ever to play a USATT tournament. I'm sure if I had access to the entire database and the proper data tools, I could figure this out. But I already know the answer – sort of.

It's Veteran's Day, so I'm off today. (In reality, I've got a rather long todo list to take care of, but at least I can start fresh and early.) Here's some Championship Table Tennis (cartoon) to tide you over. 

How Fast Can You Smash?
We often talk about how a ping-pong ball often travels at speeds up to 100 mph (about 161 kph). That simply isn't true, at least at this time.

Here's the video How Fast Does a Table Tennis Ball Travel? (1:26). Until recently, the "official" record was I believe 69.9 mph (112.5 kph), as noted in Table Tennis Ball Speed page from 2003-2004, which analyzes the data at the time. But Germany's Dimitrij Ovtcharov (world #6) "smashed" that record with a 75.8 mph (122 kph) smash. To get that speed, he did an all-out wristy forehand smash.

But this raises the question – just how fast can one smash a ball? While world-class players like Ovtcharov are undoubtedly among the hardest hitters, that doesn't mean he's the hardest hitter. Few have been tested. World-class players are actually trained mostly to loop, so when trying to hit the ball at the maximum speed they are actually doing something they are not trained to do.

Let's suppose there were big-money competitions for hardest-hit smash. We won't worry about the details about how to judge this – we'll assume the radar gun used in the video above is sufficient, and go with its results. How fast could players smash?

Life in Idiocracy; No Blog Today
I'm stunned at the historically stupid thing America did last night, and I will hold accountable those responsible. Most have no clue what they have done, and how they have made the race for the gutter the norm in American politics – and that's the least of our problems. (We are now living the movie Idiocracy. Even Biff from Back to the Future was modeled on Trump.) However, since this isn't a political blog, I'll refrain from saying more. But I'm not really into blogging about ping-pong when our country now faces far more serious problems than how to hit a forehand, so no blog today. Good luck America – you are going to need it. (Feel free to comment, but since this is a table tennis blog, absolutely no political debates here. If you want to defend Trump, do so elsewhere. I will delete any such postings.) 

Election Day
Today we decide between Trump and Clinton. But schools are closed and it's practically a national holiday, so I'm taking the day off as well. Meanwhile, here are two cartoons I did on the election that I previously posted. Now, go out and vote practice your serves!

• Clinton vs. Trump 2016 Election Cartoon
• Clinton Smashes Trump in 2016 Election Debate

Tip of the Week
Three Ways to Play the Forehand.

Reasons for More Trials Instead of Selections
As I blogged on Friday, I believe we need to go back to more Trials for our youth teams, and less selections, as we used to do it. I didn't like the idea from the start, but was willing to give it a try – but now I'm convinced it was a mistake.

The main argument for primarily choosing our youth teams rather than doing so by Trials is they feel that Trials only puts players against other USA players, and isn't a valid measure of their level against international players. I disagree, as a player who is better domestically will tend to do just as well internationally – when he has the international experience, which is the whole point of sending them overseas to tournaments like the World Junior Championships. Often the argument is made for a player with a world ranking to be chosen over a seemingly stronger player without a world ranking because that player's parents couldn't afford to send their player overseas to achieve an international ranking – and this comes down to essentially saying, "We're not sending you out for international experience because of your lack of international experience." Or we argue for a junior with a current world ranking that's much lower than another junior who no longer has a current world ranking simply because he wasn't able to go overseas.

A Hodgepodge of Topics

High-Toss Backspin Serves Lead to Misreads
Yesterday during practice games with a student at the end of a session I pulled something on him that I used to do in tournaments – I pulled out the super-charged high-toss forehand pendulum backspin serve. By throwing the ball up higher, I'm able to get more backspin on the ball, and so opponents tend to put the ball in the net. It does take practice to graze the ball since it is moving faster at contact – you almost have to scoop it with a very open racket – but it really can make a difference by increasing the spin. However, if that's all one does, it's doesn't put much pressure on the opponent – they can adjust.

Instead, to raise the level of trickery up a notch, I also raise my elbow for the serve, even hunching my right shoulder up slightly. This gave the serve even more of a pendulum look, with the racket seemingly going more sideways, and so it looks like there's more sidespin. But the reality is that if you contact the ball on the downswing, and then vigorously go across after contact, it looks very sidespinny. The combination of this, and the extra backspin from the high toss, leads to a steady barrage of returns in the net. The actual serve, the way I do it, is probably 1/8 sidespin, 7/8 backspin. But receivers see it as the reverse, as a light backspin with lots of sidespin. (When I go for a pure backspin, I get more backspin, but it's too obvious to the opponent, and so less effective.)

This is especially effective against players who try to flip serve after serve, often with backhand flips. They simply aren't expecting that much backspin, and the sideways motion of the serve tricks them further.

The Backhand Game Leads to Immediate Improvement
While coaching Daniel yesterday (he recently turned 12, is about 1700) I pointed out that when we go backhand-to-backhand, he keeps backing up, backhand looping over and over, but too soft to be really effective. He can also play it closer to the table, but is losing the knack as he simply likes backing up. How to get across to him how this was less effective? The Backhand Game!

For this I normally put a box on each side of the table, cutting off all but the backhand part of the table, so that each player covers about 40% of the table, backhand only. (The box is angled so the left side parallels the incoming ball.) We only had one box handy, and so rather than run up front to get a second one, I used my towel on my side – works just as well as a box. And then we went at it.

The rules are simple – I always serve, a straight topspin serve diagonally to his backhand. Then we go at it, backhand to backhand. No backspin or lobbing allowed. While the immediate goal is to win, the real goal is to have vicious rallies, where we bang it out ten to twenty or more times per rally. I've done this with many students, and it really leads to that.

But Daniel has been getting soft on the backhand, and when he does attack with it, he's gotten a bit erratic and jerky. Result? I won game #1, 11-1. Game #2 was the same, 11-2. All I'm doing is blocking, sometimes counter-hitting harder, but he can't maintain a rally. Game #3 is 11-0. I'm on him to be more consistently aggressive – stop playing soft or going for all-out winners, that there's a middle ground, that the rallies need to be bang-bang, where we press each other without actually trying wild shots. I can see he's trying, and in game #4 there's some improvement – I win 11-5.