Tomokazu Harimoto wins men's singles. Mima Ito wins women's singles. What is going on?

A bit premature to ask but, did we have to ruin table tennis to save it?

A bit premature to ask but, did we have to ruin table tennis to save it?

Do you really think table tennis has been ruined? In what way? I prefer aggression and tactics to long rallies from mid-distance which are more about repeating a physical feat than it is about clever tactics or outsmarting your opponent; I may be in a minority camp here, but I think the 40+ ball has created a game that is more serve and attack driven, a game where retired great Ma Lin and his infamous aggression would be the norm not the rare and unusual exception.

There is a chinese coach stating that the japanese are using a more direct hit with the new ball. Just at the rebound. It is very fast and take the chinese by surprise. The ball has less spin more speed and ball often short on the table so it is more uncommun to chinese.

This hit home this year when I started taking lessons to get my game back and players told me things like. If you see they have trouble with chop to their backhand, or maybe a particular serve of mine (I have two or three different serves!!!! LOL) then don't give them anything else, except to mix it up ever so often. Upon first hearing this it seemed almost evil, at the very least ignoble. To take advantage of a weakness instead of winning with your strength.

Consider most typical offensive players to be like chess players who do large amounts of memorisation, and defensive players like chess players who take on the game as it is and "rely on their wits" to win. I don't think that this has changed much over the years.

This isn't new, though. Watch some of the slightly older players (Matsudaira, Niwa, etc., even Lee Sangsu) - they started playing like this way before the plastic ball came along. The women have been doing it also. Even Mizutani tries to play close to the table. Of course Harimoto is doing it at a somewhat higher level at the moment. He's still only ranked 10th at the moment, though (behind Boll and Ovtcharov, and Niwa and Lee).

Iskandar

Great for Japanese table tennis, should give them a real boost!

It does make me wonder though... if this were to happen to say Australia or USA, where the sport of TT has a quite low profile compared to other sports, what would happen? Would it give a sudden boost to the sport? I guess funding would get a boost as the country would have a real chance of getting future medals... but not sure what else...

I honestly think it would do nothing to the national recognition of TT in Oz as there is no vested interests that have large investments in the sport. The US would I imagine be similar although the USATT do have some decent investors in Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and they have a much better marketing approach to anything i've seen locally. Also, 300 million people vs 23 million in population. Market size makes a difference here too.