Obviously I do love to practice, I'm using all my holidays this year to train. But what I meant was my training is totally driven by match results. Losing gnaws at me for days afterwards. And in most matches there are one or two things that if I did them properly/better I would have won. That's what gives purpose to my training. I don't actually enjoy competition, or at least it certainly isn't fun the way training is a joy. I look at competition as an unpleasant task that I have to do to make sense of my training, and training as the good part. This is probably not typical. There are rare times in competition where I am in "flow" or whatever stupid name you put on it, and that's great, the .001% of the time that it happens. I also could make competition much more fun for myself simply by adopting a more positive attitude. I need to do a lot more work there.

So it's easier to block or counter a top spin close to the table than it is to loop a backspin deep on the table.

Yeah I'd agree with that.

I can see that for us, sure. But I'm curious for Jesse, who is definitely four levels above me, wouldn'the want to hop out after the flick also? He's clearly fit enough to do that, and the ball is always going to come back long or not at all.

I am going to see whether I can find a safe way to use this bow to power a relatively shorter forehand topspin.

I was curious on LTT 91 -- Jesse was flicking and then stepping out, whereas in 90 he was bunny-hopping out after pushing short. Wouldn't you need to be back and ready even faster when you flick than after a short push? I'm assuming at his level that flick is getting counterlooped much of the time, so I would think he would want to be even further back for the fourth ball if possible.

The sound on LTT90 is now repaired. We have fired our Executive Sound Technician, so this should never happen again!

This time I tried to not drag my right foot across the floor...