OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I noticed in the recent Japan Open that China has a number of up-and-coming women defenders e.g. Wu Yang and Liu Fei, who won the womens doubles, but there are no young Chinese male defenders that I know of.

Does this reflect a judgment by the Chinese brains trust that defending is a viable strategy for women (e.g. due to their comparative lack of power) but not for men? Or is it just coincidence?

I also thought China was famed for creating shadow players i.e. a training partner modeled on a top overseas player. DId they ever create a Joo Se Hyuk look-alike? And, if not, why not - was he simply not seen as enough of a threat to their top players?

I think this has always been the case, not just in China but elsewhere as well. There are male defensive players but at the very top of the game they aren't very common, whereas among women they are. At the level just below the very top there probably are a lot more Chinese male defensive players we never hear about.

Iskandar

It looks that the chinese male defenders are just used to trained the attacker. There is one defender who is playing in the chinese league. His name is Ma te . There is a subject right now on him on OOAK. He's Young and maybe he will achieve high rank.

I think the male defender of the future will be a more an all around player that will use chop as top spin and will use Twiddling at any occasion to create even more deception and surprise. These guys will be superpowerman with new combinaison twiddling shots that will change the rotation of the ball at will. Super chop underspin, top spin, loop, flat hit, side spin etc... from BH to FH with inverted and pimple rubner.

It will be supercool to see. A mix of xu xin, Ma long, boll, weixing, panagiotis, jsh etc.

Thanks for that reference to Ma Te. I saw him on YT - quite traditional, really, i.e. does a lot of forehand chops, unlike some other modern defenders.

I would guess the best hope for good choppers to be world class is to have excellent serves and third ball attacks, to break up the attacker's rhythm. Otherwise, they seem too predictable to beat the top attackers

MAGIC PLAY BY THE CHOPPER...

http://cdn.laola1.tv/ittf/iframe/player.html?pfad=mp4:CHANNEL1-Seniors/2015/ittf_kobe/150626_t1_JOO_Saehyuk_KOR_MIZUTANI_Jun_JPN

Truly fascinating play by JooSeHuik on his backhand wing, owning mostly to the plastic unuque features, less spinny, less bouncy, etc.
DHS 40+ makes you a wall.
The novelty defensive sponge by BTF makes you a Lord of the game.

Some useful lesson to the good of all the defensive players as derived from the present video

Fellow Defender,
-- Keep yourself away from celluloid balls, you have got little chance to cope the attakers with celluloid. Plastic favours the chopper pre-eminently..

I don,t get it. You said thank to BTF. He,s using tsp curl PR-1 on his bakhand ?

hi mike,

I saw Ma te against ma long and he twiddle like crazy and top spinning and blocking with his inverted backhand. Ma long Installed himself confortably against Mate and then oups ! Ma Te just make this spinny shot that ma long didn't even move. He froze there. It was a chinese video.

I think it's simple. There simply aren't any Chinese defensive players who can win consistently over the likes of Ma Long, Xu Xin, Fan Zhendong et. al. Until there are, there won't be any on the top level Chinese national team. I don't think it's any sort of bias (other than bias against lesser players), it's simply who wins ends up at the top.

Iskandar

I think the Chinese are capable of creating a number one defensive player, but they simply don't do it. There might be two reasons:

1) Like already suggested they don't believe the defensive game is viable at the top level among men, but they believe it is viable at the top level of the women.
2) Creating a top male defensive player needs more time than creating a top female defensive player. Then the question is: why?

For me the Chinese dominance will stop one day or at least will be at a more equal level with the rest of the world. If you see how defenders thrive in the rest of the world, then that day will also mean a defender can become number one.

You have to realize that chinese champion aren't born...they're bred. You start when you're 4 or 5 and you play like you are going to school with a lot of other hopeful prodigies. Leagues to groom play like the minor leagues in baseball in the USA. You make it you are heralded as a hero. You don't you disappear. One becomes an emancipated table tennis machine. Your career is over age 27 or so.

Knowing that when was the last time you saw Ma long lose to a chopper?

The reason defenders are rare in China (and the rest of the world for that matter) is not because they don't teach them this style.

To be a defender at highest level you need a certain personality. You need to be the type of person that can sit there and be yelled at by someone and not yell back. You need to be the type of person that when punched will not punch back, and you need to be there type of person who not only does not get mad when they make mistakes or loose but who on the surface has zero reaction to it. This personality is a) more common in girls and b) not that common in general.

We can all dabble here at OOAK and at our own respective levels and wish that China will pop out a few more defenders because we love how beautiful and different the game is, but the fact of the matter is that this personality is too rare to have the numbers to compete with the attackers. And this is why China has such success in the table tennis world in general. numbers.

Also. I know we all don't want to here this, but there is a way to play choppers that works. A few proven strategies where number 100 in the world can be effective against against a top 10 chopper....but that process does not work for attackers.

Sent from my HTC One M9 using Tapatalk

I recognize the characteristics you attribute to a defender in myself: I suppose a good thing. I think three key character treats of a defender are: (1) patient, (2) long-term thinking and (3) smart.

I agree and don't agree with strategies that work with choppers. I don't agree with it, because once a strategy is known, you can always develop a counter strategy. However, I agree that of the two you're always the mouse, the murder investigator or the forest ranger if you will. You always develop counter strategies. You're the mouse, the attacker is the cat. Unless one day all strategies are known, you're always leaping behind. Seeing it from an utilitarian point of view being a defender is a stupid choice. But if you see it bigger, you're the one keeping the balance and upholding the beauty of the sport. It's an unthankful job because there's not much recognition, but people will remember you more later on than ramdom attacker X or Y.

leatherback,

You might find it interesting that Zoran Kosanovic, who was once a member of the Yugoslavia and Canadian mens's table tennis team, and also ranked something like #7 in the world at his best, described defensive table tennis players to me in a similar way. Zoran felt that defenders have a very different personality than most other table tennis players.

However, I wonder whether there are personality differences between different types of defenders. To me, defensive players can be classified as playing (1) Classical Defense, e.g., Shiono, (2) Modern Defensive I, e.g., Joo SaeHyuk who uses his defense in part to set up his offense, and (3) Modern Defense II, e.g., Gionis, who chops on backhand and fishes on his forehand. My guess is that classical defenders most closely have the personality that you and Zoran describe, followed by Modern Defense I, and then Modern Defense II.

Does anyone else have a similar or different picture?

Steven

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To be a defender at highest level you need a certain personality. You need to be the type of person that can sit there and be yelled at by someone and not yell back. You need to be the type of person that when punched will not punch back, and you need to be there type of person who not only does not get mad when they make mistakes or loose but who on the surface has zero reaction to it. This personality is a) more common in girls and b) not that common in general.


I really like this. Never looked at it like that. But the can strike like a snake,too.

Yes! I watched an A1 pennant match on Monday between a (conventional attacker) older player and an up-and-coming junior, who I think was filling in for someone else. It went to deuce in the 5th, and the older guy won. While the junior isn't a pips player (AFAIK – I could be wrong, as he has a sibling who plays short pips), he mixed in a lot of varied away-from-the-table defensive play with super-spinny slow loops and fast loop kills, and it was riveting.

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"Once you get past a certain threshold, everyone's problems are the same: fortifying your island and hiding the heat signature from your fusion reactor." –Doctor Impossible