TableTennisCoaching.com - - Your worldwide center for table tennis coaching

January 12, 2026

Larry Hodges — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 13:09:57 +0000

January 12, 2026

Tip of the Week
Every Shot Sets Up the Next Shot.
(NOTE – while I’m away I’ll still put up a Tip of the Week each Monday. I wrote them up in advance.)

Flu and South America and Next Blog Feb. 16, Oh My!
I’ve been sick in bed all week with a fever, while going through boxes of Kleenex and coughing up an ocean. I thought it was a bad cold. Over the weekend it got worse, so I finally saw a doctor. They gave me a Covid/Flu test . . . and I have the flu. I have medicine now and should be okay in a day or so. So, for this week’s blog I’m just going to post my daily upcoming schedule in South America, where I’ll be, Jan. 15 – Feb. 12. Then I’m back to bed.

South America – Classic Table Tennis World Cup and Sightseeing in Five Countries
I’ll be in South America, Jan. 15-Feb. 12. Below is my complete schedule. I may visit some local table tennis clubs if I’m not too injured from the Classic tournament. (I’m still recovering from injuries to my side and knee, and shoulder is also a concern.) I’m on local tours in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Lima, and Machu Picchu, with links below to the tours. If you have suggestions on places to visit besides what’s on the tours (I especially like historical sites), or on local table tennis clubs to visit, feel free to email me. I’m staying at six different hotels.

I arranged all of this myself – no travel agents. I arranged flights through expedia.com, hotels through hotels.com (except for the tournament hotel for the Classic Table Tennis World Cup), and tours through viator.com. I had to get a visa for Brazil, but the other countries did not require it. I’ve been to 25 countries; this will make 30! (Note – I’ll likely be at the World Masters in South Korea in June, and may then visit a few other countries, and perhaps some travel in August as well.)

Countries I’ve been to (as of Feb. 12, 2026), in order: USA, Canada, Mexico, Taiwan (let’s not bicker), Japan, China, Bahamas, Portugal, Ireland, England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Vatican City, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Greece, Egypt, Panama, Ecuador, Jordan, Austria, Dominican Republic, Scotland, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, and Columbia.

The $50,000 Classic Table Tennis World Cup includes events for Hardbat, Sandpaper, and Wood, with numerous divisions: Open, Women, Under 25, Under 18, Over 40, Over 60, and Over 80. I’m seeded #2 in Over 60 Hardbat.

Jan. 15: Fly from Dulles Airport to Porto Alegre, Brazil, with two-hour stopover in Panama. Uber to Três Coroas (90km). Arrive early in Jan. 16.
Jan. 16-18: Practice, registration, and Opening Ceremonies for Classic Table Tennis World Cup
Jan. 19: Over 60 Sandpaper
Jan. 21: Over 60 Hardbat
Jan. 23: Over 60 Wood
Jan. 24-25: Local sightseeing in Três Coroas
Jan. 26: Fly to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Jan. 27: Rio de Janeiro tour (8 hours)
Jan. 28-30: Local sightseeing
Jan. 31: Fly to Buenos Aires, Argentina
Feb. 1: Buenos Aires tour (5 hours)
Feb. 2-3: Local sightseeing
Feb. 4: Montevideo, Uruguay tour (16 hours – including long round trip boat ride from Buenos Aires)
Feb. 5: Fly to Lima, Peru
Feb. 6: Lima tour (2.5 hours)
Feb. 7: Local sightseeing
Feb. 8: Fly to Cusco, Peru
Feb. 9: Machu Picchu tour (14 hours, including long bus ride)
Feb. 10: Local sightseeing (Cusco)
Feb. 11: Fly to Bogotá, Columbia, local sightseeing
Feb. 12: Fly back to US (Dulles Airport)

Coaching and News from All Over
While I’m gone for a month, here are links to pages you might want to check.

Mostly Non-Table Tennis – My Science Fiction Blog
Besides my weekly table tennis blog I also have a science fiction writing blog. I post there erratically, and hadn’t posted in a while. Recently I’ve put up three posts – here they are! Two are about my recent short story collections, the other about my short story writing system.

Amazingly Even Yet Still More Pings and Pongs – Now Available! My 25 best short stories sold over the last two years.
Cats and Bats – Now Available! Five stories featuring cats, five featuring baseball.
My Short Story Writing System. I recently sold my 250th short story. This is the “system” I use.

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Larry Hodges Mon, 01/12/2026 - 13:09

January 5, 2026

Larry Hodges — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 18:40:29 +0000

January 5, 2026

Tips of the Week
Since I’ve been a way for a while, here are my tips going back to Dec. 1. That way you can read all five of the "Coaching Yourself" tips together!

Marty Supreme
[NOTE - I've made some corrections/updates based on emails from John Olsen and Scott Gordon.]
What a great movie for table tennis, Marty Supreme! Even though table tennis actually made up at most 20 minutes of the 150 minute running time. The rest showcased numerous escapades of “Marty Mauser,” very loosely based on the real-life table tennis champion Marty Reisman and his autobiography, The Money Player. (Note that this autographed copy is selling for about $2,000! I have two copies, one signed.) The movie is getting both literary and popular acclaim.

Timothée Chalamet stars as Marty, the table tennis champion, hustler, and general scoundrel. But as noted, this was only loosely based on the real Marty Reisman. I knew Marty very well for many years, even visited him at his house in New York City once where he showed me his microscope collection. (He loved to find things to look under the microscope, often scooping up water from outside to see what microorganisms were in it. It was apparently a lifelong hobby.)

As I’ve blogged about previously, I got started in table tennis because of Marty. I was on my high school track team as a miler and went to the library to get a book on Track and Field. I just happened to look to my left, and there was The Money Player under Table Tennis. I’d played a little bit in basements in our neighborhood, and on the spur of the moment checked it out, and discovered USATT (then USTTA). Many years later I told Marty the story, and he said, “Great. Another life I’ve ruined.” Yep, that was Marty – always ready with a quip!

I was glad they did not mention the 1997 US Nationals Hardbat final, where I lost to Marty. (I was the defending two-time champion.) I am tired of pointing out that one of Marty’s minions apparently stole my racket just before the match, and I had to borrow one at the last minute, which played completely different! The racket was anonymously returned to me a few months later at the 1998 Eastern Open, which I ran. (I normally play with sponge, but do hardbat as well.)

The Marty in the movie was basically a real jerk. While some would think that of Marty due to his many battles with table tennis officials – many referees, umpires, tournament directors, and those who worked for USATT/USTTA hated him for causing them hassles – most found him incredibly entertaining. He was always the center of attention. He’d take every opportunity to do so – and that often meant major altercations with table tennis officials, which Marty loved to flamboyantly escalate. If you walked into a playing hall, he’d be the one surrounded by fans, while off in a corner quietly by himself, perhaps reading, might be Dick Miles, ten-time US Open Men’s Singles Champion and the greatest US player in history – but the exact opposite of Marty in personality. However, if you treated Marty well, he’d generally treat you well. I once wrote that if you treated Marty like a god (as some did), he’d treat you like one as well.

Marty was a narcissist, but in a relatively good way. Unlike certain modern leaders (no Larry, don’t go there here...), he wasn’t a malignant narcissist, which is very different. He liked being the center of attention, and often earned it. He was always ready with quips and loved to entertain. He was perhaps the most flamboyant top player in US history.

There are a lot of articles reviewing the movie – Google it. Here are a few of interest. I was interviewed and quoted repeatedly in the Rolling Stone and Smithsonian Magazine articles.

Meet the Real ‘Marty Supreme’ (Rolling Stone Magazine)
How Marty Reisman, the Real-Life Inspiration Behind ‘Marty Supreme,’ Revolutionized the Sport of Table Tennis (Smithsonian Magazine)
Behind the Scenes - Marty Supreme (12:07) from Matt Heister.
Meet Hollywood’s table tennis expert who coached Timothée Chalamet (Washington Post, featuring Diego Schaaf and Wei Wang)
The Real Life Inspiration for Marty Supreme - Table Tennis Star Marty Reisman (15:17) from Ty Hoff.

Now, on to the movie!

How can any serious table tennis player NOT see this movie? The critics are raving about it. It’s won and will continue to win numerous awards. Timothée Chalamet will almost for certain get nominated for an Oscar as Best Actor, and the movie will likely get nominated as well. It’s already won and been nominated for numerous awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor. It’s currently at 94% at Rotten Tomatoes. And it’s about Table Tennis! Go see it! It’s already made about $60 million (on a budget listed as $60-70 million), and will likely keep going up.

I didn’t take notes when I watched the movie, or when I reread Reisman’s book a few weeks ago. But the differences between the movie and the reality were rather striking. Here is a short list of major changes. The following has numerous minor spoilers.

The ball was put in by computer. This was because there was no way Timothée Chalamet could do the rallies needed, and they thought this would be better than trying to use a double. According to some from outside our sport, it seemed to work. To anyone experienced in real table tennis, it was obvious – the ball simply didn’t behave the way it should.
There were a lot of lobbing points. In reality, that’s rare in hardbat, where players in trouble chop, not lob.
Everything in the movie that made it rated R was made up. Marty did date a girl in South America for a few weeks, then decided he needed to focus on table tennis. He was married twice and had a daughter. The movie has him having an affair with a married woman (a famous film actress), then have a baby with another girlfriend, but that’s all made up for dramatic purposes. I’ve never heard anything about Marty ever cheating on his wives or any of the other sexual escapades in the movie.
The businessman married to the film actress above was made up, including every scene he or the actress was in. Throughout the movie Marty is trying to get this man to finance his trip to the Worlds. In reality, Marty got the US military to fly him there in return for doing exhibitions. The part about Marty stealing and trying to pawn the movie star’s necklace is made up.
Marty’s nemesis in the movie is the Japanese player Koto Endo, inspired by the real-life Hiroji Satoh. Satoh was the first top player to use sponge – but it was nothing like what we use now. It was 3/4 inch thick foam rubber, with no rubber on top as we do now. I didn’t think they showed that in the movie, but I checked a video later and saw that Endo’s racket indeed had thick sponge, perhaps 3/4 inches. Also, Satoh was small, seemingly unathletic, wore thick glasses, and looked more like an accountant than a sports star. The Endo in the movie was normal-sized, highly athletic, and didn’t have glasses. (He was played by Koto Kawaguchi, a professional Japanese player who is also deaf, and has won numerous Japanese and World titles for deaf players.) They had Endo play penhold, as Satoh did. It's extremely unlikely Marty missed so many of Satoh's serves, as show in the movie. The movie also didn't really explain well how big an equipment advantage sponge was. Here's the video Hiroji Satoh - The man who revolutionized table tennis, (4:12), which includes video of him. He doesn't look that good, but his sponge racket drove everyone nuts and gave him that huge equipment advantage.
The sequence of events in the movie is way off from reality. They have Marty losing to Koto Endo in the final of the British Open in 1952. He then struggles to get funding to go to the Worlds in Japan. When he gets there, he’s told he’s too late and can’t play in Worlds. But the businessman who sponsored him agreed to do so only if Marty would lose on purpose to Japan’s Koto Endo again in an exhibition. Marty does so, but then announces it was fixed and challenges Endo to a “real” match. Endo accepts, they play, Marty barely wins. None of this happened. In reality, Marty lost to Satoh (Endo) in the round of 32 at the Worlds, which were in Bombay, India, not Japan. (As shown in the movie, he and his opponent did play an exhibition point where they kicked the ball back and forth and did other trick shots, but it was the first point of the 1949 final between Marty and Viktor Barna, which Marty won from down 0-2 in games, his only British Open title. Satoh wasn't at the British Open any of those years. Here’s video from the movie showing the exhibition point.) Marty then traveled to Japan where he defeated Satoh in a close challenge match, the first non-Japanese player to beat him. (It was actually part of a USA vs Japan team match, with USA winning 3-2.) The movie shows them alternating attacking and chopping. In reality, Marty discovered early on that his normal attack didn’t work against Satoh, who effortlessly blocked them back with his sponge. Instead, Marty wins 21-18 in the third (two out of three to 21) by mostly chopping and carefully picking balls to smash. Doug Cartland coached Marty in the match.
Everything about the dog in the movie was made up, including the shootout. So was the falling through the floor in a bathtub. So were all the scenes where guns and shootouts took place. The scene where Marty uses a gun to force someone to give him the money he’s owed is made up. I can’t imagine Marty doing that!
Marty moving to a more expensive hotel and charging it to the English Table Tennis Association did happen. But in the movie he charges it to the ITTF. He was suspended for this, as accurately depicted in the movie. What isn’t shown is that fellow US players Dick Miles and Doug Cartland also did this and were also suspended.
They made Marty out to be a real jerk and scoundrel. While that’s not completely off, they rather exaggerated it. He did hustle people for money in table tennis, but most often his opponents knew he was a top player and played him for money – often with a spot – just for the honor of playing him and the chance of beating him with the spot. However, the scene where he hustles players at a bowling alley and they then chased after him really did happen.
They showed Marty training at Lawrences Table Tennis Club, which is accurate. But they show him training in a sleeveless undershirt. Marty was a dapper dresser – I doubt if he ever set foot in a club dressed like that!
In the movie, Béla Kletzki was both a rival and playing partner for Marty, including with the Harlem Globetrotters. But he seemed primarily based on Poland's Alex Ehrlich (3-time Men's Singles Runner-up at the Worlds), but also on four-time World Champion Richard Bergmann, and a top US player, Doug Cartland. Bergmann was the defending champion at the Worlds. Ehrlich was the Holocaust survivor (Auschwitz, saved when a German guard recognized him), who really did cover his body with honey to feed others (as shown in the movie), while Cartland was Marty’s primary traveling companion, practice partner, and Globetrotter partner. In the book, Cartland has a much bigger role as they spent many years traveling the world together doing exhibitions. Marty did make the semifinals of the Worlds in 1949 at age 19, losing to Bergmann. If not for sponge, he likely would have been a dominant player for many years to come, and might have won the Worlds.
The movie briefly covered Marty’s smuggling. In reality, this was a major source of his income in the 1950s. He often traveled about Southeast Asia doing exhibitions and smuggling, especially gold and women’s silk stockings (the latter often in England as well). Marty was given a special vest to wear under his clothes that allowed him to carry forty pounds of gold. Those hiring him made money because of the different exchange rates in different countries, and so paid Marty $1,000 to $2,000 each time – that’s $10,000 to $20,000 in modern money.
Marty really did tour for years with the Harlem Globetrotters, usually with Doug Cartland his partner. They did play with pots and pans, playing Mary Had a Little Lamb. (I'm told he also did this with Ehrlich.) But I don’t think they every played against a walrus! The movie shows Marty being embarrassed to tour with the Globetrotters, but it was the reverse - he enjoyed and was proud of it.
I believe Marty once told me about arguing for orange balls, as depicted in the movie.
In the early 1960s (ten years after the events of the movie), Marty did work for a few weeks at his uncle’s shoe store, the only “real” job he ever had, other than delivering newspapers as a kid. In the movie, the uncle blackmailed Marty if he stopped working for him. In reality, Marty was always up late playing at Lawrences, often to 4AM, and so was constantly late for work at 9AM. They mutually agreed to part, and that’s when Marty began running his own table tennis club for a living.
The cigarette trick that I think Marty did in the movie is for real. (Someone told me they don't remember seeing this in the movie - since I didn't take notes it's possible I was thinking of the following video, which I'd linked to in my previous blog.) Here’s video (75 seconds) of him doing it numerous times! There are two keys to this trick. First, you have to have a powerful and accurate smash, which few can do. Second, Marty explained that the real key was to bake the cigarettes in an oven until they are dry and brittle so they’d break when hit. But he still had to hit them! (I do a similar trick at my club all the time, but I use a water bottle balanced on the far edge of the table and knock it off, almost always on the first try – a bigger target than a cigarette.)

Weekend Coaching
I had a busy weekend, coaching six group sessions for ten hours. I spent a good portion of two sessions as a practice partner, where I mostly blocked. I’m still trying to get over the various injuries from recent play, in particular the muscle injury to my side, which is still a major problem. My knee and shoulder issues seem okay for now.

The focus on several of the sessions was on balance and on returning to ready position when blocking. Balance is one of the most under-rated aspects of table tennis. When you can’t get to a ball, most often it’s not because you’re slow – it’s because you were off balance from the previous shot and so got a slow start. Meanwhile, far too many players, when blocking in drills, return to a backhand or forehand position after each block (depending on which side they are blocking on) instead of a neutral position, as you would in a game. If you don’t do this in practice, you’ll have trouble doing it in a match. (I’ll likely do a Tip on this, though I might already have done so.)

We also had our annual party. I brought in numerous rackets for the kids to try out – hardbat, sandpaper, mini, oversized, etc. I also put together two “long courts,” where we put two table together as one long 18-foot table. For the net, we use a barrier between the tables, with a chair on each side to hold it up. I also brought out the mini-table.

US Open
It was in Las Vegas, Dec. 22-27, which seems like ancient history now. Here are complete results. I was initially entered in nine events. But due to the injury to my side, I dropped all but six in advance. But in my second match, I both badly aggravated the side injury and re-injured my knee. Hobbling about and adjusting for the injuries, I made it to the semifinals of Over 60 Hardbat Singles, but then had to default, as well as defaulting my other five events. Since I was mostly free after that and didn’t have many coaching duties, I spent much of the time in my room and at a local Panera’s writing a science fiction story about the World Table Tennis Champion (human) playing a teleporting alien in the final of the Galactic Olympics! (A lot more happens, including a big twist halfway through.)

2026 Classic Table Tennis World Cup
The 2026 Classic Table Tennis World Cup will be in Três Coroas, Brazil, Jan. 18-25, 2026, with various events for hardbat, sandpaper, and wood. (So, no sponge.) Lots of prize money! I’ll be competing in the Over 60 events in all three categories. (I just hope my ongoing injuries don’t hamper me too much...) I leave on Jan. 15. Afterwards I’m spending three weeks touring South America, returning Feb. 12. (I’ve been to 25 counties; the below will bring it to an even 30. I plan to bring my sponge racket as well, and may visit some local clubs at the various major cities. Sightseeing includes:

Três Coroas and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Montevideo, Uruguay
Lima, Cusco, and Machu Picchu, Peru
Bogotá, Columbia
Plus a two-hour stopover in Panama, which I’ve been to before

PongSpace and Major League Table Tennis Announce Resolution of Disputes
Here’s the press release. There’s been an ongoing disagreement and legal battle between the two over the rights to “Major League Table Tennis.” But they’ve reached a settlement.

USATT Ratings
They seem to have been down for about five days. (I emailed them about this on Friday at noon, no response yet.) This is likely due to the switchover from Simply Complete to JustGo. But they still have the links to Simply Complete on the Ratings Page, so people going there find it’s a bad link. I wish they’d either put in the correct link (assuming there is one) or put up a note explaining it’s down and why.

Table Tennis History Magazine January 2026
Here it is!

100 Years of Table Tennis in 100 Seconds
Here’s the video (1:53) from ITTF.

Coaching and News from All Over
Since I’ve been away for three weeks, rather than try to list every interesting article, here are links to some of the main news and coaching pages that have been active in that time, and you can pick and choose.

Pips-Slapping
Here’s the video (13 sec)!

Monica Supreme: The Table Tennis Champion
Here’s the video (5:10) from Friends!

This Racket Should Be Illegal...
Here’s the video (27:20) from Pongfinity!

Mostly Non-Table Tennis
I have two new short story collections out, and a new short story that you can read online. They are:

Cats and Bats: Ten stories – five featuring Cats, five featuring Baseball. “In Larry Hodges’s wonderfully unhinged world, a president’s pet saves the world, enhanced cats conquer humanity, and baseball players sell their souls for stardom, and mathematicians and a mummy take over baseball. Equal parts sci-fi, fantasy, satire, and sheer lunacy—these Five Cat and Five Baseball Stories will have you laughing, cringing, and wondering what on earth (or beyond) comes next.”
Amazingly Even Yet Still More Pings and Pongs: “Here are 25 more stories from the Insane Mind of Larry Hodges ... A rat in her cubicle hates her job - a million years from now ... Can Mad Molly get a cake to Paris before DC gets nuked? ... Who are those people screaming prayers in an alien’s head? ... An alien invasion from a cat’s point of view ... What if mathematicians completely took over baseball? ... Snake-like aliens arrive and give us one hour to vacate Earth ... A small, pathetic dragon is determined to back his gold ... Everyone in the world is suddenly turned into frogs ... After searching the galaxy for the Holy Grail, Galahad Returns ... A knight and his flying unicorn steed take on a dragon ... An autistic music-loving killer whale ghost haunts a cemetery ... The universe literally does revolve around this teenaged girl ... A paranoid hermit crab vows vengeance on the world ... The thoughts of an AI as it guides a nuclear bomb to a city ... A woman breaking glass ceiling in the field of world domination ... A human writer and an AI go head-to-head trying to sell a story ... And more!”
The Schrödinger's Cats Fight Back: This just came out in New Myths Magazine – you can read it online, about a ten minute read. Four cats rebel against man's inhumanity to cats, in particular their Schrödinger's Cat experiments, where the cat dies 50% of the time. The four are Schrödinger's Cat herself, Inky; the Cheshire Cat; Puss-in-Boots; and the ghost of Socks, former pet of the Clintons at the White House. The four (aided by Egyptian cat goddess Bastet) overcome scientists, the Secret Service, and the doggedly pursuing Pavlov's Dog as they invade the White House in their caper to extract revenge on humanity.

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Larry Hodges Mon, 01/05/2026 - 18:40

December 15, 2025

Larry Hodges — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 16:33:23 +0000

December 15, 2025

Tip of the Week
Coaching Yourself, Part 3 of 5: Serve Practice

Next Blog – January 5, 2026 – and the US Open
=>But Tips Will Go Up Every Monday
I’ll be gone the next few weeks. I’m off to the US Open Wednesday morning, and then Christmas in Sonoma, CA with my brother and family (near San Francisco). So, next blog will be Monday, Jan. 5. But the Tip of the Week will go up every Monday. For the five Mondays in December, I put together the five-part “Coaching Yourself” series. Part 3 went up today!

The US Open starts tomorrow, Dec. 16-21, Tue-Sun, six days, with 1,293 players. However, this year I’m not coaching as much, and I don’t play until the last three days, Fri-Sun. So, I’m flying out Wednesday morning. I was originally entered in nine events – all senior or hardbat events (plus the sandpaper event), but due to the injury to my side, I dropped all the sponge events, and so am only playing in three hardbat events – Open, Over 40, and Over 60 (I’m defending champion in the last two), and sandpaper singles. On all my forehand shots I have to cut my follow-through short or tear the side injury, plus I can’t rotate quickly to my left. The effects are worse with sponge. But I’ll likely aggravate the injury anyway. Alas. (You can follow the results in Omnipong – go to the very first entry at the top for US Open, and in a day or so, where it says “Closed” will change to “Results.”)

The Real Life Inspiration for Marty Supreme - Table Tennis Star Marty Reisman
Here’s the video (15:17) from former hardbat star and my long-time doubles partner Ty Hoff! Learn about the real Marty Reisman. Very nice video if you want to learn about the real Marty, who I knew well. One thing I learned from the video was that his interest in microscopy was from his childhood – somehow I’d always thought it was something he’d picked up as an adult. I was at his house once and he showed me a bunch of slides under one of his microscopes.

As to the video, yes, that’s me playing him in the 1997 final, from 12:50-13:03. He won – but someone, probably one of his minions, stole my racket just before the match, and I had to play with a borrowed racket that was completely different than mine and played like a brick. I was the defending two-time champion at the time, though it had been five years since they’d held the event. I’d sure like to replay that match with my racket...

Over the last ten days I’ve been interviewed twice about him, by Smithsonian Magazine and by Rolling Stones Magazine, with both articles coming out about the time the movie comes out on Dec. 25. I may add links here when they come out, or will put them in my Jan. 5 blog.

Weekend Coaching
I coached in three junior group sessions over the weekend. One recurring theme was playing down the line, and attacking the wide backhand. When you play to the wide forehand, many players automatically return crosscourt, which is easier – there’s the longer diagonal, plus it’s generally easier to rebound a ball back the way it came. But when you play from the wide forehand, the opponent has to cover the angle to their wide forehand, and this usually means they are wide open if you attack down the line. This was always one of my favorite shots, and I spent some time showing players how you can set up to go crosscourt, and at the last second rotate your shoulders back, and taking the ball just a little bit later, take it down the line.

I also watched for an hour the autistic junior program founded by Stanley Hsu, and run by him and Mu Du, with assistance from a number of others from our regular junior program. I plan to write an article about the program sometime early next year.

I came up with three table tennis jokes during the training sessions. Sorry, I can’t help it!

"Evolution will not be kind to that ping-pong ball." Me about a ball that randomly and trustingly rolled into a ball net.
"The best way to kill a high ball is to catch it and step on it."
"Gravity pulls the ball down, but what happens if you remove it? You get gravy." [If you don’t get it, think about it.]

And speaking of table tennis jokes, I came up with this...

Dogs and Table Tennis
How dogs play table tennis.

Border Collie: "I’m going to serve short to the forepaw. You’ll fake a return to my wide forepaw, but I know you’re faking, and as you hit the ball I’ll move over and play a backpaw to your middle, which should force a slightly weak return. I’ll fake a smash to your forehand, with head fake, but then go to your backhand. If you get that back, I’ll chop block short, drawing you in, and then . . . (continued on next page)"
Australian Shepherd: "Let me round up all the balls on the floor."
Pointer: "There’s the ball."
Poodle: "I look adorable in my table tennis outfit!"
Golden Retriever: "Life is great, ping-pong is great, and we’re going to have a great match!"
Dachshund: "What are they doing up there?"
Rottweiler: "I must break you."
Pit Bull: "I ate the ball."
Lab: "Oh boy oh boy oh boy, can we play? Yes, yes, let’s play!!! Can I serve? You can serve! Hurry up and serve!"
Old English Sheep Dog: "I don’t see a table or ball anywhere."
Greyhound: "I’m going to play all forehand shots."
British Bulldog: "I'm keeping the ball."
Saint Bernard: "Did I serve another wet ball? Sorry."
Cat: "Go away."

One-Step Program to USATT Success

Give President Trump the USATT Ping-Pong Peace Prize in return for one billion in funding, declaring table tennis the national sport, and turning the White House Ballroom into a full-time table tennis club.

Butterfly Training Tips

Arantxa Cossio Aceves – All Table Forehand Loop (64 sec)
Yu Di – Forehand Sequencing (75 sec)
FETHOMANIA 18 / Drill 3: Use the Movement to Turn Your Body (42 sec) with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman
FETHOMANIA 18 / Drill 2: The Key Against Heavy Backspin… (38 sec) with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman
FETHOMANIA 18 / Drill 1: Drive the Ball More Forward (38 sec) with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman

Footwork for Short Returns
Here’s the video (2:44) from Pongspace. “Yang Xiaoxin teaches you how to receive a short serve to the forehand side and what everybody usually gets wrong.”

Seth Pech vs Junior National Team member Ryan Lin Joola Teams Semi Finals Match
Here’s the video (10:04). Some really good analysis here.

New from PingSunday
29 new videos in past week!

New from PingSkills
Ask the Coach

Zhang Jike: The Rise, The Record, The Silence
Here’s the video (4:59) from Beyond the Podium.

Major League Table Tennis

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

USATT News

USA Table Tennis Launches New Membership Tiers Effective January 1, 2026
This is highly controversial. USATT announced this on their Facebook page, and let’s just say the responses have been very negative. It’s a big membership increase.
USA Table Tennis Announces Partnership with JustGo
2026 YOUTH NATIONAL TEAM SELECTION PROCEDURE RELEASED

ITTF News

Dinosaur Table Tennis Coasters
How can any serious player not have a set of these?

Wang Chuqin Builds the Perfect Table Tennis Player
Here’s the video (37 sec) featuring the world #1 from China!

Unreal Behind-the-Back Return
Here’s the video (11 sec) featuring Alberto Gil!

Adam Bobrow and Alex Lebrun
Here’s the video (18 sec) as Adam and the world #6 from France goof off.

Mostly Non-Table Tennis – “Cats and Bats”
My new short story collection is out! Cats and Bats has five stories that feature cats, and five that feature baseball. (There are a few passing mentions of table tennis.) All are in the science fiction & fantasy genre. From the back cover: “In Larry Hodges’s wonderfully unhinged world, a president’s pet saves the world, enhanced cats conquer humanity, baseball players sell their souls for stardom, and mathematicians and a mummy take over baseball. Equal parts sci-fi, fantasy, satire, and sheer lunacy—these five cat and five baseball stories will have you laughing, cringing, and wondering what on earth (or beyond) comes next.”

This is my 24th book – here are links to all of them. They make excellent Christmas presents! I have three upcoming ones, two on table tennis:

Jan. 1, 2026, “Amazingly Even Yet Still More Pings and Pongs,” the sixth book in my general short story collections, with 20 more of my short stories. (I use “Pings and Pongs” as a name for my general short story collections, even though they are not primarily table tennis.)
March, 2026: “Ping Pong Paddles Can’t Talk!” – children’s picture book that introduces kids to table tennis, with a boy playing in his first tournament and dealing with nerves, the tournament director, referee, a girl who is really good . . . and his talking ping-pong paddle!
April, 2026 – “Even Yet Still More Table Tennis Tips” – the Fifth in my “Tips” series, with another 150 tips.

Mostly Non-Table Tennis - Recent Sales and Publications – December 2025
Here’s my science fiction writing blog that went up today, which includes links to four new stories published recently, and info on three other sales.

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Larry Hodges Mon, 12/15/2025 - 16:33

December 8, 2025

Larry Hodges — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 18:28:51 +0000

December 8, 2025

Tip of the Week
Coaching Yourself, Part 2 of 5: In Practice.

North American Teams
I coached 83 matches in three days at the Teams (Fri-Sun, Nov. 28-30 at the National Harbor in Maryland). It was my 50th Teams in a row (excluding the cancelled 2020 due to Covid), starting in 1976 when Gerald Ford was president. I used to play in it, but now I only coach. However, coaching can get pretty physical – as noted in my (short) blog last week, I somehow hurt my neck from all the watching, cheering, and coaching. (It’s 90% better now.) My voice got rather hoarse, my arm was hurting from three days of clapping, and I could barely hold my head up.

I was happy and proud to see MDTTC 1 in the final of the Open division. The three junior stars, Ryan Lin, Stanley Hsu, Mu Du, all started out in my beginning group sessions at MDTTC when they were around seven years old. Now they are all 16-17, with ratings of 2520, 2506, and 2356. (Ryan and Stanley are #2 and #3 in Under 18, and both have been #1 for their age group and on the US National Cadet or Junior Teams. Mu Du has been on the US National Cadet Team and has been rated as high as 2430. He had the miracle comeback in the semifinals, coming back from down 0-2 to clinch the win!) While all three “graduated” from my sessions and went on to private sessions with other MDTTC coaches along with group sessions that I sometimes coached at, I did get to coach them in tournaments for years, including a number of international tournaments and ITTF camps in Austria, Jordan, Ecuador, and Dominican Republic.

Here's the article MLTT Dominates 2025 JOOLA Teams Final by Matt Hetherington.

Here are complete results. (Make sure to set the year to 2025. Right now it seems to automatically go to 2024.) There were 846 players on 203 teams on (if I remember correctly) 129 tables. We had 14 junior teams and some great coaches (Cheng Yinghua, Jack Huang, Wang Qingliang, Wang Cheng, Lidney Castro, Eduardo “Dudu” Tomoike, and me). Each morning Coach Wang Qingliang would assign who would coach which teams each round in an online Google Doc. However, since some teams finished early, we’d then rove out and coach other teams. I coached 23 matches on Friday from 8AM to 8PM; 32 matches on Saturday from 8AM to 11:30PM; and 28 matches on Sunday from 9AM to 9:30PM. That’s 83 matches in approximately 40 hours.

Here are some of the more interesting tactical issues that came up.

Against a chopper with long pips, loops came back with very heavy backspin. The winning tactic? Serve heavy backspin or push deep to the backhand pips, and attack the very light backspin pushed returns. If that came back low, start over.
After a kid was lobbed down in the first game, I had him smash only to the wide backhand and middle, taking out the opponent’s spinnier forehand lob and counter-attacks. If the opponent made three lobs in a row, I told him to fake smash and block to the middle, and attack the next ball. He won.
“Attack the three spots!!!” The three spots are wide forehand, wide backhand, and middle, which means roughly the playing elbow, midway between forehand and backhand. In almost all matches you want to focus on one of the following: Attack wide forehand and middle; attack wide backhand and middle; or attack all three. Sometimes you focus on one of the three, going to another spot to draw the player away and then coming back to the weak spot. Sometimes you want to just attack the middle relentlessly.
“With the same serving motion, serve either short to forehand or long to backhand.” This worked against a player who liked to forehand loop all deep balls, but now had to watch out for the short serve to the forehand, followed by deep returns to his backhand.
“Serve from the wide forehand side so as to get an angle into the forehand to force a forehand receive.”
“Stop pushing to the forehand!”
“Do you have confidence in your backhand loop?” “No.” “Then look for balls to attack with the forehand, and after the tournament spend the next six months focusing on backhand loops.”
“Do you have confidence in your backhand loop?” “Yes.” “Then use it!” (Most effective use of the backhand loop is often “four-ball attacks” when receiving: serve, pushed receive (usually either short or quick and deep to backhand), server pushes to receiver’s backhand, receiver backhand loops.
“If you lose focus, pick out something in the distance and just stare at it for five seconds. That will clear your mind. Then go play, and think only about simple tactics.”
“Keep the ball deep.” (This is especially important against players with non-inverted surfaces.)
“Coach, I can’t stop his serve and loop.” “Have you tried pushing short?” [Long silence.] “I didn’t think of that.”
“Do you remember that tomahawk serve that worked so well in the first game?” “Yes.” “Why did you stop using it?” [Long silence.] “I forgot about it.”

USATT Issues
Someone asked me why I haven’t been writing much about USATT issues recently. There’s a simple reason. I try not to write much about US politics in this table tennis blog, but the reality is the US is in the middle of perhaps the worst crisis since the Civil War as we go from the greatness of being leader of the free world (and so much more – I could write a book on this) to where we are now. And so it’s hard sometimes for me to worry too much about the petty doings in an organization with ten thousand members when we’re daily hit with what’s happening in this country of 340 million. If you want my views on this, then perhaps get a copy of my (non-table tennis) book, “Trump Tales: A Taunting.” (Parts of it are dated, since it’s from 2020.) But I have and will continue to blog about major USATT misadventures, such as the decision not to hold an election last year for Club Rep (so it’s now another appointed board position for a loyalist), the illegal third term for the previous chair, rules and bylaw violations, cronyism, and more.

Marty Supreme
The first reviews are in – and it’s getting rave reviews. The movie is based on the life of Marty Reisman, who died in 2012. Though much of it is fictionalized (such as renaming Marty Reisman, the main events I believe are historically correct as (I think) it covers the events of the 1952 World Championships, when Hiroji Satoh becomes the first sponge champion and ending the hardbat era, leading to Marty’s lifelong war with sponge surfaces. I knew the flamboyant Marty very well. A few days ago I was interviewed by a reporter from Smithsonian Magazine for an article on Marty that should come out around the time of the movie, which comes out Dec. 25. I gave him lots of first-hand stories. Timothée Chalamet, who stars as Marty, is getting great acclaim, and was just nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Actor. He will almost for certain be nominated for an Oscar. The movie also was nominated for Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and for Best Screenplay.

It's Almost Christmas Time – Last Chance to Buy My Books!!!
Here they are, both table tennis and science fiction.

Win Everything by Wanting Nothing
Here’s the video (9:12) from Andreas Levenko. A must-watch - but there’s a 60-sec commercial for something at the start.

5 Ways to Implement Deliberate Practice for Achieving High Performance in Table Tennis
Here’s the article by Dr. Alan Chu, PhD, CMPC.

Butterfly Training Tips (These are from the past week.)

Anav Gupta – Backhand Looping from Topspin (72 sec)
Anav Gupta – Backhand, Middle, Backhand, Wide Forehand (71 sec)
Anagha Kasichainula – Forehand Looping the Flip (43 sec)
Kou Lei – Chop Sequence Training (89 sec)
FETHOMANIA 17 / Drill 4: You Might Be a Little Late (51 sec), with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman
FETHOMANIA 17 / Drill 5: Bend Your Left Leg More (40 sec), with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman
FETHOMANIA 17 / Drill 6: Use Your Wrist for Extra Lift (53 sec), with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman

New from PongSpace

Footwork 101 (2:01)
How to Attack After Slicing (1:49)
How to Handle Spinny Loops After Slicing (1:46)

Revolutionary Short Pimple Block
Here’s the video (3:12) from Pingispågarna.

Training session between Quadri Aruna & Lim Jonghoon
Here’s the video (56:04) from Tony’s Table Tennis Talk. Quadri Aruna is world #27 from Nigeria; Lim Jonghoon is world #77 from Korea.

New from PingSunday
37 videos in past week!

New from PingSkills
Ask the Coach

Major League Table Tennis

New from NCTTA

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

USATT News

ITTF News (I’m going back to Nov. 24. Skip ahead if not interested.)

Stay in Your Path
Here’s the video (25 sec) from Aga Pingpong!

Cricket Wireless Commercial 2025 Ping Pong
Here’s the commercial (71 sec).

Pokemon Ping-Ping
Here’s the video (29 sec)!

Wildest Racket Throws in Table Tennis History
Here’s the video (9:09)!

Buffalo Pong?
Here’s the picture!

My New T-Rex Hat and Shirt
Here they are!

Flying to France for a Big Table Tennis Event!
Here’s the video (12:04) from Adam Bobrow!

Most Viral Ping Pong Clips On The Internet
Here’s the video (17:03) from Pongfinity!

Non-Table Tennis – Recent Science Fiction & Fantasy Publications and Sales

“The Time and Place of the Invasion” was published in Black Cat Weekly on Nov. 9. It’s a dark and humorous story that takes place on June 4, 1944, a few days before the Normandy invasion. Two German physicists, Dr. Werner Heisenberg and Dr. Erwin Schrödinger, are summoned by Hitler. One of them knows the time of the invasion, the other the place of the invasion, and Hitler demands they tell him both. However, as the physicists explain to him, if he were to know the time and the place at the same time, very bad things will happen. (It’s a play on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.)
“The Crab and the Cambrian Ghost” was published on Nov. 28 in Murderfish: An Aquatic Anthology from Wonderbird Press. A paranoid hermit crab believes the world is out to get him and vows vengeance – and then he inadvertently frees a ghostly nautilus. (Spoiler – it’s a genie.) All heck breaks loose!
“Three Wishes of a Dead Man . . . Served Hot” came out Nov. 12 in Ancestral Recall #4 from Ahoy Comics (here it is at Amazon). An aging physicist, now on his deathbed, had once struggled to solve the secrets of the universe, with help from a genie – but others kept publishing first. Now he’s out for revenge.
“Trump Administration Job Application” sold on Nov. 2 to the More Alternative Liberties anthology from B-Cubed Press, which should come out early next year.
“The Red Patrol” sold to Black Cat Weekly on Dec. 6. Two army patrols battle on a checkerboard as they try to figure out the rules of the battlefield and contemplate the futility of it all, and wonder why there are voices and giant, ugly hands coming out of the sky.

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Larry Hodges Mon, 12/08/2025 - 18:28

December 1, 2025

Larry Hodges — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 14:27:30 +0000

December 1, 2025

Tip of the Week
Coaching Yourself, Part 1 of 5: At Home.

Alas, after coaching 83 matches in three days at the North American Teams, I’ve somehow injured my neck – probably from yelling and cheering for our players. It started bothering me late on Day 2 (Saturday), and got progressively worse on Sunday to the point where I could barely hold my head up straight while coaching. I have the same problem trying to type on my computer. So, no blog this week – I’m probably going to spend the next few days in bed reading with my head propped up on a pillow. (But the Tip is up – I wrote it in advance.) I might have to get a neck brace – not sure yet. There’s a specific spot on it that’s injured, but I’m not sure if it’s muscle, tendon, or what. I’m not even sure if I can drive safely right now. (For the record, rounding to nearest half hour, I coached 23 matches on Friday from 8AM to 8PM; 32 matches on Saturday from 8AM to 11:30PM; and 28 matches on Sunday from 9AM to 9:30PM. That’s 83 matches in approximately 40 hours.)

Larry Hodges Mon, 12/01/2025 - 14:27

November 24, 2025

Larry Hodges — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 17:42:09 +0000

November 24, 2025

Tips of the Week

November 10, 2025 - The Chewing Gum Theory of Footwork.
November 17, 2025 - Two Simple Ways to Approach Tactics.
November 24, 2025 - Do You Want to Be a Smart Table Tennis Player?

Amity Team Cup in Nanjing, China
I returned last week from nine days in China where I played on the US Over 60 team in the Amity Team Cup in Nanjing. We came in fourth place! Alas, my flight to China was a disaster - see below. But I flew in to Shanghai, spent a day there, and then we had a bus to take us to Nanjing four the tournament on Nov. 14-15.

Let me start by thanking sponsors Word 4 Asia, which helps nonprofits organizations in China) and Amity Foundation (more on them below). Also a big thanks to those who helped us along the way, in particular (with apologies to any missed) Li-Ping Martinez, Han Li, Barbara Hess, Glenda Wilson, Summer Zhang, and Pastor Gene Wood. And now, to the tournament!

The format was five players in each team match, including at least one woman. Then each player played one match. The two women always played the third match. The other four were put in whatever position the team captains wanted.

Alas, as noted previously, I've been battling injuries. While my shoulder and knee were mostly okay, the injury to my side, despite six weeks of rest and rehab, was no better, making play difficult, and of course I made it worse. (I've already blown my sponge and hardbat ratings playing injured six weeks earlier at the World Senior Games.) Specifically, I couldn't loop with power, and couldn't rotate my upper body quickly. This latter especially affected me in rallies where I had to rotate to play backhand. Since we had six on the team, they rested me a couple of times. I ended up playing four matches, winning three. (We won the tie where I lost, fortunately.) Here is the Over 60 Team with our medals, L-R: Pastor Gene Wood (who helped with arrangements), and players Lily Yip (NJ, undefeated here for two years in a row), Dave Wilson (CO, player/captain), Larry Hodges (MD), Ming Liu (MD), Li Yuxiang (NY), and Xu Xia (NY).

We also had a "Youth" team. That's in quotes because it was for players ages 18 to 45 - so some pretty old youth! They finished third. Here is the Youth Team with their medals, L-R: Austin Preiss (CO), Alex Averin (NJ), Nick Del Russo (FL), Pen-Pen Chen (NY), and Brandon Gardner (TX).

After the tournament, we had three days of banquets and friendship matches. I attempted to take part, but after two games in the first one, I had to stop due to the side injury. One of the interesting ones was with a local sports school, which had a table tennis team. While our players took on their junior squad (teenagers around the 2500 level, including one who was about 12), I watched their training session for younger kids, about 30 ages roughly 10-12. I'm pretty sure every one of them was better than 2000 level, and the better ones looked to be 2200-2300.

On the day after the tournament they took us on a tour of Amity Printing. (Here's the Wikipedia page.) They are apparently the largest printer of bibles in the world. The factory is HUGE - 85,000 square meters (that's 21 acres or 15 NFL football fields). I didn't think to ask how many bibles they print each year, but according to Wikipedia they've published over 100 million since opening in 1988. They print them in 280 languages. They are a subsidiary of Amity Foundation, whose mission is "extending services to those who were marginalized and considered “no good”; people who had been ejected from all other agencies or were deemed "not amenable" for help."

I'd planned some sightseeing on the first day after I arrived, but because I arrived a day late, that didn't happen. However, Ming Liu took some of us for a car tour of Shanghai, including some of the tallest buildings in the world, and we walked through some of the city - here I am at Shanghai Harbor (photo by Lily Yip). On the last day I managed some sightseeing in Shanghai, at the ITTF Museum (see visual tour) and the Shanghai Natural History Museum. Since I've met a large proportion of the people honored there, it was rather interesting. A curator started to show me some of the exhibits and players in English, and was astonished that I knew about all of them.

And now we get to my flight to Shanghai at the start, which was . . . how do I put this . . . a disaster? Here's what happened. I took careful notes. [Skip ahead if you don't want to hear my latest travel tribulations.)

I was told to come to the airport three hours before flight time. So, I left my house at 2AM and arrived at Reagan National Airport a little before 3AM on Monday, Nov. 10 for my 6AM flight to Detroit. However, it turns out the Delta desk didn't open until 4AM, so I had to sit around for an hour.
My 6AM flight from Reagan National Airport in DC to Detroit was delayed 75 minutes. (On a side note, they tried to convince me to check in my carry-on bag, but I insisted on keeping it. If I had given in, I wouldn't have had that when I needed it in Detroit.)
After arriving in Detroit, I essentially sprinted through the airport, and made my flight to Shanghai just minutes before they closed the gate. And so began the 16-hour flight to China...
...until two and a half hours into the flight, when a door near the front began shaking violently. The pilot turned the plane around and returned to Detroit.
Delta automatically rebooked all passengers on a 7AM flight the next morning (Tuesday). They also gave us a link for a free hotel that night and $12 food coupon. I immediately booked the hotel, got an email confirmation that the reservation was confirmed. Then I spent the next hour checking on my laptop to see if there was an earlier flight I could take to China. (There wasn't.) While I was doing this, I noticed that the roughly 300 people on the flight were all lining up at the Delta desk. I should have wondered about this, but I was too busy trying to find another flight. I finally checked my email and discovered an email canceling my hotel reservation, which came 13 minutes after the email confirming it. Turns out everyone got that, and THAT's why everyone was in line . . . except me. So I got in one of the very long lines and waited.
And waited. And waited. And waited.
After nearly an hour, I reached the front of the line. As I was next in line, the Delta rep said, "Sorry, I have to leave. Move to the next line. And she left!
I had no choice but to move to another line. So, I stood in line for another 15 minutes until I was next in line. And then had to wait as the two people (together) ahead of me were with the agent for over 30 minutes. The other lines continued to move, and one of them finally emptied out as the people ahead of me continued talking to the agent. So I moved to that Delta agent. At this point, out of 300 passengers, I was absolutely the last one to be helped.
As I got there, I checked my email - and I'd just received a reconfirmation from the hotel that I was confirmed there after all. So that hour and 45 minutes in line was wasted.
I went to the shuttle area and called the hotel. They said the hotel shuttle had already left for the airport and would be there within five minutes. Since temperatures were in the range of 60 degrees in Maryland and Shanghai, I only had a light jacket in the 26 degrees. The shuttle didn't come for 27 minutes as I shivered away.
The TV at the hotel didn't work.
The following morning all went well, and 30 hours after leaving my house, I finally got on the flight to Shanghai. Yay! Got a lot of reading and writing done on the flight, including several Tips of the Week, and a science fiction short story about the travel tribulations of two robots trying to get to Proxima Centauri . . . gee, what inspired that?

Table Tennis Doubles for Champions . . . in French!
Table Tennis Doubles for Champions is now in French! David Salomez has or is now translating three of my table tennis books into French. They are:

Tactiques et Techniques de double en Tennis de Table (Table Tennis Doubles for Champions)
Tactiques de Tennis de Table pour Pongistes Penseurs (Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers)
First Galactic Table Tennis Championships - coming soon!

He also put together Psychologie, Mental et Tennis de Table, which is a French translation of my articles on sports psychology. At some point I should put together the English version!!!

It's Almost Christmas Time - Have You Bought Someone My Books?
Or you can buy them for yourself!

2025 Hall of Fame Dinner
It was held on Nov. 6, at the Los Angeles Table Tennis Association. I've been to every one of them since 2009, when I started doing their program booklets. So I flew out that morning, spent the day sightseeing (mostly the Hollywood Museum, since I'd visited all the sites before), then Ubered out to the dinner. Each year the US Table Tennis Hall of Fame honors both new inductees and a Lifetime Achievement Award Winner. This year the honorees were Betty Henry Link, David Del Vecchio, and Stellan Bengtsson, with Connie Sweeris getting the Lifetime Award. (Stellan was actually inducted last year, but couldn't attend and so was honored this year.)

North American Teams
The JOOLA North American Teams are this weekend, Nov. 28-30 (Fri-Sun)! As of today, there are 845 players on 204 teams registered. My club, MDTTC, has 14 junior teams and seven coaches. I first competed in the Teams my first year, in 1976 (then in Detroit). This will be my 50th consecutive year at the Teams, other than 2020 when it was cancelled due to Covid. I'll write about it next week.

An 80-year-old Champion Athlete Says Playing Ping Pong Keeps Her Mind Sharp
Here's the article from Business Insider, featuring Carol Klenfner. "I'm currently living the best chapter of my life."

The Dirty Trick That Won a World Title
Here's the video (4:21) about the impact of fingerspin serves in 1936.

Facing the World's Fastest Serve
Here's the video (27 sec)!

Ping-Pong on a Picnic Table on a Hill
Here's the video (8 sec)!

Ed Sheeran versus Fan Zhendong
Here’s the video (10 sec) – some strange rackets!

Smells Like the Tears of My Table Tennis Opponents
Here's where you can buy this strange candle - the perfect Xmas gift for a table tennis player! (Right?)

"Without a Paddle"
Here's the video playlist. It's nine parts, totaling about 20 min, but they automatically play continuously. "Rex and Noah are participating in a table tennis tournament" is the description, but there's a bunch more going on.

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Larry Hodges Mon, 11/24/2025 - 17:42

November 3, 2025

Larry Hodges — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 18:36:41 +0000

November 3, 2025

NEXT BLOG – Monday, Nov. 24
I’ll be out of town the next few weeks with trips to LA and Nanjing, China. See “Traveling” segment below. But the Tips of the Week will still go up each Monday.

Tip of the Week
Learn to Defend on Receive.

Weekend Coaching
Some of you may have heard about the 6-7 thing that’s the latest craze among kids. In honor of that, in the three junior group sessions over the weekend I challenged players to get 67 shots in a row and called it out when they did. In multiball, I always yell, “Ten more seconds” near the end of each player’s turn (usually 70 sec to 2 min), but this time it was always, “Six or seven more seconds!” And I managed to find every possible way to work it in.

We also did a lot of multiball “target practice.” Often I put my water bottle on the table, somewhat deep in a corner, and challenge players to hit it while doing footwork drills. This weekend I brought out one of our ball boxes, which are plastic and about a foot across. Then I challenged the players to knock it off the table. It usually takes a number of hits to do so. When a player’s turn ended and the box was still on the table, the next player took over, and we continued until someone knocked it off. If I had three players, then I’d have one do ball pick up while the other two alternated, such as each hitting three forehands (from backhand, middle, forehand), and then rotating about as the other player did three shots, until they knocked it off. Drills like this really get the kids into it, and it really develops their footwork, strokes, and accuracy.

Christmas Shopping – Table Tennis Novels
Last week I listed my table tennis books as possible Christmas presents, as well as others. Here’s where you can find all of my books, both table tennis and science fiction. But perhaps you are interested in a table tennis novel? Here’s a listing!

The Spirit of Pong by Larry Hodges - Fantasy Table Tennis Novel. Andy “Shoes” Blue wants to be a table tennis champion, but he’s just another wannabe American. And so he goes to China to learn the secrets of table tennis. He is trained by the mysterious Coach Wang, and begins an odyssey where he learns the secrets of table tennis from the spirits of Ichiro Ogimura (who helped spawn China’s greatness), Rong Guotuan (China’s first world champion in 1959, whose tragic story Andy must relive), and others, and must face the mysterious “Dragon.” Can he overcome treachery and learn the final secret of table tennis in time to defeat his ultimate nemesis? 100 pages.
First Galactic Table Tennis Championships by Larry Hodges – Science Fiction Novelette. Li Yi is a member of the Chinese National Table Tennis Team and the best woman in the world. She has trained long hours since she was a child. But now she faces her biggest challenge – aliens! Table tennis has spread to the galaxy and alien players now dominate the sport. The best are the giraffe-like Ith, with their dominating champion Egrayu. But Earth isn't part of it, not since the cowboy Americans colonized a moon in the Ith home system, which led to a blockade of Earth. The Chinese hope to reopen trade with the galaxy by using "Ping-Pong Diplomacy" – by running the first Galactic Table Tennis Championships in Beijing. Li, her teammates, and the American champion Danny See – a literal cowboy – play aliens of all shapes and sizes, including the seemingly unbeatable Egrayu, as they battle for the biggest cash prize in table tennis history. But Li is drawn into a corrupt conspiracy that will shake the very foundations of honor and sportsmanship. Plus, there's that problem with the Chinese dumplings… 42 pages.
Campaign 2100: Game of Scorpions by Larry Hodges – this is my best science fiction novel, and while it’s not really a table tennis novel, one of the four main characters is a championships table tennis player, and there are a number of table tennis scenes. Here’s my blog about those table tennis scenes.
Underspin, by E. Y. Zhao, 2025. Here’s my review.
Ping, by Lisa Lucas & Steve Landsberg, 2025.
Kate's Progress: An Inspiring Table Tennis Story, by Graham Frankel, 2021.
The Ping of the Seas, by Ken Robbins, 2019.
The Mystery of the Lost Racket, by Enzo Pettinelli, 2013 (children’s ebook).
Hank Zipzer: My Secret Life as a Ping-Pong Wizard, by Henry Winkler & Lin Oliver, 2005 (children's book – and yes, co-authored by “Fonzi”!)
Ping Pong: A Play About American College Life, by H.C. Kim, 2001.
The Mighty Walzer, by Howard Jacobson, 1999.
Forrest Gump, by Winston Groom, 1986 – the movie was based on this.
Ping Pong: A Play, by Arthur Adamov, 1955.

Traveling - Hall of Fame Induction Dinner, Amity Cup, North American Teams
I’m going to be incredibly busy the next three months, including three trips in November. (So no blog the next two weeks.)

Nov. 6-7 – I fly out to Los Angeles early on Thursday morning, spend the day sightseeing in LA, in particular the Hollywood Museum. (In 2020, after the US Olympic Trials in nearby Santa Monica, I spent a week sightseeing in LA, and saw all the major sites – but the Hollywood Museum hadn’t opened yet.) Then I’ll attend the US Table Tennis Hall of Fame Induction Dinner that night (6-9PM) at the LA Table Tennis Club in El Monte, CA. Those being honored are Betty Henry Link, David Del Vecchio, Stellan Bengtsson, and Connie Sweeris (Lifetime Achievement Award). I fly back the following morning, returning Friday night, just in time to coach on Saturday and Sunday. And then, on Monday...
Nov. 10-19 – On Monday, Nov. 10, I fly to Shanghai, China, two days later a train to Nanjing, for the Amity Team Cup on Nov. 14-15. I’ll be playing on the US Over 60 Team. There are a number of other festivities, including various friendship exhibition matches. I’ll also do some sightseeing in Shanghai and Nanjing, including a visit to the ITTF Hall of Fame in Shanghai.
Nov. 28-30 – Coaching at the North American Teams at the National Harbor in Maryland. I believe we’ll have six or seven coaches coaching 14 junior teams.
Dec. 17-22 – I’ll be competing in various senior and hardbat events at the US Open in Las Vegas, NV, and probably coaching as well. I’ve been to every US Open and Nationals since 1985.
Dec. 22-27 – Christmas with family in Sonoma, CA (near San Francisco).
Jan. 15 - Feb. 12, 2026 – I’ll be competing in the Classic Table Tennis World Cup in Três Coroas City, Brazil, Jan. 19-25, with big prize money for hardbat, sandpaper, and woodbat events. Afterwards I’ll be sightseeing Jan. 26-Feb. 12, primarily in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Lima, Peru; Cusco, Peru (including Machu Picchu); and Bogotá, Columbia. I’ve been to 24 countries; after this it’ll be 28, plus all 50 US states!
Feb. 13 – Dec. 31, 2026 – Sleep.

Injury Roll Call
Alas, just as at the recent Senior Table Tennis World Championships, I’ll be competing while injured in the events above. Most are in the recovering stage, but as my doctor pointed out, they need more time to heal, and they won’t get that until next February. This leads to two problems. First, I have naturally stiff muscles – that’s genetics. All the stretching in the world would only get me up to perhaps normal flexibility, and I don’t have time for that. I do some stretching each day which makes me as flexible as a rock. Second, I’m 65 and still try to train and play like I’m 20. I play an athletic style, with an all-out attacking forehand, and all that movement leads to injuries. Anyways, on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 = 100% healthy; 2-3 bothersome; 4-6 real problems; 7-9 can barely play; and 10 incapacitated), here’s a listing - but these numbers will likely go up each time I play a competitive match!

Right side: 7. Makes it impossible to loop with power and difficult to rotate to my backhand.
Right shoulder (back): 6. Makes forehand loops difficult.
Right shoulder (front): 5. Makes aggressive backhands difficult. This injury was caused from adjusting my stroke due to back shoulder injury.
Right knee: 5. Makes it difficult to move quickly to my right.
Right foot: 3. Compression socks mostly fixes this.
Neck: 2. This comes and goes.
Right arm: 2. Arm brace fixes this problem.
Left Achilles tendon: 2. If it were on the right it would be a bigger problem.

Major League Table Tennis

New from MH Table Tennis

Butterfly Training Tips

Jonathan Pino – Falkenburg Variation (69 sec)
Kou Lei – Combo Play BH Push to Counter Attack (67 sec)
Maybelline Bravo – Serve Push Loop Combo (57 sec)
Anagha Kasichainula – Backhand Looping the Flip (61 sec)
FETHOMANIA 14 / Drill 4: Right Shoulder Rotation Into the Table (49 sec)
FETHOMANIA 15 / Drill 1: Always Move Your Legs First (51 sec)

3 Ways to Hold a Table Tennis Racket (Full Grip Guide)
Here’s the video (11:29) from Andreas Levenko.

3 Mistakes That Kill Your Backspin Serve
Here’s the video (3:31) from Ti Long.

Practicing Consistency for Matches
Here’s the video (4:22) with Damien Provost from PongSpace.

Dimitrij Ovtcharov RUTHLESS Table Tennis Training!
Here’s the video (5:53) from Table Tennis Daily.

When Winning Matters More Than Family
Here’s the video (4:26) from Taco Backhand, featuring Felix (world #7) and Alexis Lebrun (world #13) of France.

New from TT11TV

The First Butterfly Training Camp in Ecuador Has Successfully Concluded
Here’s the article by Geovanny Coello.

Puerto Rico Shines At The 2025 ITTF Pan-American Championships
Here’s the article by Edgardo Vazquez.

Sabine WINTER - The Queen of Anti-Top Playing Style
Here’s the video (7:28) from PingSunday.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from ITTF

Custom Table Tennis Lover Themed Pixar Style Portrait Desktop Figurine
Here’s where you can have one made (from your own photo) for $32!

Table Tennis Christmas Tree Ornaments
Here’s what comes up in Amazon.

The Table Tennis Machine
Here’s the video (46 sec)!

Five-Level Ping-Pong Challenge
Here’s the video (60 sec) from Pongfinity!

How Good is a World Rank 3 Player Actually?
Here’s the video (20:48) from Pongfinity! “World number three Hugo Calderano faces ten table tennis challenges. Pongfinity tests the pro's skills in creative trick shots and speed tests. Will they discover any weaknesses in this highly-decorated athlete's game?”

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Larry Hodges Mon, 11/03/2025 - 18:36

October 27, 2025

Larry Hodges — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 18:29:29 +0000

October 27, 2025

Tip of the Week
Death of the Kill.

Weekend Coaching
In one of our weekend junior group sessions, we had two new junior players, about 9 and 11 years old. It was their first time to a table tennis club. Two things stood out from them. First, they both had surprisingly good strokes, both forehand and backhand, and they moved well. (I think one of them said their father had coached them, and they’d seen videos.) But the problem was they both were using what were essentially store-bought toy sponge rackets. The rackets and sponge were dead, making it difficult to do advanced shots, especially in a fast rally. The older one borrowed someone else’s racket and did well with it. The other stayed with his slow one, for now. He did pretty well in drills but not in games at the end of the session. I’m pretty sure he’ll be switching to a better sponge soon.

So, what type of racket should beginning to intermediate players use? There was a huge paradigm switch a few decades ago. Back then, players were developed as hitters who then learned how to loop. They’d generally loop against backspin, but then either hit or loop once in the rally. But the problem was that once you develop as a hitter, looping is less natural later on. Most coaches can look at a player and quickly tell if he started out as a hitter (like me) or early on began to loop. But the basic idea was that players learned to hit first, and then extended the swing and changed the contact so that it became a loop.

The paradigm switch was for players to go to advanced and thicker sponge as early as possible. Before, it was advised to use slower, thinner sponge while developing your strokes, both hitting and looping. But with such sponge, looping was more difficult, and so players couldn’t really do them effectively in match situations, and so often played more hitting. When they did loop in a rally, it was often forced and awkward, or from well off the table. In contrast, those who switched to advanced equipment early on found looping easier and more natural, and so often pulled ahead of those who waited longer before going to the advanced equipment.

It’s not a firm rule, and many players who used slower sponges in their formative years still became top players. But in general, in the modern game, it’s important to go to more advanced sponge as soon as the basic shots are somewhat developed. For a player who plays regularly and receives coaching, especially a junior player, this generally means by the end of their first year, and sometimes as early as six months.

A key here is that if you are not receiving coaching, and go to advanced sponges, you might not develop your strokes properly. Slower sponges do force better technique since they have less margin for error (less topspin, more swing needed), and so if you aren’t receiving regular coaching, then you might hold back a little longer before going to advanced surfaces.

Holiday Shopping – Buy My Books!
Christmas, Hanukkah, and other holidays are coming up – time to buy my table tennis books! (But feel free to buy my science fiction ones as well.) Here’s a listing with descriptions of each. Below are direct links to the table tennis books. (Next week I will likely do a listing of table tennis novels, both mine and others.)

Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers - best seller
Table Tennis Doubles for Champions
Table Tennis Tips
More Table Tennis Tips
Still More Table Tennis Tips
Yet Still More Table Tennis Tips (fourth volume in the set)
Table Tennis Tales & Techniques
Professional Table Tennis Coaches Handbook
Psychologie, Mental et Tennis de Table (only in French, a collection of sports psychology tips I’ve written)
The Spirit of Pong - fantasy table tennis novel - American travels to China to train with the spirits (ghosts!) of past champions.
First Galactic Table Tennis Championships - science fiction table tennis novelette - aliens from around the galaxy compete in Beijing!

You can also buy a few from 5-time US Men’s Singles Champion Dan Seemiller!

Smash! Moments, Memories, and Tips (color)
Smash! Moments, Memories, and Tips (black & white)
Winning Table Tennis: Skills, Drills, and Strategies
Revelations of a Ping-Pong Champion
You can also get autographed copies directly from him – see the Dan Seemiller Books page.

Or you can buy one of Tim Boggan’s 23 volumes of History of US Table Tennis!

2025 U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame Dinner to Honor Betty Henry, David Del Vecchio, Connie Sweeris, and Stellan Bengtsson
Here’s the USATT news item. I will be there! (I fly to LA on Thursday morning on Nov. 6, spend a few hours at the Hollywood Museum, attend the HOF Dinner that night where I hobnob with the historic stars of our sport, then fly home the following morning. (Three days later, on Nov. 10, I’m off to China to play on the US Over 60 Team at the Amity Cup team tournament in Nanjing!)

Beijing Vlog from MH Table Tennis (Matt Hetherington)

Major League Table Tennis

New from Butterfly

FETHOMANIA 14 / Drill 1: Use a lot of Wrist and Forearm (42 sec)
FETHOMANIA 14 / Drill 2: Keep Your Racket Above the Table Surface (47 sec)
FETHOMANIA 14 / Drill 3: Put Your Whole Bodyweight Into The Table (51 sec)
Taiwo Adeyinka – Backhand Loop from underspin (77 sec)
Jonathan Pino – Reaction Random (92 sec)
Sanuka Herath – 2025 Canadian Senior Table Tennis Championships (3:24)

The Two Warmups You Need to Do Before a Competition
Here’s the video (3:09) with Damien Provost from PongSpace.

Short Pimples Mastermind Loa Schoug vs Top Players
Here’s the video (11:07) from Pingispågarna.

Forehand Topspin Explained for Coaches
Here’s the video (2:25) from Biomechanics Applied to table tennis.

Short Table Tennis Video Tips from PingSunday
Here’s the page.

New from PingSkills
Ask the Coach

8 Minutes of Why Ma Long Is The GOAT Of Table Tennis
Here’s the video from Taco Backhand.

New Videos

New from Steve Hopkins

New from ITTF

I Will Let My Paddle Do the Talking
Here’s where you can buy the table tennis shirt at Amazon!

Ti Long Breaks Another Guinness World Record – His 4th World Title!
Here’s the video (1:59)!

Tri Table Tennis?
Here’s the video (12 sec)!

When You Play in Front of...
Here’s the video (15 sec) from PingPongMaestro!

Adam vs. Truls: NO MERCY!
Here’s the video (11:53) from Adam Bobrow as he takes on Sweden’s world #6, Truls Moregardh!

Retired Ping-Pong Legend Hiding as Janitor Trains an Underdog—Shocks Rivals and Conquers the Court!
Here’s the video (1hr 38min) – enjoy! (I haven’t watched it, but it looks rather wild.)

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Larry Hodges Mon, 10/27/2025 - 18:29

October 20, 2025

Larry Hodges — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 17:09:14 +0000

October 20, 2025

Tip of the Week
Never Use “Full Power.”

Weekend Coaching
I spent much of the weekend working on our junior players’ forehand loops against backspin. It was sort of the theme of the week. Some of the weekend highlights:

One girl, about age 8, said she had learned to loop. It turned out she didn’t really understand the term, and she had never learned to loop. So, I taught it from scratch. Within minutes she was looping like a pro! Key thing – besides getting the technique right – is always the same: get it right one time, remember the feel of the stroke and contact, and repeat. Never focus on the awkward or missed ones or your subconscious will think that’s what you want to do. The ONLY time you think about the mistakes is if you absolutely cannot do it right even one time, in which case you have to analyze why. But once you get it right one time – REPEAT!!!
Never end a multiball session with looping against backspin, especially with players below the advanced level. If you do, they will struggle to rally properly afterwards in regular topspin rallies, where they will keep lifting the ball off the end, since that’s what they were doing against backspin. I often like to do multiball looping in three stages: against backspin; against backspin followed by against topspin (for example, a backspin to the middle, they forehand loop, followed by a quick topspin to their wide forehand, which they loop or hit); and then an all-topspin drill. The key to transitioning from looping backspin to topspin is primarily the shoulder – it drops against backspin, mostly stays up against topspin.
We have three 7-year-old girls who are getting pretty good, at least between giggling fits, which they go through every few minutes. Just before one of the sessions they “challenged” Stanley Hsu (2500 junior star), and he obliged by rallying with them for 20 minutes. He spent much of it fishing and lobbing, or just countering the ball back softly as they smacked away. I lent him my mini-racket (Tenergy both sides), and he rallied with that for a time, then played lefty for a bit. Then they lined up and tried to return his serves – not too successfully. They are pretty good at rallying but they hadn’t faced advanced serves yet!

Physical Therapy
After seeing a doctor, I had a cortisone shot in my right knee, and underwent platelet-rich plasma therapy in my injured right side. (Insurance didn’t cover that, so it cost me $500.) The doctor said the side, which is currently the more pressing problem, needs 4-6 weeks to heal. Alas, I have big tournaments in November (Amity Team Cup in Nanjing, China, Nov. 10-19, tournament on Nov. 14-15, playing on US Over 60 Team); US Open in December; and Classic World Cup in Brazil in January. I’ll have about three weeks healing for each, meaning the side might almost get healed each time before getting re-injured during competition. So, like at the World Senior Championships a couple weeks ago I’ll likely have to play injured again, primarily with the side and knee issues.

Another scare – I’ve had a lot of shoulder problems this past year, but it’s been better recently. But over the weekend while hitting with students it’s been bothering me again. I also have problems with my right foot and arm, but those, for the moment, are okay. The root of the problem? I still try to play like I’m 20, which was 45 years ago. My body just can’t take the stress of my serve and all-out forehand attack style anymore, which I also often do when receiving, plus I often race around the back court lobbing and fishing. Are long pips on the backhand in my future? Hmmm...

Blog and Tips
Dang, I missed it – eleven weeks ago I had my 2,000th blog but didn’t realize it. I just did a count, and as of today I’ve done 2011 blogs and 721 Tips of the Week.

Table Tennis Novels
I reviewed other table tennis novels, such as “Underspin” by E. Y. Zhao. But perhaps this is a good time to post about the two I’ve written!

The Spirit of Pong - Andy “Shoes” Blue wants to be a table tennis champion, but he’s just another wannabe American. And so he goes to China to learn the secrets of table tennis. He is trained by the mysterious Coach Wang, and begins an odyssey where he learns the secrets of table tennis from the spirits of Ichiro Ogimura (who helped spawn China’s greatness), Rong Guotuan (China’s first world champion in 1959, whose tragic story Andy must relive), and others, and must face the mysterious “Dragon.” Can he overcome treachery and learn the final secret of table tennis in time to defeat his ultimate nemesis? 100 pages.
First Galactic Table Tennis Championships (novelette) - Li Yi is a member of the Chinese National Table Tennis Team and the best woman in the world. She has trained long hours since she was a child. But now she faces her biggest challenge – aliens! Table tennis has spread to the galaxy and alien players now dominate the sport. The best are the giraffe-like Ith, with their dominating champion Egrayu. But Earth isn't part of it, not since the cowboy Americans colonized a moon in the Ith home system, which led to a blockade of Earth. The Chinese hope to reopen trade with the galaxy by using "Ping-Pong Diplomacy" – by running the first Galactic Table Tennis Championships in Beijing. Li, her teammates, and the American champion Danny See – a literal cowboy – play aliens of all shapes and sizes, including the seemingly unbeatable Egrayu, as they battle for the biggest cash prize in table tennis history. But Li is drawn into a corrupt conspiracy that will shake the very foundations of honor and sportsmanship. Plus, there's that problem with the Chinese dumplings… 42 pages.

Major League Table Tennis

Home Page
Major Pong Head (blog coverage)
Top players in MLTT after Week 3
Los Angeles Spinners release Amirreza Abbasi, add Ved Sheth

What is Ping Pong?
Here’s the video (3:23) from Beyond the Podium.

Butterfly Training Tips

Rachid El Bou Bou – Gameplay Sequencing (65 sec)
Laurent Jutras Vigneault – Forehand Opening Loop from underspin (64 sec)
FETHOMANIA 13 / Drill 5 - That’s a Very Common Mistake (54 sec), with Stefan Feth and Larry Thoman.

How to Finish the Point Like a Greek National Team Player
Here’s the video (2:35) featuring Gerasimos Chatzis, from Pingispågarna.

New from PongSpace with Damien Provost

Serve Placement and Strategy (6:01)
Learning to Block with the Backhand and Forehand (4:43)

Tactics to Beat a Left-Handed Player
Here’s the article by Tom Lodziak.

New from PingSunday

New from Ti Long

The Art of Winning Points Before They Begin
Here’s the video (15:32) from Andrea Levenko.

New from PingSkills
Ask the Coach

New from TT11TV
Lots of new videos here!

Lily Zhang and Kanak Jha Earn Singles Medals at the 2025 ITTF Pan American Championships
Here’s the USATT article by Barbara Wei.

New from Steve Hopkins

New from ITTF

Timothée Chalamet Spent Years Secretly Training for ‘Marty Supreme’
Here’s the article from the Hollywood Reporter about the upcoming table tennis movie (out on Dec. 25).

We Challenged Table Tennis Powerhouse Dimitrij Ovtcharov!
Here’s the video (11:06) from Table Tennis Daily!

Upside-Down Table Tennis
Here’s the video (13 sec)!

Bear Table Tennis
Here’s what you get when you Google “Bear Table Tennis”!

Little Na Learns to Play Table Tennis
Here’s the video cartoon (3:36)!

Non-Table Tennis – The Battle of Portland
President Trump says Portland is a war zone – so here’s my cartoon of The Battle of Portland. If you’re watching on a phone, zoom in – lots of little details in there!

Non-Table Tennis - “The Time and Place of the Invasion”
I just sold my science fiction story “The Time and Place of the Invasion” (2600 words) to Black Cat Weekly. It’s a dark and humorous story that takes place on June 4, 1944, a few days before the Normandy invasion. Two German physicists, Dr. Werner Heisenberg and Dr. Erwin Schrödinger, are summoned by Hitler. One of them knows the time of the invasion, the other the place of the invasion, and Hitler demands they tell him both. However, as the physicists explain to him, if he were to know the time and the place at the same time, very bad things will happen. (Yes, it’s a play on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.) It’s my 243rd short story sale and third anti-Hitler story sale.

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Larry Hodges Mon, 10/20/2025 - 18:09

October 13, 2025

Larry Hodges — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 15:38:02 +0000

October 13, 2025

Tips of the Week
(Two of them since I was out of town last week at the Senior World Championships and so didn’t do a blog.)

Oct. 6, 2025 - Nullify Opponent's Biggest Threat
Oct. 13, 2025 - Your Evolving Relationship With a Coach

Weekend Coaching
Here are three things I did while coaching in three group sessions this past weekend. The third one might be the most important.

Beginning/intermediate players need to learn to drill together. Often they learn this by just hitting forehand to forehand or backhand to backhand. But if they want to do serious drills to reach a higher level, they need to do more advanced drills – especially footwork drills. But they often don’t have the ball control to do this. For example, suppose two of them try to do one-one forehand footwork, where one player alternates between hitting a forehand from the wide forehand corner, and a forehand from the middle. For this to work, his practice partner has to be able to hit the ball to those two spots. Since he can’t at first, the rallies quickly fall apart. Enter me, the tireless coach. I had a group of four players rotating, and I did the footwork drill with each of them, with them hitting alternately to my wide forehand and middle while I moved side to side. Tiring, but they got good at it!
I convinced players working on fast, deep serves that it’s okay to sometimes miss when practicing it by serving off, and that if they don’t serve off somewhat often, they aren’t learning it right. Too often they play it safe, serving more slowly and not as deep so as to keep the serve on the table. But when learning such serves, you need to challenge yourself and serve as fast and deep as you can until you can control it. This means often serving off, and then you adjust your serve on the next one. Otherwise, you’re just practicing a medium-speed, medium-deep serve that isn’t even medium-good.
After practice was done, I taught some of the kids how to play “gnip-gnop.” Yes, that’s ping-pong spelled backwards. It’s a game I learned when I first started out almost 50 years ago. It’s regular table tennis, except that instead of hitting the ball directly over the net, you aim downward, and your shot must hit your side first before going over the net. This results on long, quick rallies. While this isn’t something you do in real table tennis, it’s a new and fun thing for them – and that’s the key. Too often coaches tell students that if they work hard, they can become good, but forget to give them a reason to want to be good. For kids, that means showing them it’s fun. Then they’ll want to do it and become self-motivated. By letting them regularly do new things like this makes it more fun and keeps them hooked on the sport – and then they want to do it, and so want to be good. It doesn’t have to be gnip-gnop. Let them try lobbing or chopping; speed bouncing on the table; serving from fifty feet from the table, even from the side with sidespin; opposite-hand or opposite grip play; playing with new surfaces such as long pips or hardbat; backspin serves that come back into the net or even bounce back over; doubles; Brazilian Teams; and so on.

Huntsman Senior World Table Tennis Championships - Injuries and Net Balls and Medals, Oh My!
First the good news: I won Gold in Over 65 Men’s Doubles with Mark Kraut! Yes, I am a WORLD CHAMPION! I also got Silver in Over 65 Men’s Hardbat Doubles, also with Mark. In singles, I lost in the quarterfinals of Over 65 Men’s Singles, and in the semifinals of Over 65 Men’s Hardbat Singles. (I went back and forth between using sponge and using hardbat in the hardbat events.) Here’s a picture of Mark and I at the Medal Stand.

Alas, I played the entire tournament injured, and it got progressively worse. So, overall, it was a disappointment as I felt I could have done much better if not for the injuries.

I came in with nagging injuries to my right side and right knee (as well as right shoulder, but it was okay this tournament). Early on my right side flamed up, and so I struggled to loop. In my worse loss, my opponent kept pushing my topspin serve up in the air, and over and over I’d try to loop kill it – normally an easy shot – only to “hitch” and miss because of the side issue. It also meant that I couldn’t rotate quickly to my left, meaning every time I went to my wide forehand and my opponent returned to my backhand, I struggled, both in playing regular backhands, and (with hardbat) in backhand chopping. I also re-injured my right knee early on, and this meant I struggled to move to my wide forehand. Since I like to play as much of the table as possible with my forehand, this greatly limited my attack. (As soon as I finish this blog, I’m signing up for rehab again, as I did earlier this year for my shoulder.)
UPDATE - rehab starts Tue, Oct. 14, at 1:30 PM, on both side and knee.

I also learned a valuable lesson in my hardbat semifinal. I had two matches where ball after ball kept dribbling over the net, with my opponents getting far more than me on this. (It’s a matter of style – my opponents in those two matches were a penhold blocker and a pips-out backhand hitter, and those type of players hit with lower trajectory, and so get more net balls.) In the hardbat semifinals, when I was serving up 20-19 game point in the first game (hardbat games are to 21), I served short side-top and my opponent pushed it up high. I prepared to smash and hopefully win the game – but the ball came down and dribbled over the net, unreturnable. (I lost the game and the match.) Afterwards I checked the net – and discovered it was super-loose, practically swaying side to side. It turned out the string that’s supposed to keep the net taut had come loose on one side, and I somehow hadn’t noticed. No wonder all those balls dribbled over! If I’d thought to check the net before the match, the result might have been different. Alas. (If I’d won, I’d have played Mark in the final – he ended up winning the event.)

Once again Jean Bulatao and her staff did a great job of running the tournament, in St. George, Utah, Oct. 6-9. But that word “running” hurts my knee just reading it!!!

And now we get to THE NIGHTMARE TRIP BACK!!!

Some of you may remember that American Airlines lost my luggage back in July on my return from the US Nationals. They found it a day later and tried to deliver it, but they claim the delivery truck was stolen (!!!). I’ve been battling with them ever since – I’ve been on the phone with them over a dozen times, and have emailed repeatedly, and filled out numerous forms, but their response? Nothing. No response at all. No emails returned. No notice of the status of my claim. And each phone call ends with the agent guaranteeing someone will get back to me, and nobody ever does. At some point I may have to take legal action. (The retail value of the missing bag’s contents was over $1400.)

This time around, on Delta, they didn’t lose my luggage. The return trip was delayed an hour, but that’s no big deal. I got back to Dulles Airport, got my luggage, and took the shuttle to the Green Lot, where my car was parked. It was just past 1:30 AM (Saturday morning) when I got in and turned the key.

The car wouldn’t start. The battery was completely dead.

I had no idea what to do – I’m parked in the middle of a huge parking lot with a dead car in the middle of the night. I Googled jump-starting services on my phone, and found a place that could do so for $200. I had no choice, so agreed. But then my credit card was declined – nine times. I called the credit card people three times before they got the problem fixed. Meanwhile, the online tracking feature that let me know when the jump-starting vehicle would arrive didn’t work. I called the company, and got a message that “due to high call volume, no agents are available...” So, I sat in my dead car in the huge parking lot while on hold for nearly an hour. Then the jump-starting truck arrived! All was well – except, after jump-starting my car, it suddenly went crazy! As I tried to pull out of the parking spot, the steering wheel froze, the dashboard lights began flashing, and the engine made funny sounds. This went on for maybe twenty seconds – and then it went back to normal. I have no idea what caused that. After that, the 40-min drive home was uneventful. I got home after 5AM, and had to go coach at 10AM. (Yes, I know about AAA, but since I rarely do long-distance driving, it's not really worth it.)

PingPongBuddies Fall 2025 – Table Tennis for Children with Autism
Here’s the video (4:35) featuring the new program at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. US junior star Stanley Hsu founded it and is president. He is assisted by numerous members of the MDTTC junior program. They meet every Saturday afternoon.

Virginia Tech Table Tennis Scholarships
Here’s the info page for the 2026-2027 academic year, and the scholarship page. (You need both. If you page down the latter, you’ll also find the link to the Mossberg Table Tennis Scholarship) They are sponsored by Jim and Liz Mossberg. Jim is long-time player from the Maryland region, who for a number of years ran the New Carrollton Table Tennis Club, where I started in 1976.

‘Marty Supreme’ First Reactions: Timothée Chalamet Gives a ‘Career-Best Performance’ in Josh Safdie’s ‘Awe-Inspiring’ Ping-Pong Epic
Here’s the article from Variety Magazine. The table tennis movie, loosely based on the life of Marty Reisman, comes out Dec. 25.

Table Tennis Drills for Progress – 10 Significant Tips for 2025
Here’s the article from Table Tennis Top by Sorin Petroj.

Top 5 Tabletennis Creators You Should Already Be Watching
Here’s the video (4:23) from Beyond the Podium, on table tennis YouTubers. Featured are Pongfinity, Adam Bobrow, Table Tennis Daily, PingSunday, and PingSkills.

Coaching and News from All Over
Since I’ve been away for two weeks, rather than try to list every interesting article, here are links to some of the main news and coaching pages that have been active in that time, and you can pick and choose.

What an Insane Way to End a Match
Here’s the video (78 sec) of this crazy last point of a match between Lin Shidong on the right (CHN, world #2) and Shunsuke Togami (JPN, world #20).

The Best of Fan Zhendong
Here’s the video (4:34) from Pakorn Pingponginter.

Cursed Table Tennis Forest
Here’s the creepy cartoon!

Jan VS Rasmus - Table Tennis
Here’s the crazy TT cartoon (1:35)!

Amped Competitor
Here’s another crazy TT cartoon (2:00)!

Dog Table Tennis Cartoon
Here’s still another crazy TT cartoon (23 sec)!

***
Send us your own coaching news!

Larry Hodges Mon, 10/13/2025 - 16:38