OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Here's the end of the match between 50-year-old Cheng Yinghua and John Leach at the recent U.S. Nationals.

I posted this because:

1) I like seeing old guys that can still play
2) Beautiful shot placement by Cheng
3) Look how puny the crowd is for a major tournament in the USA.

By the way, Cheng lost in the final to David Zhuang (age 45).

http://outpost81.com/nationals08/John_L ... inghua.wmv

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Thank you for posting, MNNB.

What audience? BTW, I can never dream of achieving what Cheng can do, the ball is way too fast for me, and may be that's why I would rather play away from the table.

oh yea. i was there but didnt watch his match.
this was the mens open, but wasn't even close to the finals so a lot of poeple didnt know about the match going on. the only matches that had a lot of people watching was the semis and the finals, cuz those were kinda like advertised.

yes Cheng isn't exceptionally fast or has a super forehand loop, but he plays a half defensive game. basically hes a really good blocker and consistant one. so he kinda incorporates it into his looping game, so instead he loops the shots that people normally block. so hes kinda a consistancy looper kind of player
you can also see that he won a lot of his points off of the light underspin/no-spin serve and john leach kinda pushed or flipped weakly, then he went for the direct winner.
He is actually my coaches teammate back in china. they were teammates from the szchuan province. I kinda trained a few balls with him, and he told me that when you turn the backhand corner and you know that you dint have much chance, focus on spin over speed. he says the spin makes your opponent think, rather than speed where he know exactly where it's going, they just have to stick the paddle there in time. with spin, they have to read the amount of spin and adjust the bat angle accordingly, and if you add side-spin, they'll have to take that into account too when calculating which way the ball will jump off the table and which way it will kick off your bat. in that way, they have to analyze too much so they have a smaller chance of having the time to think about placement and will most likely just put the ball on the table, and with the side spin, you'll have a general idea of where its going.
Your step around doesn't have to be great but it's something to keep your opponents on their toes.

just some thing i learned from the 3rd ranked male player in the usa.

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