February 17, 2026

Tips of the Week
Here are the Tips of the Week that went up every Monday during the month I was gone in South America.

A Month in South America
I just spent a month in South America, competing in the Classic Table Tennis World Cup in Três Coroas, Brazil, Jan. 18-25. I won gold in Over 60 Hardbat Singles and silver in Over 60 Woodbat singles, as well as quarterfinals in sandpaper. Here's me with my winnings! (There was also a nice cash prize. Note that I play both hardbat and sponge, and now wood and sandpaper!) All the training I've been doing with Lidney Castro paid off. Fortunately, I've gotten over the various ongoing injuries I've battled this past year, especially my shoulder, side, and knee, all on the right side. Afterwards I spent three weeks touring South America, returning Feb. 12. I posted long notes almost every night about my sightseeing on Facebook, including photos. If you want to read about my adventures, here's my Facebook Page. Page down to January 16, and go from there! Here are the places I visited and toured.

  • Três Coroas and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • Montevideo, Uruguay
  • Lima, Cusco, and Machu Picchu, Peru
  • Bogotá, Colombia

Who Brought the First-Ever World Championships to American Soil?
What Happened to Decades of USATT News Items?
Some of you may have read the USATT news item that came out a few days ago, Announcement To USATT Members from Board Chair Kelly Watson. It basically says that the USATT board has contracted current CEO Virginia Sun through the end of 2030. It gives a whole series of vague superlatives about what she’s done. I find some of them misleading. Let’s take just the first claim, “Virginia has helped elevate the sport of table tennis in the U.S. by bringing the first-ever World Championships to American soil.” This refers to the 2021 Worlds in Houston.

Sung had nothing to do with bringing the first-ever World Championships to American soil. I emailed her on this, and I’ll get to her response shortly.

It would be helpful if we could just refer to the USATT news item on this from 2019, but in another USATT scandal, all news links before May 16, 2019 have been lost from the USATT news page. (They were apparently lost when USATT switched to a new server during Sung’s tenure as CEO. No backups. Hundreds of those articles were by me from my days as co-webmaster. I'm not sure if I have copies of all of them. Most are gone for good; if you already know about a specific news item, and if you know enough about it to search, you can use the Internet Wayback Machine, but that's a rather awkward way of doing so, and the rest - the huge majority - are essentially lost.) That’s literally decades of history, now gone. In fact, the very first news item now is about Sung’s original hiring, Virginia Sung Appointed New CEO of USA Table Tennis, on May 16, 2019. (Is it coincidental that all news items before that were lost? I have no idea. It's as if nothing happened before Sung was hired as USATT's 16th CEO/ED.)

For those with time on their hands, feel free to do what I did, and go to the USATT News Page, page to the bottom, click on “Load More,” and repeat, page after Page after PAGE, until you get to May 16, 2019 (it takes a long, tedious time), and discover there are no more before that. It’s an incredibly clumsy way to organize a news page. (At least give links for each year.) I also did searches, but they only go back to that date.

I found the link to the USATT news item on USA getting the 2021 Worlds from several sources, including my blog. But it’s no longer valid, and just takes us to current USATT page. It’s by Matt Hetherington from when he worked for USATT, but he didn’t have a copy of the original. Here's the original address:
https://www.teamusa.org/USA-Table-Tennis/Features/2019/April/22/The-World-Table-Tennis-Championships-is-Coming-to-USA-for-the-First-Time-in-2021

I wasn't able to find it with the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. However, my cousin, Jess Snyder, was able to do so! Here it is. Or see the rather long and awkward address:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200813034445/https://www.teamusa.org/USA-Table-Tennis/Features/2019/April/22/The-World-Table-Tennis-Championships-is-Coming-to-USA-for-the-First-Time-in-2021

So, here are four sources:

As noted in the Butterfly article, the four main contributors to the bid and presentation were Dragomir Cioroslan (USOC Director of International Strategies and Development), Janis Burke (Houston Sports Authority CEO), Anne Warner Cribbs (USATT Board Chair), and Lily Zhang (US Team member). Here’s the 13-minute presentation to the ITTF.

The original bid (initially for 2020, later changed to 2021) was sent to ITTF in October, 2017. (Note that I was on the USATT Board of Directors until the end of 2017.) Here is the Butterfly article on this, Table Tennis North America Submits Letter of Interest To Host 2020 ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships. (I believe at the time we were working with Canada on this.) The presentation and awarding of the bid came on April 22, 2019. Sung was hired as CEO of USATT 24 days later, on May 16, 2019. Before that, she had no involvement in these issues. According to then-USATT Board Chair Anne Cribbs, "The bid was awarded well before Virginia was involved with USATT." (She also gave credit to former CEO Gordon Kaye and Dennis Davis for helping and supporting the bid.)

There was one small complication. Originally, USATT bid for the 2020 Worlds. South Korea also bid for that year. After negotiations, it was informally agreed that USATT would withdraw their bid for 2020 and bid for 2021, and both would support the other. (I think China was also involved in the discussions, as they were successfully bidding for 2022.) Here is the USATT announcement on Facebook, on May 1, 2018. (Note that the link to the news item with the withdrawal notice is no longer valid.) The bid was resent, leading to the winning bid for 2021, awarded on April 22, 2019.

At this point, it’s fairly obvious that Sung was not involved in “bringing the first-ever World Championships to American soil.” So, when I emailed her on this, what did she say?

She admitted that she was not involved in what she called the “initial bidding process,” as she was hired after that. However, it wasn’t an “initial” bidding process; it was “the” bidding process that brought the Worlds to the US. She also wrote that she was “involved in negotiating the initial financial terms with the ITTF.” That's likely correct, but that’s not "bringing the first-ever World Championships to American soil.” That's the job of a CEO who inherited a World Championships.

Her primary claim, however, was that due to Covid, the 2021 Worlds were cancelled. I’m not sure if they were actually cancelled, but I know it was considered. If Sung helped convince them to go on with the Worlds, then say, "She convinced the ITTF to continue with the 2021 Worlds rather than cancel because of Covid," and kudos to that. But that’s not the historic “bringing the first-ever World Championships to American soil.”

Making it worse is that it implies Sung did it alone rather than credit the ones who put the bid together and made the presentation that won the bid before she appeared on the scene. It says she "helped elevate the sport of table tennis in the U.S." and then says that she, Virginia, did so by "bringing the first-ever World Championships to American soil.” This is a huge disservice to the ones who actually and historically worked so hard to actually bring “the first-ever World Championships to American soil.” Perhaps the article could have just said, "As CEO, she helped organize and run the first-ever World Championships on American soil"? You know, be accurate? Then I wouldn't be writing this segment.

I’m not going to go through the rest of the news item. It’s just not worth it. And it would involve getting info from USATT that we would have to trust is accurate. Remember when former board member Thomas Hu, an MBA, said he found possible problems in the USATT financials and asked to see the more detailed version? They blocked him from seeing them. (See my July 1, 2024 blog on this, the segment "USATT Board Member Denied Access to USATT Financials," right after the segment about the illegal third term of the previous chair of the board.)

I am so flipping tired of USATT issues that I'd rather talk about flipping...

Flipping Change of Direction
Here's the video (25 sec). However, all you need to do is watch the first shot, the first three seconds – but watch it twice. First watch only the kid receiving. Watch closely (and perhaps more than once) and see how his forehand flip starts out aiming to the receiver's wide backhand, and then, at the last second, switches to a crosscourt ace. How was it an ace? Now watch the receiver. This is subtle, but watch his left foot. As the receiver is about to flip, you can see the receiver start to move to his left to cover the flip, as he sees the racket aiming there. And so he is unable to recover in time to even make an attempt to cover the flip to the forehand.

Reisman vs. Hodges Clip from 1997 US Nationals Hardbat Final
Here's a clip of me playing Marty Reisman (71 sec) in the hardbat final of the 1997 US Nationals (he won) that made the rounds on Facebook and elsewhere this past month in the aftermath of the movie Marty Supreme. The rally is about 13 seconds long, followed by Marty talking about hardbat vs sponge. (Here's a photo from the match of me smashing.) I wrote about this match in my blog on January 5, 2026. As noted in the blog, my racket was stolen before the match and I had to borrow one that played like a brick. When you watch the video, listen to the high-pitched "ping" sound when I hit the ball – that's not the sound of a good racket. (Compare it to the sound Marty's racket makes.)

Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers and Tactiques de Tennis de Table pour Pongistes Penseurs
Yesterday someone put up this video (15:38) in French about my Tactics book. I don't know French, so have no idea what they're saying – I hope they liked it! (If you understand French and want to fill me in, email me.) The book comes in English and French (with a possible Chinese version coming soon). Here are the two versions:

Table Tennis Transfers
Here's the page. I have not looked into it closely myself, but it looks interesting. "Table Tennis Transfers is a global networking app and community that helps table tennis professionals connect, promote themselves, and find opportunities."

Coaching and News from All Over
Rather than post links to everything that happened since I last blogged on Jan. 12, here are links to some pages that had new content while I was gone that you might want to check.

The Scientific Case for Ping-Pong: Why Athletes — and You — Should Play More Table Tennis
Here's the article from the New York Times. (You might need a subscription.)

‘A Long Time Coming’: Table Tennis World Hails Marty Supreme-fueled Boom
Here's the article from The Guardian about the film's impact on table tennis.

Ensure Max Protein Nutrition Shake . . . and Lily Yip
Here's the ad (6 sec) starring US Table Tennis Hall of Famer Lily Yip!

Five-Table Pong
Here's the video (11 sec)!

Valentines Table for Two
Here's the table tennis cartoon! (Here's the non-Facebook version.)

Adam vs. Stina | No Mercy
Here's the video (9:25) from Adam Bobrow!

How Good Is a World Rank 17 Player Actually?
Here's the video 20:23) from Pongfinity!

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