OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I wonder.. for TT players, the sandpaper bats are initially very strange but those with no/little experience of TT
won't experience the same weirdness. I've seen a few beginners use the PP bats with ease-they don't notice the lack of sponge
because they are not expecting it.

The PP bats make the game simpler (and promote active strokes), so might be seen as a good (& cheap) intro to TT.

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One of my British League teammates is quite involved with this event, and in fact our local league even allows these bats. Generally they are a disadvantage but they get some good wins and players need a strategy against them.

What is suprising, having hit with one, is how quick they are. Lightning. No wonder offence rules at the wcpp.

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Back to double inverted Spring 2016

I've written down some reflections on my experience at the WCPP:

http://murrayfieldttc.tumblr.com/post/109399577439/a-club-player-goes-to-the-world-championships-by

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FH: DHS Neo Skyline III
BH: Palio AK 1997 Biotech
Blade: YEO


http://www.murrayfieldtt.com | http://www.youtube.com/user/MurrayfieldTTC

The WCPP has been dominated by topspin play pretty much from the beginning. This should be no surprise since the vast majority of players are topspin oriented players. It almost always makes more sense for them to adapt their existing games to the different covering than to develop a new style that is optimized for sandpaper play. Not developing a strongly different game probably also makes it easier for them to go back to the modern game with their normal racket coverings.

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Jay Turberville
http://www.jayandwanda.com
Hardbat: Nittaku Resist & Dr. Evil

Yes. People often fail to understand that while the sandpaper has MUCH less spin capability, you can recover a bit of it through racket speed increases due to the lighter weight of the racket.

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Jay Turberville
http://www.jayandwanda.com
Hardbat: Nittaku Resist & Dr. Evil

If they had no previous experience with TT, I think probably so. The sandpaper racket is less reactive to spin and less bouncy. So it is generally easier for a newbie to control and place the ball.



I don't think sponge is forgiving at all. That's why many players use long pips on their backhand as a crutch for return of serves. (I'm not saying all use of LP is a crutch. Just that many lower level players use it in that way.)



I think people should spend their own money and/or risk it in business ventures or promotions in ways that please themselves.

Modern table tennis routinely fails to hold audiences on broadcast TV. This is the fourth iteration of the WCPP and they seem to have a formula that works. What modern TT should do is look at WCPP and see what they can learn about it to help promote the modern game.

This is not and need not be an "either or" situation.

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Jay Turberville
http://www.jayandwanda.com
Hardbat: Nittaku Resist & Dr. Evil

That's probably why the liha players always do so badly.


I didn't like how the players would often back off the table and hit topspin against topspin until (usually) one made an error. They need to slow down the blades a lot. WCPP could be so much better.

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Further thoughts:

If playing with a sandpaper bat is easy for beginners, why don't we coach beginners with these parts until they get the correct strokes?

I am not sure it is easy for a complete newbie to pick up a sandpaper bat and play - ever with wrong stokes, having a really basic schools type sponge bat is forgiving....you don't generate much spin - I am talking bottom of range pre-made bats here.

Obviously, I am not a good example, as I have played with sponge all my life and the odd time I have picked up a hard bat I have not been able to do anything other than defend really - and I am an all out attack player.

I am currently working on a project to get outdoor tables dotted around our university, so people can play sociable and without much hassle - eg, booking a court, having change of clothes, shower etc, at lunchtime.

Bats...and balls, will be something we need to consider - we want people to get maximum enjoyments out of it....for we this is what things like the World Championship PP are about - getting people into the game.

Maybe PP should be for complete amateurs? With regional heats to get in. Maybe people would be inspired by watching a fat overweight geezer with an unconventional park style win it, rather than two highly trained athletes exchanging f/h to f/h t/p rallies that the watcher is unlikely to do.....may as well be watching the Chinese no.1 & 2!

Just my thought - as my first post said, I am unsure about whether this is going to be a good thing....they have jazzed up darts fine, but they haven't messed with the equipment - for me that's what real TT needs...make it fashionable / trendy.

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I remember about 15 years ago the City of Chicago had a project where they put tables in all sorts of public places for a few months. Anyone remember this, and how well it was received? I think I actually planned to drive to Chicago (about a 6 hour drive) to have a look, but I never did get around to doing it.

Iskandar

Aha.. so they provide a standard bat? You can't buy, for instance, a Hock 3 ply and glue sandpaper onto it?

Iskandar

Yes the point about not changing their game is fair. But also I think the way the sandpaper game is set up would make it extremely difficult for a defender to be competitive given that the only choice for a defender is to be a retriever as sandpaper pretty much removes the option of deception. My point was that raising the net half and inch would have been interesting.

Perhaps. But my guess it that it is for two reasons. 1) The Liha players are simply further out of their prime. 2) The standard bats that are using are sufficiently different than what the Liha players are using that it affects their touch and play.


Actually, in my experience slowing down the bat makes it easier to spin the ball because either the ball actually sits on the racket a microsecond or two longer, or it feels that way, giving the player the confidence to spin more.

The real advance IMO, would be to toss this whole "fair play because everyone uses the same racket" idea out the window. They should standardized the surface and let the players use the blade they like with perhaps the only restriction being that the blade be all wood. That would also eliminate the shenanigans where some players get to practice with the real match rackets for a lot longer than other players - which isn't fair at all.

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Jay Turberville
http://www.jayandwanda.com
Hardbat: Nittaku Resist & Dr. Evil

Because easier doesn't mean that it would build a better foundation. A good sandpaper stroke is sufficiently different from a good inverted stroke that I think training a youngster with sandpaper might significantly hinder their progress with inverted. You could argue other benefits and they might be real. I know some kids who with crude sandpaper and petrified recreation rackets who became quite good. But maybe they are the exception. And which new and promising kid are you going to take the chance on with sandpaper?


Have you ever spent much time playing with a sandpaper racket?



If you mean getting people interested in the game, then I agree. But at the level of competition we see in the WCPP, that is no place for a newbie. Sure, the barrier to entry is lower. But it isn't "guy off the street" lower. Competitors that go anywhere are either world class or former world class. Only a handful of non world class players can manage entry, and even they should generally be moderately advanced amateurs.


The fat geezer scenario is probably less likely with hardbat than with sponge. I see PLENTY of very overweight players that have a fine game because they are able to use the high spin that sponge makes available to make up for their lack of mobility. I've seen a wheelchair player rated over 2000 USATT. I don't think that is possible with sandpaper.



I think that's worth a shot for sure. But as I said before, there is no need for an "either or" scenario. Let the WCPP do what it wants and let the modern game evolve and change (or not) separately if it learns something from the WCPP. I see no problem with having sport variants. We see it in volleyball (2 person sand, 4 person sand, indoor 6 person), baseball (softball, slow-pitch, kickball), there's indoor and outdoor soccer (football), and normal and stadium "football" (American type) and I think cricket even has a long and short version. No doubt there are other examples.

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Jay Turberville
http://www.jayandwanda.com
Hardbat: Nittaku Resist & Dr. Evil

We were playing sandpaper my my club for awhile, but everyone quit because it messed up their regular game.

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The MNNB Blog has had some pretty amazing stuff lately. Just click this text to check it out. | My OOAK Interview
Table Tennis Video Links: itTV | laola1.tv | ttbl | fftt | Challenger Series | mnnb-tv

No matter how good you are at something, there's always about a million people better than you.
Homer J. Simpson

In what way might the surface be standardized?

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