OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Note from a Table Tennis Poverty Zone

Tonight I went to the club in my town. It meets twice a week, 7 - 10 Monday and Thursday nights. There are four tables, and usually 12 - 18 people show up. We range from total beginners to 1750, with a bunch of guys between 1250 - 1450. To prevent the best four players from hogging every table, we keep one reserved for beginners, one top table, and the two others for anybody.

The last time I hit with another person was ten days ago, at a club 200 miles from here. Since then I have practiced alone for at least an hour pretty much every day, with the robot and doing serves. I have this new goofy-stance serve that I was really excited to try out in match play, and obviously I have been working on my loops vs underspin too.

So I got to the club three minutes past seven, which was too late to get the first match on the top table. I called next and started to wait. There was an open table, so I offered to hit with a teenage kid I didn't know. I blocked for him and encouraged him to try to make ten loops in a row. While we were doing that more people were coming in, and somebody pulled out the signup board. The other 1700 guy, there are three of us here, signed up for next on the top table I was waiting for. I wasn't playing, but I didn't want to just drop the kid I was blocking for, or argue with W about me being next on that table. So I decided to let him have next, and just play some matches where I was. I played three, using my new serves. It was hard to tell if they were effective because the players didn't have very strong receives. I won all nine games without really doing anything too well. The players are ~400 points below me, and I have played each of them hundreds of matches. Literally hundreds. There are no surprises here.

After that I gave up the table and waited my turn. Two guys on the top table played a five-set, many deuce match, and I was out maybe 25 minutes. At last I got to the table to play the guy who signed up ahead of me, who I have also played at least 300 times, sometimes six matches in a row. We warmed up for two minutes, and then he obliterated me in three easy sets. I was experimenting with a new serve, and he was warmed up and playing his normal game. The match lasted about 7 or 8 minutes.

Now it is almost nine pm, and there are two people waiting on the top table ahead of me. The club closes at ten. I have three choices. I can wait 20 - 40 minutes to get one more shot at the top table just before closing time, or I can wait 10 - 20 minutes to play with a very weak player, or I can forget it and leave. So I left.

Tomorrow and this weekend I will practice alone some more. Then, if I want to, on Monday I can go to the club. That is a table tennis poverty zone. This is far from being the worst, I know. I do have a club and two of the players are higher-rated than me. Lots of places in the US have less.

I will go back to posting robot video tomorrow.

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

Any videotape? I know you also live in a broadband upload poverty zone so just curious.

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Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

Sad to hear you can't get some decent games or practice, especially with all the work and effort your put into it.

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I feel your pain BRS. Right now there is no TT club within 45 minutes of my house, and the one that is open is 50 minutes away and only meets once per week. I do have the advantage of getting a multiball session/ lesson with a local 1900 player once per week, though. There is also a player over 2000 that lives in my city, but he only plays twicer a week during the cold season, but we are always sharing the table with 3 other players... so I dont hit much with the 2000 player.

Just keep plugging away. Any progress at all is huge progress for people in our situation.

I recorded the one match and will post tomorrow. It really does take a long time to upload.

@ringer You are in a worse TT place than me. I used to have a practice partner once or twice a week, and that was a lot of fun. But she is taking a break from TT and I haven't found anyone else to practice with yet.

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

Hi BRS, do you have a team competition happening there or is it only tournaments that you play in a competitive environment?

In our teams comp on a Wednesday, we cater for 48 players. The comp runs from 7 to 10 and we play 88 matches on 8 tables. Everyone gets 4 or 5 matches in this time and has to umpire a couple. Sounds like you could do similar with 4 tables, just halve the numbers, then everyone gets their fair share and something to play for. You could run a structured comp on one night and practice on the other.

If I didn't have a reason to play, I'd soon lose interest.

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Donic Waldner Senso V1,FH Baracuda Big Slam 2.0mm ,BH Victas Triple Regular 2.0mm

I only play competitively at tournaments. Team leagues are quite rare in the US, from what I understand, although the big centers (NY, LA, DC) now have them.

We did once try a league about two years ago. A lot of the players are more social and not too interested in competition, and the structure of a league didn't appeal to them. I can mention it to the two guys who run the club and see if they are interested in another try.

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

Alright, here is the video. I was going to destroy this, but I watched it in slo-mo already, and if I had to suffer NL may as well watch it too.

Some notes:
I never pay attention to the length of my serves in competition. This is the most unbelievable oversight. That is basically all I care about in practice, serving short, and in games I make thick contact and never adjust it.

I started with a bad attitude and just let it funnel down the toilet as the match got away. That was poor.

As noted earlier I have played this guy many times. He is a Cpen FH hitter with 0x LP bh to return serve. You have to play to his BH. You can go to his FH once with a quality (LOW) ball and then come back to his BH. What you cannot do is send little puffy clouds high to his middle FH and expect to ever see the ball again. I did that over and over until the third set, when it was well too late.

I have nothing good to say about this one at all. Didn't think, didn't compete, didn't move, didn't play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK8wzzBk0lU

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

Let's walk through it step by step:

1. Did you make most of your opening loops?
2. Did you place your opening loops where you intended to place them?
3. Did you make your opening loops in the style you practiced making them?

My personal take is that a few of the things I warned you about came into play and that you just need to tweak some things.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

It looked to me like you used only one serve (perhaps on purpose), and so did your opponent.

You also never block here, even when he unleashes his FH against high balls and you are caught off-guard, looked like some of them could be blocked on FH (they almost never were aimed at your body).

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USATT: 1807 | League: 1887

From my perspective, to cut a long story short:

1. Learn to slow spin the topspin ball in your drill, it may feel like a short counter or a block but good wrist acceleration adds topspin.
2. Stop giving him straight topspin balls.

Those two things were central to the original drill. The consistency of your opening, other than when you failed to read his pips, was fine. That he didn't whiff on a single one of your balls and hardly moved to get to them means they were at the middle of the table with straight topspin.

I can't re-stress the importance of learning to slow spin the topspin ball. Don't fall into the trap that a fast ball needs a fast swing to respond to it. The opposite is true and what you really need is wrist acceleration. But if you don't try, I won't bring it up again. Fast loops don't hook as much. That's the point.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

This was my favorite point of yours:

http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=TK8wzzBk0lU#/232;238

You serve to the wide forehand (although it could have been shorter!) and this was probably the only serve you did to the wide FH all match. You then follow up with a nice loop to the wide backhand (although it could have been wider). You then follow with a nice loop to the wide FH (although it could have been wider). Notice who was doing all the moving in this point and who just remained stationary and attacked. So yeah, I agree with NL that you need to try to hook/fade the ball a bit more and stop giving him straight topspin all the time.

As far as shortening the stroke versus incoming topspin, I feel your pain. I haven't learned to do this either. My percentage against long, fast serves that are non-underspin is terribly low.

I actually don't need to post my own match videos BTW, because my matches basically look exactly like this.

Agree. Monday is another day.

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

Don't aim for the sidelines so much as aim for the middle of the opponents FH side with sidespin. Let the sidespin and your practice do the rest.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

No, I still want to see your match video.

That was a pretty good point, although there is so much wrong with all the technique, the balls landed in roughly the right places. The key to this match IMO was I missed so many easy third ball opportunities to my BH. Coach Raghu at MDTTC told me I am always waiting to push my BH, and if I realize I could loop it's too late by then. He said to wait for a loop and if you have to change at the last minute you can still push. I needed to be expecting to topspin his receives. Of course this is another result of not paying attention to the flow of the match. After the first few high receives I should have started to expect them, but I was off in my own thoughts. The podcast with Dora Kurimay on http://www.experttabletennis.com/dora-kurimay-get-your-game-face-on-like-the-pros/ is so true. So sad, but so true.

As far as reacting to his smashes, they are not topspin shots. They are very flat. I think in this instance NL is looking through his 2100 glasses and seeing a problem that is far down the line for me. I haven't trained soft looping vs topspin because I can't reliably open vs backspin. It's getting pretty decent on the FH to a fixed location. But the BH and with any movement are still very dicey. Let's say I am not worried about counterlooping until I can consistently land my first loop where I want, with the spin I want.

NL's advice about aiming for the middle with sidespin instead of trying to land a straight topspin on the sideline makes really good sense. I will try to take that in for match play next week.

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono