Defaults and Rating

There's been an email exchange among some USATT officials, of which I was CCed, on the subject of players defaulting tournament matches to protect their rating, It was instigated by a gentleman who was the victim of this - a player didn't want to play him, perhaps because he had long pips, and so defaulted, apparently to protect his rating. The question raised is why don't players who default matches lose rating points? It's a good question - and below is my response.

I'll jump in and give the reasons for why they do not give away rating points for a default, and then (at the end), I'll offer a possible solution.

It would be somewhat unfair to take away rating points for certain defaults. So the only way I see for a rules change that would allow a rating loss for defaults is if the referee were given the responsibility of determining if the default was "legitimate" or not. That would not be easy to determine, as someone who wanted to avoid playing a match for rating purposes could easily fake one of the below reasons. Here are some legitimate reasons why players default that have nothing to do with avoiding rating point losses - and over the course of 37 years of play, I've defaulted matches at least once for each of these reasons (except for #3 and #8), as have many others. (I'm sure there are other reasons I haven't thought of.)

Looping Placement

Here's something interesting I noted at the Hopes Trials, which I've also seen in the past. When a player backhand loops, he is roughly facing his opponent, and so can see where the opponent's middle is. When a player forehand loops, he faces more sideways, and the opponent is no longer in clear view. Result? Especially at the junior level and below the elite level, players seem to have far more difficulty in attacking the opponent's middle when forehand looping then when backhand looping. (The middle, in table tennis terms, is the switchover point between forehand and backhand, roughly at the playing elbow.) I watched one player nail the opponent's middle over and over with backhand loops, but when forced to do forehand loops, the player was unable to do so. (This is all true as well for basic forehands and backhands, but to a lesser extent, since players tend to turn more sideways to forehand loop than for forehand hitting.)

The solution? Practice. Look to loop at the opponent's middle at least half the time, usually the weakest spot, and see how often you can nail it. Few opponents are actually moving as you are hitting the ball, so you should be able to see where he is just before you take the shot. With practice, you'll be able to hit the middle over and over. (If an opponent is moving, then usually aim behind him, since he'll have to stop and change directions. Unless, of course, he's way out of position, in which case go for the open area.)  

Table Tennis Commentating at the North American Cup

Tip of the Week

Proper Practice Progression Prevents Poor Play.

Hopes Trials

The Hopes Trials were held in conjunction with the North American Cup this past weekend in Westchester, NY, at the Westchester Table Tennis Club. And here's an article (lots of photos) on the players at the North American Cup.

I saw very little of the North American Cup since I was alternating coaching matches in the Hopes Boys and Girls Trials. (There was also an all-day USATT Board Meeting on Saturday, but I missed all of that as well.) I did see some spectacular play by 2406-rated 15-year-old Allen Wang - he's moved up to where he's challenging the best players in the country, despite being roughly six feet twenty inches tall. He beat Canada's Xavier Therien (rated 2517), went seven games with Peter Li (2557), and had a spectacular match with eventual North American Cup winner Andre Ho (2522), including an incredible game which Ho finally won, 25-23 (!). I saw some of the women's final - as usual, Ariel Hsing and Lily Zhang put on a show, with Zhang winning.

I wrote a lot about the tournament in my blog last Thursday, so I won't repeat all of that. I coached Crystal Wang and Derek Nie in all of their matches, which roughly alternated every hour all day long. Most of the time they practiced together to prepare for their matches, but I also joined in a lot, especially with Derek, where we had a lot of nice counterlooping duels as well as lots of serve & receive and serve & loop practice.

I got back from the Hopes Trials in NY very late last night, and I'm exhausted. So I'll start blogging again tomorrow, including the Tip of the Week, which will likely be on PPPPPP - Proper Practice Progression Prevents Poor Play. Short version of the Hopes Trials (from my perspective) - the two players I coached were Crystal Wang (won Hopes Girls' Trials without losing a game) and Derek Nie (was up 9-7 in the fifth in the semifinals before losing to eventual winner Victor Liu). 

No Blog Tomorrow (Friday)

I'm off to the Hopes Trials in at the Westchester TTC in Pleasantville, New York. See you on Monday!

Hopes Trials at Westchester TTC in NY

I'm going up to coach the two Maryland players who qualified, Crystal Wang and Derek Nie. We've been training for this for weeks! I did a 90-minute session with Derek just last night, while other coaches worked with Crystal. What is it?

Every year the ITTF has Hopes Week. This year it's going to be at the Werner Schlager Academy in Austria, June 10-16. (I think it was there last year as well.) The best 11- and 12-year-olds from around the world will be invited there for a week of training, culminating in a tournament. The North American Hopes Trials are this weekend, coinciding with the North American Cup. Here are some info links:

USATT Goals

Wouldn't it be great if USA Table Tennis (or another national table tennis organization) came up with a specific lofty goal, made it their top priority, brought in the right people to design a program to reach that goal, and then put their resources behind achieving that goal? Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen due to the politics. If you try to focus on a top priority, all the other special interests want their piece of the pie, and so limited resources are instead spread out over a number of items, resulting in lots of weak programs instead of one or perhaps a few really good ones. Plus it's easier to implement easy stuff than to go for the hard stuff - and make no mistake, creating a lofty goal and trying to achieve it is no easy task. But it's a lot harder to achieve if it never becomes a goal. But I always hope that someday, somehow, someway, it'll happen.

No, I'm not volunteering - there was a time when I volunteered for everything. I could go on a rant here on what usually happened, but I'll refrain. Let's just say I don't have the time anymore.

Here are three possibilities, with a rough plan on how to achieve it. (Note that I didn't put "Create Olympic Gold Medalists" on the list - all three of these items would be a first step toward doing that, especially #1. The others bring in the revenue needed if we want to create top players, which is an expensive process.) 

Tomahawk Serve

Recently someone asked me about why fewer players use the forehand tomahawk serve than before. (If you aren't sure what a forehand tomahawk serve, see video below of Matsudaira.) It was a much more popular serve back in the 1960s and 1970s. These days, however, the forehand pendulum serve (with racket tip down) has taken over in both its forms - regular and reverse. With a regular pendulum serve, the racket moves from right to left (for a righty). A reverse pendulum serves goes the opposite way. Regular pendulum serves dominate table tennis below the world-class level. However, at the world-class level, regular and reverse pendulum serves are about equally common. The latter is harder to learn, but is often more effective since players aren't as used to them - and even more effective if you can do both.

So why is the pendulum serve so popular, as compared to the tomahawk serve? 1) It allows them to serve both types of sidespin with roughly the same motion; 2) it's easier to serve very heavy backspin; 3) and they are just copying other top players. However, pendulum serves are way overused. Anyone developing a good tomahawk or other serve will give players problems as they aren't as used to it. If you are able to get heavy underspin (along with sidespin, side-top, and no-spin), and it's not obvious, then that's key to making the tomahawk serve effective at all levels. The same is true of the reverse pendulum serve - most players can't do it with heavy underspin, and when they do, it's too obvious. If you don't use it already, you should experiment with reverse pendulum serves so you can serve sidespin both ways.

Tip of the Week

Playing the Big Backhand Player.

Incentive

Yesterday I was coaching a 6-year-old. I've been working with him for a while, but his hand-eye coordination make learning difficult. For example, despite months of trying, he can rarely bounce a ball on his paddle more than two or three times. He also has great difficulty timing serves - the timing of throwing a ball up and hitting it accurately is difficult for kids that age - and he can rarely serve two balls in a row successfully. (His record is four in a row.)

Because of his difficulties in learning, he quickly loses patience if he doesn't get it quickly. He also is obsessed with Star Wars, and I made the mistake of letting him know what a big fan I was as well. It's often all he wants to talk about. Sometimes he insists I call him Yoda. He often tries to steer practice sessions into Star Wars question and answer sessions.

I often challenge him to do as many forehands or backhands as possible. His record on the forehand (when I feed multiball, which is easier than hitting them "live") was an even 40, but that was sort of fluky; his second most was about ten or fifteen. His backhand record is 18. His interest in getting as many in a row as possible is erratic.

I came up with an idea a few days ago. I created a chart, "Anton's Chart," where I listed his records for most forehands and backhands in a row, both with multiball and live, as well as ball bouncing, ball balancing (where he sees how long he can balance the ball on his racket while I time it), and how many serves he can do in a row. At the start of our lesson yesterday I brought out the chart, and taped it to the wall. His eyes went wide.

Wet Balls

I saw a discussion on the OOAK forum about whether it's a let if the ball is wet during a rally, and so slides off your racket into the net. The question comes up all the time. The answer is yes. Here's the rule:

Rule 2.09.02.04: [Play may be interrupted] "because the conditions of play are disturbed in a way which could affect the outcome of the rally."

If a ball is wet, "the conditions of play are disturbed in a way which could affect the outcome of the rally." The only question is how to judge this. A wet ball normally slides off the racket into the net. But so does a misread backspin serve. So it's a judgment call. The best indication is if there's a wet spot on the racket - but again, it's a judgment call since that wet spot might have been there before the point started or have been hit with sweat during the point. But normally it's pretty obvious if the ball went into the net because of a wet ball, and checking a wet spot on the racket is just verification. I have had opponents put my heavy backspin serve into the net and call "wet ball" when they had simply misread the serve, as indicated by their racket angle. (If you serve backspin but the split second after contact pull your racket up, this'll happen a lot. But it takes practice.)

I believe the wording used to be that it would be a let "if the ball was fractured or imperfect in play," but at some point it was changed. With both wordings the main reasons for calling a let because of the ball is because it is wet or fractured. (Or, of course, if another ball rolls into your court.)

New Back Problem

I live life by several rules. And one of the main ones is never, Ever, EVER carry heavy objects with my playing arm. On Tuesday I broke that rule and paid for it. I went grocery shopping. Normally I'm careful not to carry anything heavy with my (right) playing arm. I own a townhouse and live on the third floor, and rent out the first two floors. When I was about to carry the groceries out of my car and up the stairs to the third floor, I picked up all of the bags in my left arm. But I also had a case of Deer Park water. They normally come with 24 bottles, but this one was some sort of special, with 28, each of them 16.9 ounces. That's about 30 pounds. No problem, I picked them up with my right arm. It wasn't until I was nearly at the third floor that I began to feel the strain behind and to the left of my right shoulder. I made it to the top, no problem. None whatsoever.

Yesterday I only had two sessions. The first was with a beginning-intermediate player, age 11, rated about 800. He'd just played a tournament and had had trouble blocking. So near the end of the one-hour session I did a multiball drill where I stood near the end-line of my table with a box of balls, and tossed balls up one by one and looped them at him so he could practice blocking. At first I didn't notice the strain, but after a few minutes of this the pain in my back began again. I'd hurt it the day before, but now I'd aggravated it pretty badly.