Breakability, Playability, and Financiability of Plastic Balls
There are regular complaints about how the new plastic balls (which aren't so new anymore) break more easily than celluloid ones. Someone posted a note about this last night, and I responded as follows, about my experiences at the North America Teams – with the "breaking point" observation.

Most of the new plastic balls break more often than the celluloid ones. All you can do is call a let when it happens. One thing I noticed - I coached junior teams where the players were mostly 8-10 years old, and I don't remember them breaking a single ball. But I kept hearing from others, like you, that the balls kept breaking. Adults smash harder, and there's apparently a "breaking point" speed where they break too often.

Most of them also don't play as well as celluloid, though some of them are pretty good. There's going to be a titanic struggle at some point between the forces of seamed and unseamed balls – I'm guessing that eventually it'll be one or the other.

There are always going to be suspicions that the switch to plastic balls was more commercial than out of necessity due to the flammability of celluloid (which causes shipping and insurance difficulties). Perhaps it was both. Switching to plastic balls both enriches those who have the patents for them, and increases the number sold since they break more often. (I have no idea if they knew that part in advance.) However, I don't claim to be an expert on this.

Tip of the Week
Follow the Elbow.

North American Teams
I spent the weekend coaching at the JOOLA North American Teams. (Here are complete results.) As noted in my blog last week, I always have this conflict as I'm sponsored by Butterfly, which runs the Butterfly Teams the same weekend, but the JOOLA Teams are practically next door, and my students play there. So that's where I coach. 

As usual, since I was busy coaching MDTTC junior teams on the back tables, I didn't see many of the big matches. During the Division One Finals I was watching the Division Ten Final. Note I said watching, not coaching? That's because it was between MDTTC/HWGF1 and MDTTC/HWGF2! Yes, an all MDTTC final. (HWGF stands for HW Global Foundation, which sponsors and runs the Talent Program at MDTTC, which is mostly kids from around 7 to 11. Contact them if you are interested in such a program at your club.) The players on the two teams were mostly 8-10 years old. I'd coaching both teams during the tournament, though I'd been assigned to mostly  coach the #1 team. (Others coaching the MDTTC junior teams were Jeffrey Zeng Zun, Wang Qing Liang, John Hsu, and Jack Huang.) But when two MDTTC junior teams play each other, we have a firm rule – no coaching from coaches or parents; only the kids can coach each other. They are all teammates, and we don't want coaches or parents coaching against each other there. It was a battle, as the players were used to each other, with the #1 defeating #2, 5-2. It could have been closer as the #1 team won two matches deuce or 11-9 in the fifth. These players all came in with ratings roughly 1100 to 1400, but they were severely under-rated.

Next Blog – Tuesday, Nov. 29
I'll be eating Meleagris on Thursday, coaching at the Teams Fri-Sun, and exhausted in bed on Monday. See you Tuesday!

Coaching at the Teams
On Fri-Sun I'll be at the JOOLA North American Teams, coaching one of the junior teams from the Maryland Table Tennis Center. It's a rather big job, herding the kids to the right table, warming them up, getting the match slips filled out, scouting opponents, coaching matches, consoling tearful kids after a loss, and making sure they eat and drink properly. Fortunately, most of the kids are now "old pros," having played numerous tournaments.

It's a tough decision for many of us each year – JOOLA North American Teams in DC, or Butterfly Teams in Philadelphia? It's unfortunate they are on the same weekend, and only 2.5 hours apart, but both want the Thanksgiving weekend. For me, it's an especially uncomfortable choice, since I'm sponsored by Butterfly, but the North American Teams are practically in my back yard. Since the players I coach are playing there, I'll be coaching at the JOOLA North American Teams in DC. But I wish I could do both.

For those of you playing at the Teams (either one), here's my article, Top Ten Ways to Play Your Best in a Tournament. Unless you are playing an MDTTC Team. Then go out and party late the night before, and show up at the last minute to play – only wimps need to warm up, right?

One thing of possible great interest – at the North American Teams they will be following the new ITTF coaching rule. This means coaches are allowed to coach at any time during the match that the ball is not in play. I do not like this rule, and am not looking forward to it. Hopefully it'll be low key, and not three days of coaches screaming out instructions. But I'm sure there'll be some coaches signaling every serve.

Sixteen and Training Again . . . with Christer Johansson
The year was 1976, I was 16, and I'd just finished a week of hard training at the Monty Merchant Christmas Training Camp. On the last day I got a surprise – Monty had been so impressed with my skills that he'd arranged for Christer Johansson, the great Swedish coach, to fly to the U.S. to take personal charge of my training.

The preceding never happened – or did it? Let me tell the story in order.

I'm in my room, shadow-practicing my forehand, when Monty and Christer walk in. Monty introduces us, then Christer takes charge. Tells me I need to focus on looping from both sides. On the forehand, I was both hitting and looping; he assures me that the future is looping, and to focus on that.

But then we get to my backhand. "You must loop your backhand," he says. He guides me through the stroke as he wants me to do it, and I begin to shadow practice it.

"It's easy to do in practice," I vividly remember telling him, "but hard to do it in games."

"But you must do it in games," he says. We're still in my room at home, with a table somehow jammed into it. We begin training, as he blocks to my backhand loop, constantly on me to spin it harder, Harder, HARDER!!! He's moving me side to side, backhand to forehand, and I'm really into it, looping everything, as I want to be the best in the world, and now I have one of the best, maybe the best, coach in the world training me. Every now and then I see Monty in the background, nodding. I'm a hard worker, and both of them are impressed. He's focusing especially on my backhand, turning it into a deadly weapon.

Soon I'm ripping loops from both wings, relentlessly, like a champion. I'm 16 and I have a great future ahead.

Tip of the Week
Getting "In the Zone" by Adapting to Your Opponent.

Car Pong!
Yesterday, while driving home from coaching at the club, I suddenly heard a rattling. It seemed to be coming from below, as if something were lose under the car. (And yes, this is all table tennis related – you'll see!) I finally pulled over and looked, but couldn't find anything. So I got back in, and there was more rattling. Something was wrong with my car!!! I debated whether to take it to a gas station, but it was around 8:30PM and I doubted there'd be anyone there to help. So I decided I'd have to take it somewhere in the morning. It meant skipping this morning's blog, since those who come in later in the morning have to wait for them to finish on the ones that came in earlier, and I'd need the car later this afternoon when I go to coach.

After I got home, I checked under the car one more time, but couldn't find the problem. Sighing, I went to the trunk to get my playing bag and a big metal cartoon of food I'd gotten from the club. The MDTTC's Talent Group – the best players mostly under age 10 – had just had a party, and had given me this big metal carton on Chicken Lo Mein. And that's when I found the culprit. I keep a Butterfly Ball Amigo (a ball net for picking up balls) in the trunk of my car, which I bring into the club as my personal ball net. The head had gotten stuck under my playing bag, with the handle on top of the metal food carton. The sound I'd heard was the handle banging up and down on the carton!!!

Pro TT Leagues
One thing I've been harping on for a number of years is how we keep losing our top juniors right as they are on the verge of being world-class players – they go to college. The horror!!! But from a table tennis point of view, it'd be nice if we had a professional league of some sort in the U.S. so these players could postpone college a few years and develop their game to the fullest. It'll be on the agenda at the USATT Board meeting at the U.S. Open in Las Vegas.

As I've blogged about before, never in our history have we had such a strong group of cadets and juniors – and it's not even close. Our best ones can now compete with the best in the world, something that was almost unheard of in the past, plus there's the depth is far beyond anything we've had in the past. (How is this happening? The growth of full-time training centers.)

So how do we set up such a pro league in time for this generation of up-and-coming superstars? I see three options:

Ten Things That Require Zero Talent
On Monday I linked to the list Ten Things That Require Zero Talent. The point is that even if you have little talent – whatever talent is – you can still make the most of what you have, and these ten things will, in the long run, almost always overcome talent. (Unless, of course, the "talented" one also does these ten things to a very high degree.) Here's the actual list:

1. Being on time
2. Work ethic
3. Effort
4. Body language
5. Energy
6. Attitude
7. Passion
8. Being coachable
9. Doing extra
10. Being prepared

I can't help but think the list is somewhat redundant. You really should do all ten, but in reality, #7 (Passion) leads to #6 (Attitude), which leads to the other eight. Now it's possible to have a good Attitude without the Passion, but that does make it more difficult. (A person working a menial job may not have passion for the job, but can still have a good attitude about it.) But a good Attitude is a must, and automatically leads to the rest.

Some might try to nitpick, for example claiming energy comes from fitness – but it's still mostly attitude, unless you are out running a marathon. Even if you are doing footwork drills, you can have energy until you run out of it, and then you rest and it comes back. But even more directly, if you don't have energy, then you should do the fitness training to get it back – which comes from passion and/or attitude.

Miscellaneous Stuff
I think I've been fighting a minor cold the last few days. This morning I woke up with my head feeling like it was full of cotton, a minor background headache that won't go away, sniffles, and a general feeling of "I should be in bed." Today's a slow day for me - I only have one hour of coaching today - so I should be able to do that. I'm also going to try to get some writing done.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post came in yesterday for the follow-up to their previous visit. This time they had both a writer and a photographer, who took pictures for three hours. So far they have interviewed me, Cheng Yinghua (the focus of the story, along with MDTTC), Jack Huang, Ryan Dabbs, Tiffany Ke, and Lisa Lin. They took many pictures yesterday of these players and coaches, plus lots of shots of 8-year-old Stanley Hsu (about 1350) smacking balls against Cheng. The article will most likely come out next week.

I had a great 90-minute session with Daniel Sofer, recently turned 12, and told him afterwards that if he trained like that all the time, he'd soon be battling with the best players his age in the country. "Soon," of course, is a relative term. He's about 1700 right now, with a great feel for the ball, but still lacks confidence in his attack.  

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.