says
editing a big TTD Team episode... stay tuned 👀
says
editing a big TTD Team episode... stay tuned 👀
Well-Known Member
Administrator
Ok after Table Tennis Talk and Ourselves have looked at the posts from the Official WTTC Prize Draw 2011and we came up with the final 5 posts for each forum, which are below:
TTD:
scylla24
TToski
Carl Horowitz
lgreggs
bollforte94
TTT:
Hellraiser
Harry Belafonte
Concretepong
Rathbeinfreo
TheMoose
There are some outstanding posts including bollforte94, TToski, Concretepong, Ratherbeingfreo and others so we decided to draw from the ten and the winner was drawn out of the hat by myself and Dave (TTT)... TheMoose was the winner over at the tabletennistalk forum.
Congratulations TheMoose. The other competition TableTennisDaily is running is with vinqui, enter today before the 30[SUP]th[/SUP] June 2011 HERE
It must be said that the most common idea and certainly the way forward to promote the Sport of Table Tennis is to use the media in every form possible but as ever this relies on everyone who is involved in the process to make some effort to do so. This has to include players, coaches, and of course the major strength the ITTF and the local governing bodies of each country.
Hope everyone enjoyed the World Table Tennis Championships 2011. Big thanks to everyone who entered. Below are the top 5 TTD members posts.
scylla24
In terms of the sport itself, I think it already is quite action packed, especially since now games are played to 11. I think what is really needed more to make table tennis more popular is a widespread effort to have more tables available to the public, have more clubs where you can play etc. Everyone who actually gets a chance to play table tennis a little love it. So its not a question of whether table tennis is fun enough. But whereas, its easy to have a flat field where everyone can run around in order to play soccer, its much harder to make a table and racket available to everyone. It would be great to have an outreach program that supplied cheap tables and rackets to community centers, such as the YMCA in the US or the equivalent. I think most fair sized cities in the US have at least one table tennis club that meets regularly a week, so getting some publicity for that, and inviting more people to play would definitely make table tennis a more popular sport. Right now, other than in China, table tennis is a pretty minor sport, which is too bad. Another way to get people to like it is maybe to have it more widespread in physical education classes at school.
TTOski
I think Werner Schlager said something good in his interview on this page. China is putting much more people and money in the sport. Especially the Europeans have to do something about this! We have to stream Table Tennis much more through the media. We need skilled coaches from all over the world to train clubs. A good start is to go to schools and create "tabletenniscamps" and give them a good offer at their spare time. We need to set up a lot of tables in parks etc. Maybe we can bring up some legends to show the schools an exhibition show and let the kids try with them.(Jean Michael Saive has been a true inspiration for kids in Belgium.) My conclusion is: More money, more streaming at the media, more skilled coaches, and maybe summer camps. I think this would help us Europeans a lot to become a nation which can match the Chinese in the future.
lgreggs
I feel that results of table tennis matches should be published in newspapers. National newspaper sport sections are very popular and this would raise the profile of the sport by letting people know it is happening.
Also the sport needs to be televised more. I think table tennis is extremely exciting to watch because it is so explosive. Coverage should be from more of a side angle on the corner of the table. I think this angle is better to watch because it displays how dynamic the game is. I think games such as the champions league should be televised. They also need to be televised at sensible time; not at 2 in the morning lol.
Table tennis also needs big crowds that cheer and get excited. Bigger events need to encourage larger crowds and also the crowd to get behind a player they are supporting!
CCHHHOOO!!!
bollforte94
I think Table Tennis offers good fundamentals too be media friendly, exciting and entertaining. It is very fast, actually the fastest racket sport regarding of reaction time. But why is Table Tennis not broadcasted on TV ?
I think because laymen do not understand the game. They don't know how complex every stroke is. They don't know how much spin is in the ball and how difficult it is to read the spin and to answer with the right stroke. If a layman saw table tennis he would only see two supposed professional players who miss the ball every five seconds.
But I believe rule changes will not help too, for example to increase the ball to 44mm. The game would become slower but laymen would still not understand the spin.
In China everyone knows the rotation of the ball. That's why so many can watch Table Tennis there. In Europe only the real players understand the spin and comprehend the pro's. In addition to that too many people in Europe think that Table tennis is no sport. They think you don't have too move and table tennis is not exhausting. They only have the typical image in their mind: a table in the basement
But how can we resolve the ignorant?
This question over challenges me
You can't force people to play and to understand table tennis and the ITTF has no money to start ad campaigns ... I think the world needs a player who can beat the Chinese with a win rate of 70%. If Boll won the WTTC 2011 a boom would arose.
I am sure about that. Even Rossi and Fetzner aroused a little boom in Germany and that was only a double title
In Short:
Problem: People do not understand the game
We need a person who can beat the Chinese and can win WTTC or Olympia.
But all in all, we should be happy with this situation. There are still some sport that even don't have a live stream or so many great youtube videos.. and we will have 3 live streams + a chat room for WTTC 2011. This is great!
Carl Horowitz
The question: "How would you make the sport of Table Tennis more media friendly and exciting to the public", is a challenging one to address. In the U. S. A. people have been trying to figure out how to make a sport like soccer (football for people not from the U. S. A.) have more of a media presence and in the U. S. there is a similar problem. I think the issue needs to be addressed in a few ways. The first is getting more people playing the sport. When people have more of an awareness of the sport and the subtleties of the sport, it is natural that they start watching more matches. When I first started playing more seriously almost two years ago, I did not really understand what I was looking at when I saw top players in a match. I could not really tell the difference between the real thing and those staged matches where there are longer rallies and one player is smashing the ball while another player is playing defense and the two players are putting on a show. Now I can.
I play at a club where people play and train seriously, but I also like to play at some local bars that have tables. Often, at these local pubs, regular people who think they are good because they never saw anyone who knew how to play, will see me playing and think they can beat me. If I am nice to them and do not play hard, they will walk away thinking that they actually had a chance and only lost by a few points. If I play a little harder they may end up being upset or frustrated by the realization that they have no chance. Often what I do with this kind of player, rather than just playing hard and leaving them without any points, or just being nice to them, I will play a certain amount of the points where I am being nice and then I will show them how, using different spins, I can get them to hit the ball up (heavy topspin), to the left or right (sidespin) or down (backspin). And then I will show them how I can use those spins to cause them to set it up so I can put the ball away on them. Then I will play nice again. The education ends up making them realize that there is more to the game than they originally realized. And I think that is one of the big issues in getting people to watch these kinds of events.
Someone who has not played enough Table Tennis to understand some of the subtleties of the sport, and I think it has more subtleties than any other sport out there (I am a yoga teacher - there is a lot of subtlety in what you are doing under the surface in yoga, I was a professional in-line skater, there is a lot of subtlety in how you generate speed and hight on a ramp). But if people play, they will naturally want to watch and see what the best players in the world are doing. And if you understand some of the subtleties of the sport, more of what you see will make sense. I think, sometimes when people watch matches with pros, they wonder why a player will miss a shot that looks like it should have been easy. As you start understanding how spin is used in the sport, you understand what happened when a player goes to hit a shot and the ball hits the net or goes off to the left or right. And instead of seeing that as one player messing up, you start seeing the skill and deception of the other player.
So the question ends up being: how to get more people playing this amazing sport at a higher level?
The first issue would be getting Table Tennis into schools, as part of the physical education program. This would take some work getting people to realize the benefits of bringing a low cost sport like Table Tennis into the school systems. One angle that could help this initiative is the high level thinking, processing and problem solving that is part of reading an opponent's spin and countering it. This is a sport where thinking and using your intelligence is at least as important as physical abilities.
Another thing would be, making it so there was more access to facilities to play in, outside of schools. When I was skating there was a large movement to get local governments to help fund and build free outdoor skateparks, in public parks, so that people had places to skate. Creating places like that (perhaps not outdoors with Table Tennis) which provide a forum for people to play would be really useful.
The next thing would be to increase the level of play of the top players of countries other than China. China puts a lot of money into the sport and wants to be the best in the world. They have earned the fact that 5 of the top 6 players are from China and 6 of the top 10. In an interview I listened to, Ma Lin said that Europe would never catch up to China as long as they mainly practiced in clubs rather than having teams. The Chinese team works together to get better. China does not care which player wins the World Championships as long as the winner (men, women and team) is from China. If they get their way, they would like the semifinals to be an all China affair as well. If different countries worked for that kind of team effort, their level of play would be more likely to improve but that might also take some government involvement.
I know the top players in the U. S. A. are not even on the charts as far as world ranking is concerned. The U. S. lags so far behind the rest of the world as far as level of play, and a lot of people in this country do not see Table Tennis as a real sport so much as a game. This could be changed with a little government involvement and some real, organized training for the top prospects.
With that, events at these local centers, where people are playing, and at schools with the top professionals, more tournaments, and media involvement, so that the kids playing in school see top athletes playing and want to see more, and the top athletes have a forum for improving and a reason to want to increase their skill level, these things would go together to increase the demand for media coverage of the sport, and increase the desirability for corporate sponsors and commercial sales on televised events.
Sorry this is so long but I do think it would take a large effort in several directions to increase public interest in different venues for Table Tennis to be viewed and enjoyed, through the media by the public.
TTD:
scylla24
TToski
Carl Horowitz
lgreggs
bollforte94
TTT:
Hellraiser
Harry Belafonte
Concretepong
Rathbeinfreo
TheMoose
There are some outstanding posts including bollforte94, TToski, Concretepong, Ratherbeingfreo and others so we decided to draw from the ten and the winner was drawn out of the hat by myself and Dave (TTT)... TheMoose was the winner over at the tabletennistalk forum.
Congratulations TheMoose. The other competition TableTennisDaily is running is with vinqui, enter today before the 30[SUP]th[/SUP] June 2011 HERE
It must be said that the most common idea and certainly the way forward to promote the Sport of Table Tennis is to use the media in every form possible but as ever this relies on everyone who is involved in the process to make some effort to do so. This has to include players, coaches, and of course the major strength the ITTF and the local governing bodies of each country.
Hope everyone enjoyed the World Table Tennis Championships 2011. Big thanks to everyone who entered. Below are the top 5 TTD members posts.
scylla24
In terms of the sport itself, I think it already is quite action packed, especially since now games are played to 11. I think what is really needed more to make table tennis more popular is a widespread effort to have more tables available to the public, have more clubs where you can play etc. Everyone who actually gets a chance to play table tennis a little love it. So its not a question of whether table tennis is fun enough. But whereas, its easy to have a flat field where everyone can run around in order to play soccer, its much harder to make a table and racket available to everyone. It would be great to have an outreach program that supplied cheap tables and rackets to community centers, such as the YMCA in the US or the equivalent. I think most fair sized cities in the US have at least one table tennis club that meets regularly a week, so getting some publicity for that, and inviting more people to play would definitely make table tennis a more popular sport. Right now, other than in China, table tennis is a pretty minor sport, which is too bad. Another way to get people to like it is maybe to have it more widespread in physical education classes at school.
TTOski
I think Werner Schlager said something good in his interview on this page. China is putting much more people and money in the sport. Especially the Europeans have to do something about this! We have to stream Table Tennis much more through the media. We need skilled coaches from all over the world to train clubs. A good start is to go to schools and create "tabletenniscamps" and give them a good offer at their spare time. We need to set up a lot of tables in parks etc. Maybe we can bring up some legends to show the schools an exhibition show and let the kids try with them.(Jean Michael Saive has been a true inspiration for kids in Belgium.) My conclusion is: More money, more streaming at the media, more skilled coaches, and maybe summer camps. I think this would help us Europeans a lot to become a nation which can match the Chinese in the future.
lgreggs
I feel that results of table tennis matches should be published in newspapers. National newspaper sport sections are very popular and this would raise the profile of the sport by letting people know it is happening.
Also the sport needs to be televised more. I think table tennis is extremely exciting to watch because it is so explosive. Coverage should be from more of a side angle on the corner of the table. I think this angle is better to watch because it displays how dynamic the game is. I think games such as the champions league should be televised. They also need to be televised at sensible time; not at 2 in the morning lol.
Table tennis also needs big crowds that cheer and get excited. Bigger events need to encourage larger crowds and also the crowd to get behind a player they are supporting!
CCHHHOOO!!!
bollforte94
I think Table Tennis offers good fundamentals too be media friendly, exciting and entertaining. It is very fast, actually the fastest racket sport regarding of reaction time. But why is Table Tennis not broadcasted on TV ?
I think because laymen do not understand the game. They don't know how complex every stroke is. They don't know how much spin is in the ball and how difficult it is to read the spin and to answer with the right stroke. If a layman saw table tennis he would only see two supposed professional players who miss the ball every five seconds.
But I believe rule changes will not help too, for example to increase the ball to 44mm. The game would become slower but laymen would still not understand the spin.
In China everyone knows the rotation of the ball. That's why so many can watch Table Tennis there. In Europe only the real players understand the spin and comprehend the pro's. In addition to that too many people in Europe think that Table tennis is no sport. They think you don't have too move and table tennis is not exhausting. They only have the typical image in their mind: a table in the basement
But how can we resolve the ignorant?
This question over challenges me
I am sure about that. Even Rossi and Fetzner aroused a little boom in Germany and that was only a double title
In Short:
Problem: People do not understand the game
We need a person who can beat the Chinese and can win WTTC or Olympia.
But all in all, we should be happy with this situation. There are still some sport that even don't have a live stream or so many great youtube videos.. and we will have 3 live streams + a chat room for WTTC 2011. This is great!
Carl Horowitz
The question: "How would you make the sport of Table Tennis more media friendly and exciting to the public", is a challenging one to address. In the U. S. A. people have been trying to figure out how to make a sport like soccer (football for people not from the U. S. A.) have more of a media presence and in the U. S. there is a similar problem. I think the issue needs to be addressed in a few ways. The first is getting more people playing the sport. When people have more of an awareness of the sport and the subtleties of the sport, it is natural that they start watching more matches. When I first started playing more seriously almost two years ago, I did not really understand what I was looking at when I saw top players in a match. I could not really tell the difference between the real thing and those staged matches where there are longer rallies and one player is smashing the ball while another player is playing defense and the two players are putting on a show. Now I can.
I play at a club where people play and train seriously, but I also like to play at some local bars that have tables. Often, at these local pubs, regular people who think they are good because they never saw anyone who knew how to play, will see me playing and think they can beat me. If I am nice to them and do not play hard, they will walk away thinking that they actually had a chance and only lost by a few points. If I play a little harder they may end up being upset or frustrated by the realization that they have no chance. Often what I do with this kind of player, rather than just playing hard and leaving them without any points, or just being nice to them, I will play a certain amount of the points where I am being nice and then I will show them how, using different spins, I can get them to hit the ball up (heavy topspin), to the left or right (sidespin) or down (backspin). And then I will show them how I can use those spins to cause them to set it up so I can put the ball away on them. Then I will play nice again. The education ends up making them realize that there is more to the game than they originally realized. And I think that is one of the big issues in getting people to watch these kinds of events.
Someone who has not played enough Table Tennis to understand some of the subtleties of the sport, and I think it has more subtleties than any other sport out there (I am a yoga teacher - there is a lot of subtlety in what you are doing under the surface in yoga, I was a professional in-line skater, there is a lot of subtlety in how you generate speed and hight on a ramp). But if people play, they will naturally want to watch and see what the best players in the world are doing. And if you understand some of the subtleties of the sport, more of what you see will make sense. I think, sometimes when people watch matches with pros, they wonder why a player will miss a shot that looks like it should have been easy. As you start understanding how spin is used in the sport, you understand what happened when a player goes to hit a shot and the ball hits the net or goes off to the left or right. And instead of seeing that as one player messing up, you start seeing the skill and deception of the other player.
So the question ends up being: how to get more people playing this amazing sport at a higher level?
The first issue would be getting Table Tennis into schools, as part of the physical education program. This would take some work getting people to realize the benefits of bringing a low cost sport like Table Tennis into the school systems. One angle that could help this initiative is the high level thinking, processing and problem solving that is part of reading an opponent's spin and countering it. This is a sport where thinking and using your intelligence is at least as important as physical abilities.
Another thing would be, making it so there was more access to facilities to play in, outside of schools. When I was skating there was a large movement to get local governments to help fund and build free outdoor skateparks, in public parks, so that people had places to skate. Creating places like that (perhaps not outdoors with Table Tennis) which provide a forum for people to play would be really useful.
The next thing would be to increase the level of play of the top players of countries other than China. China puts a lot of money into the sport and wants to be the best in the world. They have earned the fact that 5 of the top 6 players are from China and 6 of the top 10. In an interview I listened to, Ma Lin said that Europe would never catch up to China as long as they mainly practiced in clubs rather than having teams. The Chinese team works together to get better. China does not care which player wins the World Championships as long as the winner (men, women and team) is from China. If they get their way, they would like the semifinals to be an all China affair as well. If different countries worked for that kind of team effort, their level of play would be more likely to improve but that might also take some government involvement.
I know the top players in the U. S. A. are not even on the charts as far as world ranking is concerned. The U. S. lags so far behind the rest of the world as far as level of play, and a lot of people in this country do not see Table Tennis as a real sport so much as a game. This could be changed with a little government involvement and some real, organized training for the top prospects.
With that, events at these local centers, where people are playing, and at schools with the top professionals, more tournaments, and media involvement, so that the kids playing in school see top athletes playing and want to see more, and the top athletes have a forum for improving and a reason to want to increase their skill level, these things would go together to increase the demand for media coverage of the sport, and increase the desirability for corporate sponsors and commercial sales on televised events.
Sorry this is so long but I do think it would take a large effort in several directions to increase public interest in different venues for Table Tennis to be viewed and enjoyed, through the media by the public.
