MDTTC Open House, Balticon, and a Four-Day Weekend!
I'll be mostly away the next four days, mostly at the Balticon Science Fiction Convention, which is Friday through Monday (Memorial Day). However, I'll be back at MDTTC on Sunday (12-3PM) for our Open House, where I'll be doing a demonstration and exhibition; running a Parade of Champions (single elimination, one game to 3 points – you heard that right! – with everyone welcome to participate); doing a trick shot demo (where I teach the 50-foot serve, blowing the ball in the air and over net, backspin serves that bounce back over the net, speed bouncing, playing alone with two paddles, etc.), and a service seminar. I'll be doing some private coaching afterwards.

At Balticon I'm a panelist, and will be doing a reading Saturday night at 8PM (either from my new novel, or one of my short stories). I'll also get to hobnob with fellow SF and fantasy writers, including Guest of Honor George R.R. Martin – who I've met before! Yes, I Know Him!!! (Okay, maybe he'd vaguely recognize me from conventions as that stalker fellow writer he once met.) For you ignorant people scratching your heads and wondering what Martin's rating is and what sponge he uses on his forehand, he's the author of Game of Thrones, now the hit HBO series. He does more kills in a typical chapter than most of you do in your table tennis careers. (I've read all five of the Game of Thrones novels – but they average over 1000 pages, so it's like reading 15 books.) Hopefully they'll sell a bunch of my novel in the dealer's room. 

Rarely Used Hand Signals for Illegal Hidden Serves
Here's the video (5:38), which came out in February. But there's something surreal to me about having signals for hiding the ball (with the arm, the shoulder, and the head), when these are almost never called, no matter how blatantly the player hides the serve.

As I've blogged many times, we have a culture of cheating in our sport, where essentially every major title is won with illegal hidden serves that are done right out in the open, where everyone can see it, and the umpires will not call it. Yes, it's tough to see if a serve is hidden, but that's clearly covered in the serving rules – 2.6.6.1: "If either the umpire or the assistant umpire is not sure about the legality of a service he or she may, on the first occasion in a match, interrupt play and warn the server; but any subsequent service by that player or his or her doubles partner which is not clearly legal shall be considered incorrect."

And in case that's not enough, there's also 2.6.6: "It is the responsibility of the player to serve so that the umpire or the assistant umpire can be satisfied that he or she complies with the requirements of the Laws, and either may decide that a service is incorrect."

Backspin Mania Continues!
Yesterday was quite a site – ten minutes before the scheduled 4-5PM session with two kids there were FIVE of them all on a single table, all practicing and competing to see who could do the most backspin serves that came back into or over the net. This past week it's been a battle to get some of them to do regular practice – they are absolutely backspin crazy. That's all we did from 4-4:30.

When we went to regular practice, guess what they insisted on working on? More backspin. So we did a lot of pushing. (Maybe we're developing a bunch of choppers? Should I explain long pips to them?) I stopped trying to explain that keeping the ball LOW is important – they were more interested in pushing so the ball bounced backwards. Since they ranged from beginner to advanced beginner, and were 7-8 years old, I allowed it – they got great practice learning to graze the ball. (Have trouble creating great spin on your serves? Then learn from the kids, and try to make the ball bounce back into the net! Here's my article Visualize Your Serves and Make Them Do Tricks.)

The youngest, age seven, goes absolutely bonkers whenever he makes a serve where the ball bounces back over the net onto his side – and he can do it about 10% of the time now, which I wouldn't have  believed possible a week ago. At that time, he'd not only never done it, he didn't know what a backspin serve was – and now, one week after learning how to do one, nearly all his serves bounce back into the net! He's rather single-minded about this, as you can guess.

Tip of the Week
Contact Point on the Forehand. (I actually did an entire Tip for this morning, only to discover I'd already done How to Serve to the Backhand Attacking Receiver. After over 270 Tips of the Week, that's the first time I've ever done that.)

Why My Forehand Push Is Much Better Down the Line
Here's something I hadn't really noticed before - my forehand push down the line is pretty good, but crosscourt not so good. Unless I'm chopping, I only forehand push against short balls, mostly when someone serves short to my forehand or drops my serve short there, and I decide not to flip. Off this ball I have a big angle into a righty's forehand - but the very threat of this means opponents automatically cover it. And so what do I almost always do? Fake it crosscourt, and then, at the last second, taking it right off the bounce, I push it down the line into their backhand. And that's what I became used to doing, and so have great control over it. But when I do go crosscourt, as I often do in drills with students, I don't have nearly the same control because I so rarely did it that direction. 

You'd think I would have developed the crosscourt forehand push for playing lefties - but there's a different reason why I didn't. Against lefties who serve short to my forehand I almost always fake a down-the-line flip, and then, at the last second, flip it crosscourt into their backhand - which almost always sets up my forehand against their backhand return. (I was a strong forehand player.) For variation, I drop it short to the lefty's forehand. And so again, I rarely pushed crosscourt. 

Serving Mania
Serving Mania has struck MDTTC! At least with my students. I blogged about this on Wednesday, about two kids who spent an entire one-hour session doing almost nothing but backspin serves (trying to make the ball come back into the net or bounce back over the net). It happened again on Thursday, where two kids (including the 7-year-old I blogged about on Wednesday) spent 40 minutes doing it again. There's getting better and better at it, and get pretty excited when they make the ball jump backwards and over the net.

We have a scoring system: one point if you get the ball to bounce back and hit the net; three points if it bounces back over the net cleanly after one bounce; two points if it bounces back over the net, but nicks the net in either direction, or takes more than once bounce on the far side to come back over the net. Here's a video (78 sec) of Ma Lin demonstrating the "ghost serve, where the backspin pulls the ball back into the net. But the ultimate backspin trick is making it bounce back over the net!

When I do the Trick Shots demo at the MDTTC Open House on May 29 I'm going to demo and teach these "Come Back" serves. It's a fun trick shot, though more advanced players see it coming and either reach forward or go to the side of the table, and smack it in. (I'll also demo and teach the 50-foot serve; blowing the ball so it balances in the air – sideways!; rallying by blowing the ball over the net; speed bouncing on the table; and playing alone with two paddles.

Chop Blocks
I have a student who cries "Foul!" whenever I do a chop-block. He insists no one else does them, and often will catch the ball when I do them. Before we go further, what is a chop block? Here's my article, Chalk Up Wins with Chop Blocks, and here's the video, Ma Long Chop Block (5:17).

Yesterday, in a session with Matt, I threw a chop block at him, and he wanted to try it. Now I wouldn't normally devote half a session to chop-blocks, but on the other hand I'm an adherent to Saturation Training, which means if you are going to make a change in your game or add something new, you really focus on it for a time until you get it right, rather than just work at it now and then. So we did just that – spent half the session on it. For most of this I stood a few feet back and fed him loops, multiball style, as he chop-blocked and sidespin-chop blocked.

This is a shot that most people have trouble with at first, and then it comes together suddenly, once you get that "smothering" feel of contact. And once you do, it creates havoc for opponents. I think it's even more effective these days for a simple reason – it's one of those shots that has died out in popularity (except for long pips blockers, who do it naturally), and so few players are used to it. There's a reason why world #1 Ma Long likes to use it.

Backspin Serves for Kids, and Making the Ball Return Into or Over the Net
Had an interesting session yesterday with two kids, ages 7 and 9. You'd think kids that age are balls of energy, wanting to smack the ball over and over. But when they get interested in something, that becomes their whole focus – and that's what happened yesterday.

I'd been teaching them backspin serves recently. It was new to the 7-year-old, while the 9-year-old was a bit more advanced. It started with the 7-year-old rushing out to the table five minutes early, and with a bucket of balls, trying to serve backspin so the ball would bounce backward. I'd demonstrated this to him a few days before, and he badly wanted to do it. He was able to serve so the ball would sometimes come to a stop, or even sometimes bounce backwards, though usually with the ball never reaching the net. He wanted to serve so it would go to the other side and bounce back into the net, as I'd shown him. And so began our hour-long Odyssey. (Here's the serve in question, though they aren't doing it with a high toss.) 

Adjusting to Different Balls in the Yucky Insane Plastic Era (YIPE!)
One of the realities of the YIPE era (yes, that's what I'm calling it!), where we use plastic balls instead of celluloid (which is actually a type of plastic, but we won't get into that), is that the balls vary widely, far more than before. It used to be that everyone knew that Butterfly balls were slightly softer and lighter than Nittakus, and you'd warm up with the appropriate tournament ball and you'd be ready. But now they vary dramatically. Playing with the various 40+ Nittaku, DHS, Butterfly, JOOLA, and the seamless Xu Shao Fa is like trying to play basketball where one moment you're dribbling a basketball, then suddenly (in no particular order) it's a bowling ball, then a baseball, then a golf ball, etc.

One of my students, Daniel (who I've blogged about before) played in the Capital Area League this past Saturday. He tends to play too passive, and so we've spent a lot of time working on using his serve to set up his attack. Alas, we weren't using a Nittaku Premium 40+, and so when he used that in the league, he said it felt really heavy, and he had no confidence in his attack. Result? He went back to pushing.

The moral here, and for others, is that you need to work out in advance what events you'll be playing in, find out what balls they will be using, get a supply of each type, and make sure to practice with that ball before each event.

Tip of the Week
Depth Control on Serves with CBS.

Bottle Drill and Quotes
Here is a useful drills I used this weekend. Sameer (14, 1826) has reached the point where he's pretty consistent with his first and second loops (both forehand and backhand), but needs more focus on placement. He told me that in his league matches, he's making nearly 100% of his backhand loops off push, but they keep coming back – but that was because he's opening primarily to the middle backhand, where the opponent is ready and waiting. (And most players block better on the backhand.) Since your first attack should most often be to the opponent's middle (something top players routinely do, but beginners and intermediates often don't quite get – here's my Tip on Attacking the Middle), with follow-up attacks at the corners (since the attack to the middle draws them out of position), we did the following multiball drill.

I put a bottle just a bit to the left of the middle line on my side of the table, about a foot in, where the middle (playing elbow) of a typical right-hander would be. (This does vary based on the player, situation, and handedness.) I put another bottle on the right side of my side (my wide forehand), about 18 inches outside the corner, a couple inches from the sideline. First I fed just backspin to his backhand so he could practice hitting the bottle with his backhand loop. Then I fed just topspin to his wide forehand so he could practice hitting the bottle with a hooking forehand loop (so the ball curved to his left, my wide forehand). He reached the point where he was able to hit the bottles about 1/3 of the time.

Footwork Drills by Stefan Feth, and Attacking the Middle
Here's the new video (1:23) from Butterfly. Note how, for this drill, Stefan stresses that the he's putting the ball to his partner's middle. Far too often players just drill to the corners, and then wonder why they have trouble attacking an opponent's elbow, usually the weakest point – if you don't practice it, you won't do it very well. I've often faced this as a coach – I'll tell a player to attack the opponent's middle, and he'll get this pained look as he knows he's not comfortable doing so since he's so used to attacking the corners. And then he'll go out there and continue to go to the corners, since that's what his muscle memory wants to do.

Think about it. Any coach or top player will tell you that your attacks should go to three spots – wide forehand, wide backhand, and the opponent's middle (roughly his playing elbow). Most will agree that attacking the middle is usually the best spot for the first attack – here's my article, Attacking the Middle. Here's an excerpt:

Why is the middle so weak when attacked? There are five (yes, five!) primary reasons.