TT pet peeves?

[Shuki]

Haha I like the badass basement player scenario. I played one of these players pretty recently.

Unfortunately I think I'm the "chatter". I often get distracted with others approaching me or asking for my help or just asking me questions in general. I completely forget I'm in a club match and chat my mouth off.

Just yesterday I was playing a guy named tien and then a player named duc who's between 2000-2050 was asking me equipment questions and by the time I finished talking to duc, tien was nowhere to be seen.

I blame my ADHD but in reality I'm sure it's a lack of social awareness on my part


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[edgy]

My pet peeve is the guy who tries to win warmups or goes too hard in warmups, which from this thread looks to be a universal pet peeve. We have a few guys at our office that do this. It's like come on guys, all I want to do is keep the ball on the table and get loosened up. You sending every FH loop off of the end of the table or every BH loop into the net is not helping .

 

[pgpg]

Haha I like the badass basement player scenario. I played one of these players pretty recently.

Unfortunately I think I'm the "chatter". I often get distracted with others approaching me or asking for my help or just asking me questions in general. I completely forget I'm in a club match and chat my mouth off.

Just yesterday I was playing a guy named tien and then a player named duc who's between 2000-2050 was asking me equipment questions and by the time I finished talking to duc, tien was nowhere to be seen.

I blame my ADHD but in reality I'm sure it's a lack of social awareness on my part

If I was in Tien's shoes, both you and Duc would end up on my pet peeve list: one for thinking it's OK to interrupt a match and the other for letting it happen. As you correctly guessed it sends a message to Tien that he is not worthy of your attention, so I don't blame him for disappearing. That's just rude, man.

 

[NextLevel]

I read a lot of complaints about players not picking up balls. One of the things higher rated players need to realize is that as you become a better player, you become more ball sensitive. Lower rated players literally cannot sense the ball the same way higher rated players do. So while a higher rated player can tell his focus has gone to another ball in the area and locate it, a lower rated player can't. Hopefully, this will help you cut some people slack when they don't pick up your ball.

 

[NextLevel]

With all this talk about what annoys us, I'd like to take out a little gem by Ross Bentley in his Ultimate Speed Secrets book. It's for race car drivers, but I'm sure you can see the relevance to much of any sport.

"Many drivers become too focused on what their competitors are doing. They're constantly looking at what the competition is doing to their cars, at how they're driving a particular corner and watching the mirrors to keep them behind.

Instead, if they would put that much focus and concentration on their own car and driving; they would be so far ahead they would never have to worry about the competition.

Don't worry about the competition. If you're getting 100 percent out of yourself, there is not much else you can do about the competition anyway. If you don't win, there is not much you can do other than improve your car's performance level or work at raising your own 100 percent. After all, your 100 percent today may be only 90 percent six months from now, because your technique has improved. And you can always improve."


I think there's a good reason why as the level gets higher, people are generally not that much bothered by many of the things said here.

While this has a good point, race car driving is like golf, where most of what other people are doing only impacts your optimal strategy so much - it is like dancing with yourself. In TT, just about everything you do is based on what the opponent is doing and when they win you lose and vice versa. So you can't quite focus on yourself without relating to what the opponent is doing. In fact, as your game gets better and better with technique, your focus turns more and more to how to best counter the other player.

 

[NextLevel]

I have only one pet peeve that drives me crazier than anything else. I am playing a point and in the middle of my shot, someone screams in celebration on anguish towards my table from the next table when I am about to hit the ball.

COME ON!!!!!

 

[OldschoolPenholder]

Oh, a pet peeve about myself... while in the middle of a point, another table's ball comes over... do i call "let" or do i play the point out? Sometimes the other table's player will come over to pick the ball up themselves, even while the point on my table is in play

More often than not, i play the point out and lose it and think to myself, i should've called let ... lol

 

[Archosaurus]

While this has a good point, race car driving is like golf, where most of what other people are doing only impacts your optimal strategy so much - it is like dancing with yourself. In TT, just about everything you do is based on what the opponent is doing and when they win you lose and vice versa. So you can't quite focus on yourself without relating to what the opponent is doing. In fact, as your game gets better and better with technique, your focus turns more and more to how to best counter the other player.

I believe that Ross was talking more in a meta-sense when he referred to "what others are doing". Although I understand what you mean: you can't indeed just ignore your opponent in TT.