Ayano vs Tawny Banh

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Tawny and the entire US Olympic team came down to practice at the Balboa club in San Diego. I wouldn't have remembered her at all but when I saw the name appear on youtube, I was reminded that I had seen her long before.

I think she was playing with a penholder named Gao Jun. Anybody know where she is now?

My impression is that back in 2000, USATT didn't have the Kou Lei type foreign import players, so the general level must have been much lower.
 
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Here's a bit of a unusual and quirky match. Ayano vs Tawny Banh. I actually saw Tawny play in person once when I was a child over 20 years go and was completely away from the sport the past 20 years. It's a bit surreal to see her play again, how quickly those years passed.
It is a fun match to watch. Sad that it is only best of three. I always feel that goes too quickly. But fun to watch nevertheless. And they both do really seem to be having a good time playing.

 
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Tawny and the entire US Olympic team came down to practice at the Balboa club in San Diego. I wouldn't have remembered her at all but when I saw the name appear on youtube, I was reminded that I had seen her long before.

I think she was playing with a penholder named Gao Jun. Anybody know where she is now?

My impression is that back in 2000, USATT didn't have the Kou Lei type foreign import players, so the general level must have been much lower.

That's so cool. I'm about to see Tawny right now, I'll mention this. Gao is the head coach at her own gym just a few miles from Tawny called California Table Tennis.

 
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It is a fun match to watch. Sad that it is only best of three. I always feel that goes too quickly. But fun to watch nevertheless. And they both do really seem to be having a good time playing.

Tawny is extremely rusty from competitive play, she was in good spirits but was hilariously sucking wind just after the warm ups. You can see she didn't receive serves very well and she was really mad at herself. She is so competitive. I hope she continues to play as she is still quite a monster, but 15 years of retirement had her pretty rusty and Ayano has been playing daily and competiting almost every weekend.

 
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I'm surprised you can own a club and not end up playing at least fairly regularly. If you love TT so much to own a club, why wouldn't you at least play basic matches once a week.
 
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Tawny is extremely rusty from competitive play, she was in good spirits but was hilariously sucking wind just after the warm ups. You can see she didn't receive serves very well and she was really mad at herself. She is so competitive. I hope she continues to play as she is still quite a monster, but 15 years of retirement had her pretty rusty and Ayano has been playing daily and competiting almost every weekend.

Yes, her serve returns looked a lot like mine. Where her mind knows she is not returning correctly, but her muscle memory isn't reacting correctly and making her hit the wrong shot.

 
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Tawny and the entire US Olympic team came down to practice at the Balboa club in San Diego. I wouldn't have remembered her at all but when I saw the name appear on youtube, I was reminded that I had seen her long before.

I think she was playing with a penholder named Gao Jun. Anybody know where she is now?

My impression is that back in 2000, USATT didn't have the Kou Lei type foreign import players, so the general level must have been much lower.

Gao Jun is a foreign import and she was playing for the US national team back then.

 
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I'm surprised you can own a club and not end up playing at least fairly regularly. If you love TT so much to own a club, why wouldn't you at least play basic matches once a week.

Tawny also runs the biggest sanctioned tournaments in southern california monthly and is a regional director of USATT tournament events so she has a lot on her plate to keep table tennis growing. She really is highly regarded in the LA area.

 
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I'm surprised you can own a club and not end up playing at least fairly regularly. If you love TT so much to own a club, why wouldn't you at least play basic matches once a week.
She may play without playing matches that are really competitive and, at that level, if you are not playing competitive matches, that might make it hard to have all of those more subtle skills honed up. They are playing at a decent level. At that level, you have to really be playing vs players your level regularly to keep the short game and return of serve skills all the way up to par.
 
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Tawny is extremely rusty from competitive play, she was in good spirits but was hilariously sucking wind just after the warm ups. You can see she didn't receive serves very well and she was really mad at herself. She is so competitive. I hope she continues to play as she is still quite a monster, but 15 years of retirement had her pretty rusty and Ayano has been playing daily and competiting almost every weekend.


I'm surprised you can own a club and not end up playing at least fairly regularly. If you love TT so much to own a club, why wouldn't you at least play basic matches once a week.

She may play without playing matches that are really competitive and, at that level, if you are not playing competitive matches, that might make it hard to have all of those more subtle skills honed up. They are playing at a decent level. At that level, you have to really be playing vs players your level regularly to keep the short game and return of serve skills all the way up to par.
@ ILuvPingPong: I am not quite sure why you gave an angry face to my comment when I was simply explaining to MZ how easy it is for someone who is as good as Tawny to not keep up her highest level if she is busy coaching or running a club.

There are not that many people who are as good as she has been. I see that as recently as 2018 she had a 2490+ USATT rating which is pretty darn good. The skills are still there. But if you don't play against 2500 level players consistently and train consistently, it makes sense that you might not win against a good 2300+ player. It is not really much of a drop in level to be honest. And clearly she is still really darn good.

So, as an adult with a lot of responsibilities, I could see how running a club and running tournaments could cause you to not be able to train enough to keep a 2500 level up. I am definitely not trying to say anything to disrespect Tawny or Ayano. They are both pretty darn good.

 
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@ ILuvPingPong: I am not quite sure why you gave an angry face to my comment when I was simply explaining to MZ how easy it is for someone who is as good as Tawny to not keep up her highest level if she is busy coaching or running a club.

There are not that many people who are as good as she has been. I see that as recently as 2018 she had a 2490+ USATT rating which is pretty darn good. The skills are still there. But if you don't play against 2500 level players consistently and train consistently, it makes sense that you might not win against a good 2300+ player. It is not really much of a drop in level to be honest. And clearly she is still really darn good.

So, as an adult with a lot of responsibilities, I could see how running a club and running tournaments could cause you to not be able to train enough to keep a 2500 level up. I am definitely not trying to say anything to disrespect Tawny or Ayano. They are both pretty darn good.

Tawny was 2500 in 2018? That's pretty high. I had the impression that Lily Zhang and this era far surpassed the 2000 era, but even Lily is only 2600 isn't she? So Tawny's peak was probably much earlier than 2018, so are they actually on par with each other?

 
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@ ILuvPingPong: I am not quite sure why you gave an angry face to my comment when I was simply explaining to MZ how easy it is for someone who is as good as Tawny to not keep up her highest level if she is busy coaching or running a club.

There are not that many people who are as good as she has been. I see that as recently as 2018 she had a 2490+ USATT rating which is pretty darn good. The skills are still there. But if you don't play against 2500 level players consistently and train consistently, it makes sense that you might not win against a good 2300+ player. It is not really much of a drop in level to be honest. And clearly she is still really darn good.

So, as an adult with a lot of responsibilities, I could see how running a club and running tournaments could cause you to not be able to train enough to keep a 2500 level up. I am definitely not trying to say anything to disrespect Tawny or Ayano. They are both pretty darn good.

Hey sorry Carl, the angry face was unintentional. I meant to do a thumbs up. 👍🏻 I'm new to the forum! Sorry for the confusion!

 
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Tawny was 2500 in 2018? That's pretty high. I had the impression that Lily Zhang and this era far surpassed the 2000 era, but even Lily is only 2600 isn't she? So Tawny's peak was probably much earlier than 2018, so are they actually on par with each other?

There is actually a gigantic world of difference between 2497 and 2600+. But someone who was at one point very high level can stay at a decent level.

Just for ideas, even though it sounds like 100-175 point difference that we are talking about above, lets just even numbers out, the difference between just barely 2500 and comfortably 2600 is a bigger difference than the difference between 1600 2000. As you get to the higher and higher levels, the difference becomes more stark.

From 1800 to 1900 is a bigger gap than from 1700 to 1800. From 1900 to 2000 is bigger than 1800-1900. From 2000 to 2100 is bigger than from 1900-2000 and then the gaps get exponentially bigger after that where it is hard to understand how much it takes to get from 2300 to 2400, from 2400-2500 and so on.
 
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That is from the USATT page for Tawny.
 
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Here's a bit of a unusual and quirky match. Ayano vs Tawny Banh. I actually saw Tawny play in person once when I was a child over 20 years go and was completely away from the sport the past 20 years. It's a bit surreal to see her play again, how quickly those years passed.

Nice!

I didn't even know they had played.

This is at the club where I play, LATTA, Tawny's the owner.

 
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