Tip of the Week
Heavy and No-Spin Pushes.

Coaching Subtleties and Attacking the Middle
After 42 years of playing and coaching I can pretty much analyze an opponent's weaknesses within a game, based both on what he does, but also on his strokes, stance, footwork, etc. If a shakehand player has long arms and tends to extend his arm when stroking, and so has a big gap between where they contact their forehand and backhand, I don't need to see the player react to an attack to the middle for me to know there's going to be a weakness there.

However, when coaching, you also have to know the player you are coaching to really be effective. Even if you watch a player for a time you can't always pick up on everything. It's not just what your player does, but what he doesn't do - and why. If he isn't playing into an opponent's weakness, is it because he hasn't seen the weakness, or because he can't effectively go after it, at least in some ways?

Here's an example. If I played someone who doesn't cover the middle well (the transition point between forehand and backhand, roughly the playing elbow), and a coach told me to open with my forehand loop to his middle, it wouldn't work. The coach saw the opponent's weakness, and (seemingly correctly) told me to attack it with my forehand. (I was a very aggressive forehand attacker.) But he has no way of knowing whether I could go after that weakness unless he really knew my game. He'd see me attacking the corners relentless with my forehand, and only attacking the middle with my backhand. So he'd tell me to attack the middle with my forehand - but he'd be making a mistake.

Tip of the Week
Don't Try So Hard When Ending the Point.

Upcoming USATT Strategic Meeting
USATT is holding a Strategic Meeting in Colorado Springs, Nov. 3-4. They hold these periodically. They've had a number of mini-strategic meetings, where the USATT board breaks up into groups to discuss specific issues - I've been to about ten of those. But the last time they had a real Strategic Meeting like this was in 2009, which didn't go well and led to nothing. (I've been to five of them.) I was debating whether to attend this one - as Coaching Chair, I was allowed to choose two coaches, and could include myself - but chose not to this time, though now I'm sort of regretting it - I'd like to be there. So I did the next best thing, and wrote the following letter to the attendees, which focuses on learning from the mistakes of past Strategic Meetings, and on Regionalization, which will be a major issue at this meeting. 

Dear Members of the Upcoming 2018 USATT Strategic Meeting, USATT Board and Staff,

I apologize for the length of this email, but I think the content is important. I wrote a similar letter to the USATT Board a few weeks ago, but this one has a number of updates. I am writing about two things:

1. How to make the upcoming Strategic Meeting successful, in particular by learning from our mistakes in the past;
2. Regionalization.

I have been to five previous USATT Strategic Meetings, mostly two days long each time, and about ten "mini" Strategic Meetings (where we broke into groups at regular board meetings to discuss and plan various Strategic issues). None have been successful.

Tip of the Week
Top Ten Ways to Be a Professional at All Levels.

Weekend Coaching
I did a lot of "scouting" this weekend. By scouting, what I really mean is I watched and studied our junior players in matches and practice and took lots of notes. Plus, of course, there was the usual weekend group sessions. Here's a rundown.

Friday. I watched our junior players in the Friday night league for 2.5 hours, getting pages of notes on a number of players. I spoke with each of the players on the issues I saw, including both strengths and weaknesses. Some problems I saw included:

• Not using backhand loop
• Not attacking the middle
• Weak pushes
• Standing in backhand stance as a ready position
• Frozen footwork against a pips-out player
• Lifting too much when looping instead of driving the ball more forward
• Backhand drive too flat
• Not enough serve variation
• Rushing, especially when serving
• Backs off table too easily
• Grip problem
• Getting too disgusted after missing a shot instead of getting determined

Saturday. I coached in the Saturday Junior League for two hours. It's not a "normal" league - it's really half league, half coaching. We did a lot of doubles the first half, so I worked with players on their doubles footwork and tactics. In singles, we had them play improvised games, such as where they score two points if they serve and attack and win the point (not necessarily on the first shot). We also played games where each game starts with the server serving down 7-9, but wins if they get both points on their serve, plus a few other variations.

Tip of the Week
Style Experimentation.

Table Tennis Inventions
Table tennis regularly has new innovations, both in technique and equipment. The major equipment manufacturers are constantly coming up with new products. For example, Butterfly (which sponsors me) came up with Tenergy rubber a few years ago, and as a truly innovative product, with high-tension sponge and rubber surface, it became a huge seller. They've since innovated on it in numerous ways, including coming up with four types (05, 25, 64, and 80, and please don't ask me how they got those numbers), as well as FX versions of each, which are softer. And now they have come out with Tenergy 05 Hard! (Here's the Here's the review by Stefan Feth.)

But that is NOT the subject of today's blog. Instead, I'm writing about other table tennis inventions. We'll start with Samson Dubina, who has two recent table tennis inventions: TT-Serve and TT-Flex. TT-Serve (which I tried out last week) is put over the net so that players can practice serving low, but with the added feature that it extends about six inches on both sides of the net. If it were just a rod going across the net, you could potentially serve the ball too high, but have it cross the net a low point, and so seem to be low - but still bounce too high on the far side. TT-Serve forces you to serve truly low, so that the ball stays low before and after it reaches the net, and thereby bounces low on the far side. You can adjust it up and down. TT-Flex is "a full body strengthening system designed to enhance your loops, smashes, flips, chops, serves, and much more!"

Tip of the Week
Counterlooping and the Forehand Block.

Why China's Dominance in Table Tennis is Unmatched at the Olympics
Here's the video (10:54). This is fascinating viewing, and I recommend you watch it.

One interesting statement in the video was someone saying, "61% of the worldwide table tennis innovation techniques and tactics are from China." Now this is a rather arbitrary thing as who judges what is an innovation?

Here's discussion on this at the Mytabletennis.net forum, which includes a listing of the innovations by China and others, where they got the 61%. But as noted, it's somewhat arbitrary. It includes many techniques that are no longer common at the high levels, and some are somewhat redundant. If they are going to include those, then they should include many more European hardbat techniques from the 1940s and 1950s, such as the Barna backhand flick - he won Men's Singles at the Worlds five times with it - and many more. It also has entries for Zhuang Zedong's penhold close-to-table double wing attacking, Li Furong's penhold close-to-table backhand blocking and forehand attacking, and Xu Shaofa's "kuai dai" technique, which are all rather similar, with only subtle differences. If they are to be included, then there are all sorts of subtle variations of techniques that could be included. It includes several items for racket flipping, but leaves out Carl Prean's innovations. It also leaves out the innovative variations and serving techniques developed by Waldner. (There's also the Seemiller grip - two USA players reached top 20 in the world with it.)

Tip of the Week
How to Punish those Slow, Spinny Loops.

History of U.S. Table Tennis, Volume 22
This morning USATT Historian and Hall of Famer Tim Boggan moves in with me for about 12 days so I can do the photo work and page layouts for the latest volume of History of U.S. Table Tennis. This one covers 1996-1997, and will be in the 450 page range, with about 1700 graphics. Actually, every page is technically a graphic, since Tim creates the volumes by mostly cut & pasting articles from the past. He arranges them into 8.5x11 pages, which are scanned by another USATT Hall of Famer, Mal Anderson.

Then comes the "hard" part, for me, as I have to place each page into the layouts, and then fix up all the graphics - and there are a LOT of fixing up. For one thing, all of Tim's scissor cuts show up and have to be removed; for another, most of the work is scanned from gritty newsprint, and that takes time to fix up. Plus Tim is very picky about backgrounds, and regularly has me Photoshop "distracting" background items or people out. We also have to add lots of captions. Tim also always has a large number of separate photos for me to scan to put in.

Tim will be arriving promptly at 9AM, as he always does, driving down from New York during the night. He keeps strange hours, getting up each morning at around 4AM and going to bed around 8PM or earlier. For the next 10-12 days we'll be working from 7AM to 5PM. If all goes well, we'll be done by Oct. 12, so I can set up for the MDTTC October Open that weekend, Oct. 13-14, which I'll be running.

Tip of the Week
Top Ten Guidelines for Playing the Unconventional Style.

USATT Board Meeting
This past weekend I attended the USATT board meeting at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Sept. 21-23. (I attended both as a member of the board and as chair of the coaching committee.) Friday was travel day, plus an informal dinner at the OTC dining hall. I flew on the same flight as USATT legal counsel Dennis Taylor. Others attending the meeting included fellow board members Anne Cribbs (chair), Rajul Sheth, Ed Hogshead, Carolyn Savini, and Erica Wu (who just took a job at Facebook), with Gary Schlager and Tara Profitt attending via e-conference. Also attending were USATT CEO Gordon Kaye, COO Mark Thompson, High Performance Director Jörg Bitzigeio, and High Performance Committee Chair Carl Danner. Also attending for a few hours were new USATT employees Chris Mauro (accounting) and Tammy Kuyper (administrative assistant).

The meeting started at 9AM on Saturday. First on the agenda were formalities - roll call and call for any conflicts of interest. Then came approval of the minutes of our August teleconference - there were no substantive changes, though I did point out a missing period, which was duly added - my great contribution. The minutes were approved unanimously.

Tip of the Week
Development of an Outrageously Great Spin Serve.

New Format at the U.S. Open
Here's the 2018 U.S. Open page, and here's the entry form. It will be held Dec. 16-22 in Orlando, FL, near Disneyworld. (Yep, I'm going afterward, probably with a group of our juniors.)

Two huge pluses are 1) Every match will be played on rubberized floors (no more cement!), and 2) Did I mention it's near Disneyworld? The entry form includes discounts for Disneyworld, Universal Orlando, and Universal's Islands of Adventure, all nearby.

However, the format for the Open itself has changed. Before going further, I recommend you browse over the entry form, and then read the FAQ page. Really - it explains a lot! It's not that complicated once you read things over. And note that this is just for the Open; the Nationals in July will stay with the previous format.

The first thing you'll notice is that the format has changed - a lot. Instead of rating events, there's a Tiered Rating event. In this, you play not one, not two, but THREE round robins, with groups of mostly five, and then there's the single elimination state. (See page 3 of entry form, "Performance Track - Event 73.") There's also a Tiered Rating Doubles event, where you play in two round robins before the single elimination state.

Tip of the Week
Develop Ball Control by Playing with Different Surfaces.

Shortened Tables
There seems to be an obvious way to develop great players that we're almost all missing. Because of the height of the table - 30 inches - kids can't really play until they are about five or six years old, and even then it's rather awkward. (It's especially hard hitting backhands at that age, until their elbow is over the table.) However, there are many stories about how top players started playing much younger, as young as two or three, on shortened tables. They then move to regular tables around six or seven. 

For example, the Japanese whiz kid, Tomokazu Harimoto, who is world #8 (and #6 last month) at age 15, started when he was two years old. Here's video of him playing on a shortened table, where he's at most three years old. (Video should take you ten seconds in, where you see this for about six seconds.) Is it any wonder how good he became? I've seen others start this way as well. I once hit 50 forehands in a row on a one-foot table with Barney J. Reed when he was three years old, who would go on to be a many-time U.S. team member. He'd obviously been playing for a while, probably starting at two.

Tip of the Week
The Flat Smash That Isn't.

USATT League Ratings as Initial USATT Ratings
Below is a proposal I made a few days ago to the USATT Tournament Committee about using USATT League ratings as initial ratings for tournament. I think it's self-explanatory. Note that both regular USATT ratings (i.e. tournament ratings) and league ratings are in the USATT database, and both are in each player's profile when you look up their rating in the USATT ratings page. In the August Open I ran recently we had three "unrated" players who had league ratings that could have been used - but instead, we had to treat them as unrated players, so they could only play in the preliminaries of rating events.

Dear USATT Tournament Committee,

The USATT League is rather widespread, with (I'm told) more rated matches every month than tournament matches. Many clubs, including mine (MDTTC) have many players with extensive and accurate league ratings but no tournament rating yet. (We have USATT Leagues three times/week.) When they want to play their first tournament, they are stuck as unrated players even if they have an accurate league rating. The two systems are essentially the same. When I co-founded the system many years ago one of the goals, once it was widespread enough, was for it to be used as an initial rating in USATT tournaments, so players could play (and advance) in the appropriate rating events. I believe we reached that stage several years ago.