OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I have a lot more problems with bad attitude adults than I do kids. I prefer choing or any kind of talk to people who play in absolute serious library silence. I really hate that.

As far as not letting it bother you in competition, I think you are missing an opportunity by even thinking of opponent noise as an obstacle for you. Try thinking of it as a reflection of their inner stress.

The easiest way to win a tournament match is to destroy your opponent mentally. This can mostly happen two ways. You can break their spirit where they give up trying due to lack of belief they can win. Or, much more fun, you can put them on tilt where they lose their minds and start smashing every ball to let the anger out. If you are a pips player, as I am now, one way to do that is to get three or four nets in a set. When you hear them complain about the nets, especially if it is to spectators, you know they aren't focused. That's a good moment to say something like "I always get at least four nets every set, it's guaranteed when you switch to pips." Then aim quite low. If you can get one more net dribbler in the next two or three points most times they will go completely berserk. And that's always good fun.

Even if you don't find humor in being a jerk sometimes, I still think you should look at loud opponents as stressed, and think of ways to stress them more. Generally in competition we are meant to focus on the opponent and not ourselves. Worrying about their choing between points, which has zero relevance to your play, contradicts that.

More interesting to me than talent is the phenomenon of anti-talent. That is when a player is still quite terrible, but thinks they are good, or sometimes, knows they stink, but think they already know everything about technique and just aren't showing their best. Anti-talent completely negates any coaching, since the player already knows whatever the coach is telling him.