United States Smash 2025, Las Vegas, 7/3-13

[Tinykin]

1. Both.
2. The first point is about the ball toss and since visibility is only at contact, the ball can even be tossed behind you and then exposed only at contact. The ref has to tell the difference from the perspective of the receiver in your point. There is no reason according to your desire for only visibility at contact for the toss to even be visible to the receiver.
3. Of course it is more subjective. Again, I have not said you are wrong, I have said I disagree. The main point that the current rules and restrictions try to enforce is to prevent any part of the body from shielding the ball from the receiver. This is relatively easy to judge from the sidelines by ensuring that there are no body parts in front of the ball at contact. But once you make visibility only at contact the rule, it is harder to use this rule of thumb because obscuring is possible at any time, but ensuring it is only not at contact is something very hard to determine from the chair and the common excuse of umpires. If they just enforced the rules they were trained to enforce, there would be more calls, players would just not like it.

Even with the hand, the hand is a body part in front of the ball, it is easy to call once one is aware. After the toss, the hand is not allowed to be in the contact area between the contact and the net. Easy to enforce from the umpire chair.

My main point here is that I do not support going to a rule that is very hard to enforce well without tech and I prefer the current system to it, even if umpires do not have the will to enforce it because no one will ever enforce serve calls in club matches from the umpire seat if left to strictly at contact, while behind the body is much easier to judge, especially after a complaint from the receiver.

I get your disagreement. Good people disagree all the time.

You guys are not being fair to the rule makers.
It is very difficult devising serve rules that are fit for purpose. It takes time. The first writing of the rule was only 120years (or so) ago. Definitely too short a period to get it right.

 

[Shine]

MS R32
Tanaka 3-2 Moregard (5) (10, 10, -4, -6, 12)
G5 25 TO for Tanaka, 55 TO for Moregard, 56, 76, 78, 88 no side edge for Moregard, 98 down-the-line serve for Tanaka, 910, 1010, 1011, 1111, 1211 slight net for Tanaka, 1212, 1412
Moregard gets eliminated again in R32 of GS after SGP GS 2022 and 2025. His worst GS result is R64 at Saudi Smash 2024.

Tanaka: I'm your senior when it comes to catching WCQ.

The Tanaka from ATTC 2023 is here. A very calm and intelligent player. Probably even higher than Shinozuka when it comes to reading the game. Must've studied Togami's loss in detail. His overall stats in 2024 were not shabby.

https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/wtt-contender-skopje-2025-jun-9-15.37408/post-528017


https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/wtt-star-contender-chennai-2025.36921/post-516206


田中老师vs莫雷加德 (Tanaka-sensei vs Moregard)
https://tieba.baidu.com/p/9859350974
渣男渣女严打 田中老师这么猛的吗？以前没发现。比宇田像小透明一样
IP属地:四川来自Android客户端1楼2025-07-10 05:58回复
(Is Tanaka-sensei so fierce? I didn't realize it before. He was more transparent than Uda)

张本mo和 破遮理论第一人vs奥运破遮之神
IP属地:重庆来自Android客户端2楼2025-07-10 06:00回复
(GOAT in anti-hidden-serve theory vs Olympic god of anti-hidden-serve)

贴吧用户_Q9WQaMW 田中前几站被欧男干成人机这场竟然这么猛
IP属地:美国来自iPhone客户端3楼2025-07-10 06:00回复
(Tanaka was raped by European men to the point of NPC a few stops before yet he is so fierce here)

諪狁 这就是jtta最好用的脑子吗，田中送走小莫
IP属地:贵州来自Android客户端17楼2025-07-10 06:24回复
(Is this the best brain JTTA has to offer? Tanaka sends off Little Mo)

（yuuruoufy 一旦对方违规发球，就自动触发田中老师的被动技能了
IP属地:江西来自iPhone客户端30楼2025-07-10 06:35回复
(Once the opponent serves illegally, the passive skill of Tanaka-sensei gets automatically activated)

林诗栋（贴着油油版） 田中老师专治回抛
IP属地:辽宁来自Android客户端31楼2025-07-10 06:36回复
(Tanaka-sensei hard-counters wide toss)

秋山澪 破遮第一人还得是田中老师
IP属地:广东来自iPhone客户端33楼2025-07-10 06:37回复
(GOAT of anti-hidden-serve has gotta be Tanaka-sensei)

潇洒疯一回 莫雷那发球有问题，澳门世界杯要是不用发球弄高茨，估计就栽高茨手上了
IP属地:山东来自Android客户端35楼2025-07-10 06:40收起回复
(More's serve is problematic. If he hadn't used the serve to get Gauzy at the World Cup in Macau, he would have probably fallen at the hands of Gauzy)

篠塚大登（最水世冠版 教授下一轮打大布，有机会吗
IP属地:湖北来自iPhone客户端38楼2025-07-10 06:48收起回复
(Big B next for Professor, any chance?)
扬帆-远航: 我看没机会，大布状态好的狠，连续两轮都是零封对手
2025-7-10 07:00回复
(I don't think so. Big B is in fantastic form, shutting out his opponents in the previous 2 rounds)
雨果（最强外协版）: 大布上一轮流鼻血中暑了，而且大布也回抛，估计会被田中制裁
2025-7-10 07:00回复
(Big B was bleeding in the nose and has heat stroke, and Big B also has wide toss, I guess he will get sanctioned by Tanaka)
雨果（最强外协版）: 回复 篠塚大登（最水世冠版 :触发田中抗魔被动，不愧是日男里最强抗魔机制人
(Activated Tanaka's anti-magic passive skill. No wonder he is the strongest anti-magic mechanism-player on JNT)

Funny how some people here used to wax lyrical about Truls' serve was so clean. A lot of European players do not have the clean serve that you think they have.

 

[pongfugrasshopper]

Retiring?

Unlikely for the time being from her interviews (like I said 2025 was going to be inconsequential here and here), but an inevitable topic at the end of the LA cycle not just for her, but Ito and Hayata as well.

We'll have to wait and see, but we won't be seeing Miu anytime soon at WTT events as she hasn't signed up for anything while her compatriots are quite active. She's currently 8th in world rankings of the Japanese women, and one really good tournament from Yokoi could put Hirano in 9th place. [Edit: Not only Yokoi, but Hitomi Sato is active and expect her to win WTT Feeder Spokane]. Though we are far away from 2028, even current ranking matters because you need to be at least within reach of top 4 to get invited to the 6 Champions events per year and top 6 to be invited to Grand Smashes. She's also stated that she will only attend WTT if she feels up to it (or something like that). Sounds like she's not that motivated by WTT. That's fine. I fully understand and agree her mental health is of utmost importance. But the practicality of that and making the Olympic and World Championship teams do not mix well. She's enjoying and doing well in Chinese Super League as well as T-League so in that sense she's not retiring from table tennis.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

So no, obscuring the flight path of the ball without obscuring the contact point makes little to no difference to play.

it makes a difference,

ball hiding behind the head or body, and then "clear" contact is the tricks everyone is using.
the only problem is, it is getting worse.

the difference it makes is, the ball disappears, and then appears "all of a sudden" and then contact.
If you think that doesn't make a difference, then I need to you train the pros I manage.

 

[zeio]

From dry ice (for effects) falling from the roof during the match between Bardet and Walther to a leaky roof during the match between LSD and Feng Yi-Hsin...

美国大满贯真是草台班子聚会了 (US Smash is really a gathering of amateurs)
https://tieba.baidu.com/p/9860467977
米少女壮士 与此同时隔壁一家casino失火了
IP属地:江苏来自iPhone客户端2楼2025-07-10 15:02回复
(At the same time, a fire broke out in the casino next door)

你二眔爷 老美跟当年的大清末年差不多了
IP属地:湖北3楼2025-07-10 15:04回复
(The US is roughly the same as it was in the final years of the Great Qing)

何求美人折☘️ 林诗栋说漏水他从小习惯了
IP属地:福建来自Android客户端5楼2025-07-10 16:48回复
(LSD says a leaky roof makes him feel right at home [Hainan is a coastal province like Florida])

HimHer 前段时间 kk 回海南训练的时候，乒乓球场地不就在漏水吗，这下看懂了
IP属地:安徽来自Android客户端6楼2025-07-10 16:59收起回复
(When KK went back to Hainan for training some time ago, the table tennis arena was leaking, right? Now I get it)
皇朝季孺: 回复 HimHer :低情商：训练环境恶劣 高情商：提前适应场地
2025-7-10 19:38回复
(Low EQ: Poor training environment High EQ: Adapt to the venue in advance)

 

[jar]

it makes a difference,

ball hiding behind the head or body, and then "clear" contact is the tricks everyone is using.
the only problem is, it is getting worse.

the difference it makes is, the ball disappears, and then appears "all of a sudden" and then contact.
If you think that doesn't make a difference, then I need to you train the pros I manage.

Hello Tony,

If you track the ball trajectory from the moment it leaves the hand, are you not able to tell where it will land on the racket, regardless if it is hidden at some point during the trajectory?

Arent we taught, for serve returns, to focus on the moment the racket hits the ball?

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Hello Tony,

If you track the ball trajectory from the moment it leaves the hand, are you not able to tell where it will land on the racket, regardless if it is hidden at some point during the trajectory?

Arent we taught, for serve returns, to focus on the moment the racket hits the ball?

theory and practical is two different things
the ball disappears and reappears
some can adapt in time, some maybe takes a chance.

of course hidden contact is the worse.
and there is a border line on hidden flight and hidden contact versus how much is visible, and when it gets visible.

everything happens so fast, and the less information for your eye/brain to process, the worse for you.

 

[NextLevel]

Funny how some people here used to wax lyrical about Truls' serve was so clean. A lot of European players do not have the clean serve that you think they have.

Truls hardly hides the ball and if you watch the serve where he was called for verticality, one thing that Truls does that is different from other players is that he lets his none vertical tosses drop which is very different from most people who use a lack of verticality to toss the ball into their paddle or behind their bodies. So is the exit angle incorrect? Sure. Is he gaining a massive advantage from it? Watch it and compare it to say Quadri's backward toss or Lin Shidong's hook serve. And Truls is probably the only player I can think of now who frequently tosses and serves the ball well besides his body. If you want to compare that to some of the ridiculous hiding that goes on, feel free to. I stand 100% by my statement.

 

[turbozed]

What exactly is your argument? That obscuring the ball before contact in and of it self does affect play, which is why it should be illegal? Or that obscuring the ball before contact makes it easier to obscure the contact as well, which is why it's OK for it to be illegal? Or both?

For the first point, once tossed the ball is acted upon by only the force of gravity, its trajectory is thus entirely predictable. You only need to observe the ball for a split second to know exactly how it'll travel the rest of the way. So no, obscuring the flight path of the ball without obscuring the contact point makes little to no difference to play.

As for the second point re: making hiding the contact harder, it's more subjective. I don't agree with it as I think it takes too much away from the game without eliminating the guesswork involved, but I do see your point. Frankly for me personally I see WAY less of people using their head or shoulder hiding the pathway of the ball and WAY more of people using their off hand to hide the ball. Making the toss visible the whole way makes zero difference to that since it's only the contact point is hidden, and you still make the umpire guess whether the opponent withdrew his hand in time or not.

Thats not actually how vision in sports work. If you look at research on "quiet eye" an athletes performance absolutely improves when they are able to focus for longer on the ball. If the ball disappears, then performance decreases as focused gaze is broken.

This explains why there's been an arms race of shady serves and trying to hide the ball with your head for as long as possible amongst pro players. The science says that it messes with your ability to judge. If it didn't confer a benefit as you say, then players wouldn't be doing it so much.

Even if players sometimes can judge serves properly with the ball hidden, that doesn't mean the receiver is not at an disadvantage. Your brain having to compute the ball path and register the reappearance of the ball behind some dude's head carries a mental load which could be applied for other focus tasks. Eye tracking is king, and can't be substituted with mental maps. We all know this when we dump a shot into the net when we fail to look the ball into our racket.

The weight of scientific evidence goes against the framework you provided. But with statistics moving forward we can probably get hard numbers to confirm one side or the other. If you're right, then known ball hiders should have the same amount of service win percentage in TTR events as they did last year with poor enforcement. I'd bet on that figure being lower.

 

[turbozed]

Wow. I expected a good match, but it was no contest. SYB easily 3-0 over Miu Hirano.

Miu really looks off. Was constantly missing high balls and sitters. A few misses is understandable but she could not find the table at all. Hope she works through whatever it is and finds her groove again.

Mima was looking pretty off last year too and she was able to regain form and look amazing recently. So there's some hope.

 

[TensorBackhand]

WR5 Liang JingKun loses to WR84 Lilian Bardet.

WR6 Truls Moregard loses to WR60 Yuta Tanaka.

Lin GaoYuan loses to WR61 Alvaro Robles.

Remember how it was supposed to be easy to win 50 matches in a row against a lower ranked player?

 

[mamedium]

WR5 Liang JingKun loses to WR84 Lilian Bardet.

WR6 Truls Moregard loses to WR60 Yuta Tanaka.

Lin GaoYuan loses to WR61 Alvaro Robles.

Remember how it was supposed to be easy to win 50 matches in a row against a lower ranked player?

Lin Gaoyuan can lose to anyone now

 

[NextLevel]

Thats not actually how vision in sports work. If you look at research on "quiet eye" an athletes performance absolutely improves when they are able to focus for longer on the ball. If the ball disappears, then performance decreases as focused gaze is broken.

This explains why there's been an arms race of shady serves and trying to hide the ball with your head for as long as possible amongst pro players. The science says that it messes with your ability to judge. If it didn't confer a benefit as you say, then players wouldn't be doing it so much.

Even if players sometimes can judge serves properly with the ball hidden, that doesn't mean the receiver is not at an disadvantage. Your brain having to compute the ball path and register the reappearance of the ball behind some dude's head carries a mental load which could be applied for other focus tasks. Eye tracking is king, and can't be substituted with mental maps. We all know this when we dump a shot into the net when we fail to look the ball into our racket.

The weight of scientific evidence goes against the framework you provided. But with statistics moving forward we can probably get hard numbers to confirm one side or the other. If you're right, then known ball hiders should have the same amount of service win percentage in TTR events as they did last year with poor enforcement. I'd bet on that figure being lower.

For the record, and not in response to you in particular, I am not against making serve return harder. I just want rules that umpires can regulate fairly easily. Even the toss angles are sometimes a bit tricky especially in the left to right parallel to the table, but as long as it is something that can be fairly well seen by an attentive umpire, I am okay with it. Ball hiding and borderline reappearing is a very tricky guessing game. Many servers do something plausibly clean 80% of the time and then at critical moments just block the ball to create confusion. It's sometimes the changeup from the norm that causes the annoyance, if the person hid the serve all the time, it might be far less of an issue from a receiver standpoint.

 

[backspacer]

Lin Gaoyuan can lose to anyone now

Lin Gaoyuan vs Chair when?

 

[zeio]

We'll have to wait and see, but we won't be seeing Miu anytime soon at WTT events as she hasn't signed up for anything while her compatriots are quite active. She's currently 8th in world rankings of the Japanese women, and one really good tournament from Yokoi could put Hirano in 9th place. [Edit: Not only Yokoi, but Hitomi Sato is active and expect her to win WTT Feeder Spokane]. Though we are far away from 2028, even current ranking matters because you need to be at least within reach of top 4 to get invited to the 6 Champions events per year and top 6 to be invited to Grand Smashes. She's also stated that she will only attend WTT if she feels up to it (or something like that). Sounds like she's not that motivated by WTT. That's fine. I fully understand and agree her mental health is of utmost importance. But the practicality of that and making the Olympic and World Championship teams do not mix well. She's enjoying and doing well in Chinese Super League as well as T-League so in that sense she's not retiring from table tennis.

Let's go back and check out her track record.

Back at the start of the Road to Paris race, specifically after Lion Cup (2022/3/5-6), Hirano finished in 8th place and when looking back later, she thought she was going to miss out on Paris 2024. During WTT CT Tunis 2022 (8/1-6), so well after Hirano beat Kihara in the final at the Asian Games 2022 selection trial (4/9-10) which gave no points but just a week before Nojima Cup (8/13-14) where Hirano lost to Hayata in the final, I made a post how Hirano had actually done the best at that point, with Hayata in 2nd, and Kihara 3rd (09/04/2022 at 12:40am). At the end of the race, Hayata finished at the top, Hirano 2nd, and Kihara 5th (ultimately chosen as the reserve player).

Fast-forward to 3 months after the race, Shibata, Sato, Hashimoto, Yokoi and Odo weren't even ranked in the first half of 2024. Where are they now, a mere year later?

BTW, I ran into your post on Uda and Miwa back in early 2022 before the race (03/20/2022 at 11:09am) while looking up the links above.

pongfugrasshopper 03/20/2022 at 11:09am
Yukiya Uda not at the WTTTC and not participating in the Asian Games Trial is ridiculous. He's Japan's best player right now.

And no Miwa Harimoto at the Asian Games Trial either? SMH

 

[pongfugrasshopper]

Let's go back and check out her track record.

Back at the start of the Road to Paris race, specifically after Lion Cup (2022/3/5-6), Hirano finished in 8th place and when looking back later, she thought she was going to miss out on Paris 2024. During WTT CT Tunis 2022 (8/1-6), so well after Hirano beat Kihara in the final at the Asian Games 2022 selection trial (4/9-10) but just a week before Nojima Cup (8/13-14) where Hirano lost to Hayata in the final, I made a post how Hirano had actually done the best at that point, with Hayata in 2nd, and Kihara 3rd (09/04/2022 at 12:40am). At the end of the race, Hayata finished at the top, Hirano 2nd, Kihara 5th (ultimately chosen as the reserve player).

Fast-forward to 3 months after the race, Shibata, Sato, Hashimoto, Yokoi and Odo weren't even ranked in the first half of 2024. Where are they now?

BTW, I ran into your post on Uda and Miwa back in early 2022 before the race (03/20/2022 at 11:09am) while looking up the links above.

For Paris 2024 we know that the 2 singles spots were based primarily on a series of domestic tournaments. Indications are that LA2028 will most likely be based on ranking at least for the 2 singles spots. For the 3rd spot, it's highly likely the player will need to mesh well in doubles with one or both of the singles players as well as meshing well in mixed doubles. Hirano is falling behind really fast in the ranking race. She really needed to do well at this Smash, a high value points tournament.

 

[zeio]

The final standings of Zennihon Takkyu 2022 were used to seed the Lion Cup and its results were used for the next trial and so on.

Ito was 1st, Hayata 2nd and Hirano 10th. For reference, Ishikawa 11th.

天皇杯・皇后杯 2024年全日本卓球選手権大会（一般・ジュニアの部）最終結果・ランキング
https://jtta.or.jp/special/4130
https://jtta.s3.ap-northeast-1.amaz.../2022/02/07094432/2022_zennihon_ranking.2.pdf

2022 LION CUP TOP32
https://jtta.or.jp/tour/5462
https://jtta.s3.ap-northeast-1.amaz...639/2022lioncuptop32-finalwomensjunit0306.pdf
1st Hayata
2nd Nagasaki
3rd Kihara
4th Sato
5th Ito
6th Ishikawa
7th Hashimoto
8th Hirano

 

[pongfugrasshopper]

The final standings of Zennihon Takkyu 2022 were used to seed the Lion Cup and its results were used for the next trial and so on. Ito was 1st, Hayata 2nd and Hirano 10th.

That's all well and good when the Olympic race is based on domestic tournaments. And she did great. There may be some component based on domestic tournaments like the All Japan, but if the main focus is world ranking in this Olympic cycle then she's in trouble. Those invited to the Champions events as well as Smashes are going to have a big advantage. Not only for the fact that they will gain points faster, but their points in reserve are going to be more substantial. Paris points are going to expire on August 05. Both Hina and Miu will have huge points expiring then though Hina will be coming from a much higher level. Hina is doing something about it... She's playing Contender Lagos and is likely to either win or make the finals against Honoka. With domestic tournaments, you know there are going to be a set number of points available. With WTT, you may or may not get into your desired tournaments.

 

[mamedium]

is there a table somewhere in the venue for the fans to play? or a club in Vegas that potentially has AC?

 

[zeio]

As I projected, Hayata could very well drop out of the top 10 come this August if she finishes R16 (Miwa) here and get stuck in the "PDR hell", what Hirano experienced for 2 years.

Therefore, JTTA will have to take that into account when formulating the new selection system.

https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/fo...-be-revamped-for-paris-2024.24977/post-477346

To be frank, only Miwa is set for LA 2028. The odds for Hirano, Hayata and Ito are roughly the same if the selection system remains unchanged. There is no telling what happened to Ito wouldn't happen to Hayata and it doesn't have to do with injuries. It comes down to how she positions herself in the next cycle.