OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Cai Zhenhua vs. J-O Waldner. I read about Cai years ago, never got to see him play until now. He was a long pips attacker, supposedly pretty spectacular to watch. He got a lot of points by twiddling the bat, then serving. You didn't know what he was using so you'd either put it in the net or pop it high, and then BAM. Most of the points in this game were very, very short. After the two color rule came in he went steadily down in the rankings, these days he's a bigwig in the Chinese TT association.

I'll admit, before the two color rule I played like that, too, just that I was not good at all. The main problem is long pips can be hard to play with, particularly for beginners. Flipping and then serving was fun, though, got lots of cheap points that way. Too bad I missed 50% of my hits.



Note how spartan things were back then, too - towels went in a little laundry basket. No fancy umpire station. One camera only (they were probably filming with.. um, film). Even back then Waldner was using hidden serves - I wasn't even aware they existed, never saw anyone use one at a tournament - until maybe 1998 or 99, when someone used one against me. Maybe it's the color of the floor, watching this makes me thirsty (looks like a desert).

Iskandar

Cai used anti not LP. He was extremely good at what he did but his matches were terrible spectacles. They usually involved superb players popping the ball up like beginners. The match below, featuring the great Klampar, is too painful to watch. Thank goodness for the 2 colour rule!

[youtube]www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3DaATc8LQ[/youtube]

Randomly dipped into this video, look at Waldner's disguise on the putaway at 4.15 - pure class!

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Timo Boll ALC ST
FH Tibhar Evolution MX-P Max
BH Tibhar Evolution FX-S 1.8
185g

Strange. All the stuff I read about him back then said he used long pips. I wonder if I still have those issues of Table Tennis Topics. Back then a lot of people used anti - including Jonyer (not sure about Klampar), but I don't recall anyone else getting this much deception out of their serves just by flipping the bat.

Iskandar

Fixed...

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Victas Koji Matsushita
Thibar Hybrid k1 euro max
TSP Curl p1-r 1.0

I agree with carbonman--Cai used anti. I switched to anti on my backhand as a result of Cai's success. Actually played pretty well with it for a number of years before switching to short pips.

Larry