April 6, 2026

Tip of the Week
Try to Stay Within Arm’s Length of the Table.

Spring Break Camp, Weekend Coaching, Multi-ball Backspin, and Placement
I coached Tue-Fri last week in our MDTTC Spring Break Camp, plus two group sessions on Sunday. I spent over half the sessions feeding multiball, and the rest either as a walk-around coach or practice partner. If there was a theme to the multiball, it was looping against backspin, both forehand and backhand. Most kids learn this pretty easily. The harder part is when I do drills that combine looping backspin and then looping or hitting against a topspin ball that roughly mimics a quick block of their loop. The key is the playing shoulder. You drop it against backspin. After doing that a lot, it’s somewhat natural to drop it at least a little against topspin – and the instant you do that, you’re going off the end. So, I did drills where I’d have them do the one-two of looping against backspin and then a quick topspin.

One other key thing was I didn’t want them to fall into the bad habit of just looping and hitting everything crosscourt. Once they could do this one-two drill pretty well, against backspin and then topspin, I had a new rule. Every shot had to go to one of the “three spots” (wide forehand, wide backhand, and “middle,” the opponent’s transition spot between forehand and backhand), but they couldn’t hit to the same spot twice in a row. So, they had three options for the first shot, and then the second shot had to go to one of the other two spots. This roughly mimics what you should mostly do in a match. There are times you do want to go twice in a row to the same spot in a match, but most players do that out of habit rather than tactical reasons.

When should you go to the same spot twice? You can often do this to the opponent’s middle over and over effectively. (I once coached a 1200-rated kid against a 1700 player. He was down 0-2, and every rally was a bang-bang fast topspin rally. I told him to attack every ball at the opponent’s elbow, and he relentlessly did just that, especially with his backhand – and he didn’t just win the next three games and the match, he completely dominated all three games.) Or, if you go to a wide corner – most often the forehand –  you can often catch the opponent off guard by going there again as he moves away and back into position. However, far too many players just go to the same spot twice because that’s what they do in practice

Upcoming Travel
I’ve got a busy travel schedule this Summer, including lots of table tennis and science fiction. Here’s the rundown. The BIG one is I’ll be spending 25 days sightseeing in eight northern European countries in August!

Class of 2026 Inductees & Lifetime Achievement Award
Here’s the announcement from the US Table Tennis Hall of Fame, with info on each recipient. The new Hall of Famers are Mark Hazinski, Juan Liu, and Noga Nir-Kistler, with Lily Yip getting the Lifetime Achievement Award. “The Class of 2026 will be formally honored at the U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame induction ceremony as part of the Patty and Si Wasserman Junior and Open Championships in October 2026 in New Jersey. Additional details will be announced soon.”

Major League Table Tennis

Butterfly Training Tips

Designing Points Around YOUR Strengths
Here’s the video (11:19) from Seth Pech on “How I Practice.”

The Service Training Method I Wish I Knew Earlier
Here’s the video (11:42) from Andreas Levenko.

New from the Table Tennis Teaching Channel

Fast Long Serves with Milo DeBoer
Here’s the video (3:01) from Acceleraq.

New from PingSunday
19 new videos this past week!

We Challenged World's Best Anti Spin Player!
Here’s the video (9:58) featuring Sabine Winter (world #9 from Germany), from Table Tennis Daily.

Membership Rating Features Enhanced on JustGo
Here’s the USATT news item.

The Philosophical Adventure of Ping-Pong
Here’s the article from El Mundo America.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from NCTTA

New from ITTF

Panda vs. Cat
Here’s the video (21 sec)!

World's Most Dangerous Racket
Here’s the video (15:17) from Pongfinity! That first “game” where they smack each other in the head with ping-pong balls – yikes!

Non-Table Tennis – New Short Story Sales
I sold two more short stories this past week. “Blueberry Pie” was my 200th original short story sale. (I’ve sold 257, but the other 57 were resales.) The two new sales were:

  • “The Eye in the Sky of the Blueberry Pie” (1000 words) to Third Flatiron’s Food for Thought anthology. When a planetary-sized blueberry pie comes plummeting down on Earth, scientists and religious folk debate who sent it while normal people prepare to get smooshed.
  • “Thirty-Five Genie Heads on a Wall” (8400 words) to Critical Blast’s Fantastic Journeys anthology. While being bullied at the beach, teenager Robbie is sucked into a Coke bottle. So begins his life as a genie, including classes at Genie University. His owner is a brutish king on a planet far from Earth – and the squirming, tormented heads of the king’s previous 35 genies are on display on a wall. (This was a resale.)

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