Tip of the Week
Semi-Circular Motion on Serves.
Serving Tips
My last three Tips of the Week have been on serving. On August 11 I did Ten Steps to a Great Service Game. But when I did so, I realized I didn't have article explaining #5 and #6 (which go together) and #10. And so on August 18 and August 25 (this morning) I did The Purpose of the Serve and Semi-Circular Motion on Serves. I've now updated the Ten Steps to a Great Service Game article, with links to these two Tips. I'm also going to post the Tip here.
Ten Steps to a Great Service Game
- Learn to serve with lots of spin by accelerating the racket through the ball and grazing it.
(Here's the article Serving Short with Spin. Here's another, Five Steps to a Great Spin Serve.)- Learn to serve various spins, including backspin, side-backspin, sidespin, side-topspin, and topspin, and be able to serve with sidespin in either direction.
(Here's the article Importance of Serve Variety.)- Learn to serve low.
(Here's the article Serving Low.)- Learn to control the depth and direction of the serve.
(Here's the article Depth Control of Serves.)- Learn to serve with spin using a semi-circular motion so you can create different spins with the same motion by varying where in the motion you contact the ball.
(Here's the article Semi-Circular Motion on Serves.)- Learn to minimize and do quickly this semi-circular motion so receiver has trouble picking up contact.
(See same article linked in #5.)- Learn to change the direction of your follow-through with your racket the split second after contact to mislead the receiver.
(Here's the article Exaggerate the Opposite Motion on Serves.)- Learn to fake spin and serve no-spin by contacting the ball near the handle.
(Here's the article Those Dizzying No-Spin Serves.)- Learn to serve fast & deep as a variation to your spin serves.
(Here's the article Fifteen Important Deep Serves. Here's another, Turn Opponents into Puppets with Long Serves. Here's How to Ace an Opponent.)- Learn to follow up your serves.
(Here's the article The Purpose of the Serve.)
Upcoming Stuff
With summer over and kids back in school, you'd think I'd be less busy. I thought so too. But it seems my todo list always grows to encompass all time available. Here's a Top Twelve list from my todo list.
Coaching Articles from Samson Dubina
Here are recent coaching articles from the Ohio coach.
Table Tennis Training with "The Wheel"
Here's the video (36 sec). Even if you don't have such a wheel, this is how you can do footwork training with a robot that hits to one spot - alternate hitting an actual ball, and move to the other side to shadow practice a shot, and then move back to hit the next shot, and so on. (I used to have a wheel like this but it broke.)
Corkscrew Return from Waldner
Here's the article and video (1:55).
Atlanta International Academy
Here's the USATT article. How many people remember before we had all these top training centers popping up all over the U.S.? It used to be a barren wasteland out there. There used to be a lot of USATT "leaders" who doubted there would ever be a demand for these things!!! (I remember arguing about this with certain short-sighted USATT board members at the December, 2006 board meeting.)
Belarus Open Men's and Women's Final
Here are the Men's and Women's Finals at the Belarus Open this past weekend, with the time between points removed. Here's a picture of the champions. Here's the ITTF home page for the event, with results, articles, pictures, and video. This was the first ITTF Pro Tour Event that used the new non-celluloid balls. They also experimented with playing without service lets! Not sure yet how that went off - I'm sure there'll be an article on this.
100-Day Countdown to Change in the ITTF's Presidency
Former USATT President Sheri Pittman Cioroslan is doing an article every day during the last 100 days of Adham Sharara's ITTF presidency, counting downwards from 100. Previous ones are linked from the USATT News page, as well as in my past blogs. Ninety-three down, seven to go!
MDTTC August Open
We had a 2-star tournament at my club this past weekend. Here are the main results. You can get complete results (care of Omnipong) here.
MDTTC Open
Maryland Table Tennis Center, August 23-24, 2014
Director: Charlene Liu. Referee: Paul Kovac.
Open Singles - Final: Chen Bo Wen d. Wang Qing Liang, -13,2,5,9,-9,8; SF: Chen d. Raghu Nadmichettu, 4,-9,6,7,-9,7; Wang d. Khaleel Asgarali, 6,5,9,6; QF: Chen d. John Wetzler, 9,7,5; Asgarali d. Stefano Ratti, 8,6,-11,9; Nadmichettu d. Bojun Zhangliang, -8,11,11,-10,6; Wang-bye.
Under 2400 - Final: Khaleel Asgarali d. Raghu Nadmichettu, 8,8,-9,13; SF; Asgarali d. Humayun Nasar, 5,-6,1,4; Nadmichettu d. Stefano Ratti, -11,-11,7,8,8.
Under 2250 - Final: Nasruddin Asgarali d. Lixin Lang, -9,-6,9,5,8; SF: Asgarali d. Ryan Dabbs, 1,8,8; Lang d. Humayun Nasar, 5,4,4.
Under 2050 - Final: Gong Yunhua d. Joshua Tran, -5,-7,5,9,10; SF: Gong d. Gary Schlager, 9,-6,-10,3,7; Tran d. Carlos Williams, 9,7,-7,9.
Under 1900 - Final: Justin Bertschi d. Michael Greenbaum, 8,-10,8,-6,7; SF: Bertschi d. Gordon Lee, -10,2,4,6; Greenbaum d. Ara Sahakian, 2,6,10.
Under 1650 - Final: Chanakya Anne d. Jozef Simkovic, -8,9,6,-4,10; SF: Anne d. Gordon Lee, 4,9,9; Simkovic d. Hu Yingyao, 6,8,-10,-6,9.
Under 1400 - Final RR: 1st. Huang Siliang, 4-0; 2nd Benjamin Clark, 3-1; 3rd William Huang, 1-3; 4th Pelle Deinoff, 1-3; 5th Ian Dominguez, 1-3.
Under 1150 - Final: Pelle Deinoff d. Benjamin Clark, 6,4,4; SF Deinoff d. Ian Dominquez, 8,9,-10,9; Clark d. Krishna Ganti, 11,-10,3,-9,7.
Under 13 - Final: Daniel Sofer d. Benjamin Clark, 9,4,8; SF: Sofer d. Emily Yuan, 4,5,1; Clark d. William Huang, 6,5,-6,10.
New York Jets Table Tennis Tournament
Here's the article and video (6:31).
Ice Bucket Challenges
Here are more from prominent players.
Table Tennis in Space
Non-Table Tennis - Orioles Top Ten List
Orioles Hangout published another of my infamous lists, "Top Ten to Stop the Orioles Historic Two-Game Utter Collapse." (They've now lost three in a row, but still lead the division by six games over the Yankees.)
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