WTT Champions Frankfurt 2023

[Egon]

I do not know if he himself knows what his lesser qualities are but I have known for a long time what his shortcoming is and for attentive readers I have written it here several times, namely his reflex time especially in his BH > FH movement and with age and having developed more muscles it has not improved. I therefore fear for another top 3 in the future, I don't see it happening again.
It is also not what he will be able to change so 123. He is not there with innate let's say.
Other than that, he obviously remains a fantastic player.

The further he goes, the more difficult it will be for him to remain in the top 10. His main problem is the lack of tactical variations. His style of play is to block the reaction of incoming balls and use the speed and spin of the opponent. Yes, he does it great, but where is the tactics here? In addition to this, for some reason he gained muscle mass. It slowed him down a lot as a player. It’s great that he understands this himself now. If he doesn’t change anything, he will creep further and further down the rankings.

 

[zeio]

Once again, check out the Harimoto back at World Cup 2020. I have no clue what caused him to deviate, but it's likely along the line what LGL touched on in early 2018 - coaching. Hayata has been rotating between multiple coaches recently probably for that reason as well.

https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/harimoto-forehand.32060/post-426674

 

[ZFT]

Players level ebb and flow.

How short or long the cycle is depends on the player. Harimoto may have led us into his inner circle thinking, that currently, he is within a 6-8 month cycle to reach his next projected peak.

And when he peaks, he amazes. We know this.

Until then he is suspectible.

The rankings is not a good indicator as there can be a lag from results achieved during a “peak” and/or be skewed by 1 or 2 outlier results keeping or preventing a player from being positioned at their true current strength. Truls WTTC and the weaker continental ranking buff (Oceania/Americas/Africa) being examples.

I hope people can be mindful of not being too short sighted, which I admit is difficult on an internet forum!

 

[jammmail]

what people don't know is, the attitude of the players who is forever employed as a "clone/practice partner"

In CNT, it is the role of many in the team to make sure the team wins, and if it means that you need to sacrifice your career growth to become an imitation and or to help the main players to success, then so be it.

You won't find that kind of sacrifice any where else.
and with such sacrifices, they can actually go a long way to imitate who they need to clone, but of course, it will never be 100%, but if it is close enough

How does this actually work Tony? The ‘clone player’ do they have a coach to work on them and make them more clone-like and then they have practice with the CNT so are playing constantly - as you say must be massively dedicated. I take it the ‘clones’ go on to be coaches etc. how many players are cloned do you imagine?

 

[Egon]

Once again, check out the Harimoto back at World Cup 2020. I have no clue what caused him to deviate, but it's likely along the line what LGL touched on in early 2018 - coaching. Hayata has been rotating between multiple coaches recently probably for that reason as well.

https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/harimoto-forehand.32060/post-426674

Thank you, Zeio! Great interviews from a great era!

 

[blahness]

I do not know if he himself knows what his lesser qualities are but I have known for a long time what his shortcoming is and for attentive readers I have written it here several times, namely his reflex time especially in his BH > FH movement and with age and having developed more muscles it has not improved. I therefore fear for another top 3 in the future, I don't see it happening again.
It is also not what he will be able to change so 123. He is not there with innate let's say.
Other than that, he obviously remains a fantastic player.

Yep +1.

It is the same problem for all super close table players like Lin Yun Ju, Harimoto and Felix Lebrun. How do you solve for the fast balls coming to your middle or FH if you're that close to the table already? If you move farther from the table then you compromise on the BH speed which means that your specialty gets taken away. But the FH is inherently a larger, more powerful stroke. Felix probably has the best solution by reducing his body rotation to gain more speed in his FH counterloop - this is why he is fast from both BH and FH. Lin Yun Ju actually has a complete mid distance game so he's not afraid of getting into that when forced to do so after being switched to the FH. He is also fast af at the transition, able to switch super quickly even after anticipating wrong.

Harimoto has a potent FH counterloop and FH loopkill but he takes too much time to wind up so he often gets jammed there especially at the elbow area. It's not an easy problem to solve imo.

Imo it's too late for Harimoto to learn new tricks. He just needs to make his BH-FH transition way quicker with a lot of these multiball switching training against these type of balls designed to jam his FH. I haven't seen any training videos of him training against that yet but I've seen the CNT training this all the time.

 

[Shine]

How does this actually work Tony? The ‘clone player’ do they have a coach to work on them and make them more clone-like and then they have practice with the CNT so are playing constantly - as you say must be massively dedicated. I take it the ‘clones’ go on to be coaches etc. how many players are cloned do you imagine?

I think there may be a few clones in the team who just train and especially practise intensively with the top players during serious tournaments. But I don't think the "terrible" clone culture of yesteryears is the same as it today, that culture barely exists looking from outside, and it's obvious a lot has changed within the CNT.
I think it's less about grooming and more about player's capabilities + WTT participation rules restricting their usage in useful tournaments.
Let's be real, Sun Mingyang will not be restricted to a clone if she were a top 10 player in the Chinese team. Zhang Rui used to follow the team for Ito practise in the big events, but I've seen her play a lot of tournaments last year and this year, beat some of Japan's top players, and get a couple of wins and final appearances, she's playing at Taiyuan this week. That doesn't look like a clone to me, more like she's staked her claim and she's getting chances.
Besides, Xue Fei, Xu Yingbin, Xu Haidong, Liu Dingshuo are still on the team all these years- mostly redundant and unnecessary to the team's goals and have not been assigned "clone" positions. What's their job on the team then? I think the National team is kind enough to retain them and keep training them in the hope for a break out, they're still relatively young, until they want to leave. I'm sure they get decent financial compensation for their efforts.
Japan's choice to deal with this is to have 5-7 rotating "National" team members, and it definitely makes sense. The clubs manage the rest of the players.
Another problem is our tendency to see things from a zero sum pov, Instead of seeing it as solely "serving" the top players, it's actually more of a symbiotic relationship, the more they practise with ML, the more they pick up things that may be useful to their careers. WCQ and LGY attested to this benefit in their come up.
WTT only allowing between 4-7 per tournament is also a problem, this means players below top 10 in China are not gonna gain a lot of experience in the long run. Their evidence based play skill atrophies.
Players' capabilities and set-up seem to predispose them to these arrangements too, if someone uses the same kind of rubber/racket that a "threat" uses, obviously that person will be asked to help in practise, that's a no brainer, lefties will be asked to help when facing foreign lefties etc. I don't think China has cloned anybody for Yuan Jianan, she's definitely a threat, In older times, that would've been done long ago, cloning is also easier when there's just a couple players that are threats in the whole world, now almost every country has a threat to the Chinese, is it even feasible or rational to clone that?

 

[TensorBackhand]

How come other teams dont hire provincial players as clones of CNT players?

Obviously they are not as good, but they can still mimic

 

[ZFT]

Yuan Licen more forehand dominant in his actual matches though it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine him playing closer to LYJ in a training scenario particularly on the first 3-4 balls.

Look at his similarities to LYJ on:

- receive stance, using same racket ready position over table to judge distance
- high ball toss FH pendulum serve

 

[Shine]

Yeah that's true, but he rarely plays on the tour, and he's rarely practicing in the backstage of these tourneys, which reinforces my point.
Or Did anyone ( those that went to Frankfurt) see Yuan Licen practicing with WCQ and ML??

Yuan Licen more forehand dominant in his actual matches though it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine him playing closer to LYJ in a training scenario particularly on the first 3-4 balls.

Look at his similarities to LYJ on:

- receive stance, using same racket ready position over table to judge distance
- high ball toss FH pendulum serve

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

How does this actually work Tony? The ‘clone player’ do they have a coach to work on them and make them more clone-like and then they have practice with the CNT so are playing constantly - as you say must be massively dedicated. I take it the ‘clones’ go on to be coaches etc. how many players are cloned do you imagine?

CNT is a business, a company, there is a boss, and there is management and then you have the workers.

The management will identify top international threats and then study those individuals inside out.
The clone players would then learn and try and do everything like the target - from serving, service return and style of play.

How many players are clones? There is quite a lot.
Some times, the clones can even be very good players, like Hao Shuai back then was given the tasks of being China's Timo Boll.

I think the above is still acceptable, like Lin Yunju got in lefty training partners to work on his performance against WCQ, but what is crazy is, in the CNT, some players are told to change equipment to match those of the target.
I'm not going to guess if the worker has the right to tell management "No".

IE, the most famous is Wang Jianjun, who was tasked to be China's Ryu Seung min and changed his Cpen blade to Jpen. Since retiring from CNT, he changed back to Cpen and has been doing pretty well (with Cpen) in European leagues (in China, he is the call up guy if the main players want to train with "RSM")

There are also inverted players that had to become a Fukuhara Ai, or Mima Ito and had to change to pip outs to match them.

As I said, it is easy to get practice partners, ie, Lin can hire 10 or 20 if he had the budget for it,
but in CNT, it is national team - where TT is really an individual sport.
So you can say that if the team is around 20, the main players and "training partners" is likely 1 to 2 ratio.
So what is the purpose of the other 10~15 in the national team, other than the 5 to 10 that is on the world top 20 rankings.

Basically your future in the CNT is set, you are either going to be a main guy, or not.
or maybe there is a chance to "break through", or not.
LJK and LGY for example will never be going to the Olympics. They were the "chance to break through".

One of the Chinese coaches told me, if you are a chopper, you will never be a main player in CNT, at best, you will just be the only 1 (or 2) choppers in the A team to be a practice partner.

So take this to Europe, would Dima (Ma Long), Boll (WCQ) now become Dang Qiu's CNT clone players?
It is impossible right? even practice partner is impossible, yet alone clone player.

In Europe or anywhere else in the world, the national players are all individuals who want to play and I can't find another place where the national players will be asked to sacrfice theselves because the management feels they need to look after the main guys.

 

[backspacer]

The German Table Tennis Association has released videos around the tournament throughout the whole week. Few noteworthy points:

1. About that edge ball that was clearly side in Bernie's match against Chen Meng. The umpire said she saw edge and the assistant umpire heard the edge apparently. The replay can't be used as proof and they hope the hawkeye will be used in the future so the umpires' decisions are reinforced.

2. Claudia Herweg, president of the association, casually revealed the Champions tournament in Frankfurt will return next year, probably starting a week later than it did this year. They hope to do more WTT tournaments in Germany, maybe even a smash. She will be retiring however since she is fighting cancer.

3. A total of 151 volunteers helped out. That number is insane to me. Oldest volunteer 89 years old, lots of older volunteers actually. One guy told the host of the videos that Ma Long wasn't really keen on writing a lot of signatures after his match on Thursday only giving two, but the volunteer saw a small girl, pulled her up and Ma Long gave her an autograph. She was so happy she cried.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

3. A total of 151 volunteers helped out. That number is insane to me. Oldest volunteer 89 years old, lots of older volunteers actually. One guy told the host of the videos that Ma Long wasn't really keen on writing a lot of signatures after his match on Thursday only giving two, but the volunteer saw a small girl, pulled her up and Ma Long gave her an autograph. She was so happy she cried.

Do you know what he volunteers got in return? other than just free tshirts?

It was nice that the one volunteer helped with the autograph.
CNT Players do become sore losers, I think it got to do with the huge pressure and when they do loose, it becomes just way too personal.

I actually wondered, when did FZD go out with Timo Boll, was it before or after he loss.
all those "smiley face" is actually quite unusual for a player that loss to the wrong player

 

[backspacer]

Do you know what he volunteers got in return? other than just free tshirts?

It was nice that the one volunteer helped with the autograph.
CNT Players do become sore losers, I think it got to do with the huge pressure and when they do loose, it becomes just way too personal.

I actually wondered, when did FZD go out with Timo Boll, was it before or after he loss.
all those "smiley face" is actually quite unusual for a player that loss to the wrong player

Access to the venue basically. That was the benefit mentioned in the application. When I was there on Saturday a few were sitting in front of me and watched the matches when they didn't have anything to do. There was also a volunteer party Saturday evening and they got a group photo on the stage. The 89 years old volunteer said he has been helping out at sports events since 2006. I think Timo and FZD went there after his loss.

EDIT: There was a candy bar at the party. I would have been all over it 😅

 

[Metaxa]

Yep +1.

It is the same problem for all super close table players like Lin Yun Ju, Harimoto and Felix Lebrun. How do you solve for the fast balls coming to your middle or FH if you're that close to the table already? If you move farther from the table then you compromise on the BH speed which means that your specialty gets taken away. But the FH is inherently a larger, more powerful stroke. Felix probably has the best solution by reducing his body rotation to gain more speed in his FH counterloop - this is why he is fast from both BH and FH. Lin Yun Ju actually has a complete mid distance game so he's not afraid of getting into that when forced to do so after being switched to the FH. He is also fast af at the transition, able to switch super quickly even after anticipating wrong.

Harimoto has a potent FH counterloop and FH loopkill but he takes too much time to wind up so he often gets jammed there especially at the elbow area. It's not an easy problem to solve imo.

Imo it's too late for Harimoto to learn new tricks. He just needs to make his BH-FH transition way quicker with a lot of these multiball switching training against these type of balls designed to jam his FH. I haven't seen any training videos of him training against that yet but I've seen the CNT training this all the time.

This: Reflex test
and this: Batax-test

 

[jammmail]

CNT is a business, a company, there is a boss, and there is management and then you have the workers.

The management will identify top international threats and then study those individuals inside out.
The clone players would then learn and try and do everything like the target - from serving, service return and style of play.

How many players are clones? There is quite a lot.
Some times, the clones can even be very good players, like Hao Shuai back then was given the tasks of being China's Timo Boll.

I think the above is still acceptable, like Lin Yunju got in lefty training partners to work on his performance against WCQ, but what is crazy is, in the CNT, some players are told to change equipment to match those of the target.
I'm not going to guess if the worker has the right to tell management "No".

IE, the most famous is Wang Jianjun, who was tasked to be China's Ryu Seung min and changed his Cpen blade to Jpen. Since retiring from CNT, he changed back to Cpen and has been doing pretty well (with Cpen) in European leagues (in China, he is the call up guy if the main players want to train with "RSM")

There are also inverted players that had to become a Fukuhara Ai, or Mima Ito and had to change to pip outs to match them.

As I said, it is easy to get practice partners, ie, Lin can hire 10 or 20 if he had the budget for it,
but in CNT, it is national team - where TT is really an individual sport.
So you can say that if the team is around 20, the main players and "training partners" is likely 1 to 2 ratio.
So what is the purpose of the other 10~15 in the national team, other than the 5 to 10 that is on the world top 20 rankings.

Basically your future in the CNT is set, you are either going to be a main guy, or not.
or maybe there is a chance to "break through", or not.
LJK and LGY for example will never be going to the Olympics. They were the "chance to break through".

One of the Chinese coaches told me, if you are a chopper, you will never be a main player in CNT, at best, you will just be the only 1 (or 2) choppers in the A team to be a practice partner.

So take this to Europe, would Dima (Ma Long), Boll (WCQ) now become Dang Qiu's CNT clone players?
It is impossible right? even practice partner is impossible, yet alone clone player.

In Europe or anywhere else in the world, the national players are all individuals who want to play and I can't find another place where the national players will be asked to sacrfice theselves because the management feels they need to look after the main guys.

Thanks for the reply Tony!
Really interesting. I guess it works a little like sparring partners for boxers before a big fight.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Thanks for the reply Tony!
Really interesting. I guess it works a little like sparring partners for boxers before a big fight.

any time.
I guess your example is correct, but then, boxing is an individual sports - so its like Lin and his crew.
But now, we talking about CNT and all the best in the country comes together, but them 2/3 of the team becomes crew members for 1/3. I think that is what I'm trying to point out.
This is unique to only 1 country.

and of course, clone/mimic is the easy part and you as the main player don't need to worry about it. The management will sort all that out.

Lin is a lone warrior, fighting a whole team basically and so is many other players from different countries

 

[Metaxa]

any time.
I guess your example is correct, but then, boxing is an individual sports - so its like Lin and his crew.
But now, we talking about CNT and all the best in the country comes together, but them 2/3 of the team becomes crew members for 1/3. I think that is what I'm trying to point out.
This is unique to only 1 country.

and of course, clone/mimic is the easy part and you as the main player don't need to worry about it. The management will sort all that out.

Lin is a lone warrior, fighting a whole team basically and so is many other players from different countries

I had a thought exchange in another group about Lin's nationality. The other wrote that Lin was a Chinese. I messaged him that Lin is a Taiwanese. According to that man, Lin remains a Chinese, mentioning that a Cretan is also a Greek. An example that is not comparable at all in my opinion. According to me, Lin also sees himself as a Taiwanese.

 

[Shine]

CNT is a business, a company, there is a boss, and there is management and then you have the workers.

The management will identify top international threats and then study those individuals inside out.
The clone players would then learn and try and do everything like the target - from serving, service return and style of play.

How many players are clones? There is quite a lot.
Some times, the clones can even be very good players, like Hao Shuai back then was given the tasks of being China's Timo Boll.

I think the above is still acceptable, like Lin Yunju got in lefty training partners to work on his performance against WCQ, but what is crazy is, in the CNT, some players are told to change equipment to match those of the target.
I'm not going to guess if the worker has the right to tell management "No".

IE, the most famous is Wang Jianjun, who was tasked to be China's Ryu Seung min and changed his Cpen blade to Jpen. Since retiring from CNT, he changed back to Cpen and has been doing pretty well (with Cpen) in European leagues (in China, he is the call up guy if the main players want to train with "RSM")

There are also inverted players that had to become a Fukuhara Ai, or Mima Ito and had to change to pip outs to match them.

As I said, it is easy to get practice partners, ie, Lin can hire 10 or 20 if he had the budget for it,
but in CNT, it is national team - where TT is really an individual sport.
So you can say that if the team is around 20, the main players and "training partners" is likely 1 to 2 ratio.
So what is the purpose of the other 10~15 in the national team, other than the 5 to 10 that is on the world top 20 rankings.

Basically your future in the CNT is set, you are either going to be a main guy, or not.
or maybe there is a chance to "break through", or not.
LJK and LGY for example will never be going to the Olympics. They were the "chance to break through".

One of the Chinese coaches told me, if you are a chopper, you will never be a main player in CNT, at best, you will just be the only 1 (or 2) choppers in the A team to be a practice partner.

So take this to Europe, would Dima (Ma Long), Boll (WCQ) now become Dang Qiu's CNT clone players?
It is impossible right? even practice partner is impossible, yet alone clone player.

In Europe or anywhere else in the world, the national players are all individuals who want to play and I can't find another place where the national players will be asked to sacrfice theselves because the management feels they need to look after the main guys.

All cases that happened in the previous generations. Like I said, it's obvious that things have changed. How many players are clones in the current generation? And what foreign players are they mimicking?
What option do the other players have? No one is forcing them to be on the team, they can stay at the provincial level or play for other countries. There's always that. They see the incentives they gain from being on the national team, that's why they stay.
The current "cloning" in the team is nothing more than the kind that Lin is accessible to.
Choppers can't be a main player because they have a low ceiling. They'll inevitably get beaten at the top level. I don't know why that's shocking to anyone.

 

[longrange]

CNT is a business, a company, there is a boss, and there is management and then you have the workers.

It's kind of a normal evolution of the organization, Chinese got more professional attitude than anyone else. It's a little like complaining that they invented and used multiball for training when everyone else was training with a couple of balls and training partners. Both are innovative approaches on their levels.

The management will identify top international threats and then study those individuals inside out.
The clone players would then learn and try and do everything like the target - from serving, service return and style of play.

It looks like a normal approach in every kind of sport: to study and prepare to your opponent. Maybe it's a little exaggerated in TT, but it's their national sport and they have to compensate for the enormous pressure on the players.

No one seems to want to appreciate this: the pressure is enormous. You get on top and you are under constant scrutiny of the whole world. They study everyone? Ma Long is an open book for a decade and yet he manages to stay on top. And that's not even mentioning the pressure from the party and the duty to win Olympic medals.

So take this to Europe, would Dima (Ma Long), Boll (WCQ) now become Dang Qiu's CNT clone players?
It is impossible right? even practice partner is impossible, yet alone clone player.

Apples and oranges. A really bizzarre comparison. Why should Dima become DQ's partner? An unknown player from 1./2. Bundesliga — that would be fair.

In Europe or anywhere else in the world, the national players are all individuals who want to play and I can't find another place where the national players will be asked to sacrfice theselves because the management feels they need to look after the main guys.

The problem of Europe is that TT is not recognized as a worthy professional sport. No money, no national (for the international competitions that is) organization, no nothing. Apart from Germany (and maybe France now), national teams comprise 2-3-4 same people, which play till they are mid 30s-40 and that's all.

In such circumstances of course there are "individuals" achieving nothing. If a sport was considered worthwhile, something similar to the chinese organization would emerge immediately. I can come up with an example of cycling, where the team of "individuals" works on the star "sacrificing their career." Tough s**t, that's just their job.