I never had any contact with table tennis before I was 24 because I lived in small towns that didn't have any clubs
, I moved to a slightly larger city after starting medical school. After recovering from major surgery on my left knee, I learned that there were some people in that city who took table tennis seriously. I've always loved the sport, so I talked to these people so I could start training, which happened last year. Just to give some context, the club is terrible, the floor is extremely slippery, I need to use a product on the soles of my shoes that acts like glue to make them playable. The biggest problem with the floor isn't even that it's unsuitable for the sport, but they simply don't CLEAN the club, so a layer of dust forms which makes the already slippery floor even more slippery. Besides the floor, the tables are of questionable quality. I believe the contact with the ball is a little different, I'm not sure why, I've visited some larger clubs in other cities and the ball's timing... It's very different.
But the biggest problem is some members (only two), they have an absurd ego. The first one was someone I even liked. He has a very strange style; he holds the racket in a very odd way (he puts his thumb on the side of the rubber he plays with and the other four fingers on the rubber on the other side, practically covering the entire surface of the rubber). In the beginning, he played with a long OX pimple racket that he modified (I'm not sure if it's legal), and with an anti-spin racket where he removed the sponge to make an anti-OX racket (I don't know if that exists). Basically, he played pushing dead and strange balls (he doesn't know how to chop). For a beginner like me, it was very frustrating to play against him. However, he switched to a cured pimple racket. I told him it was illegal and that they could ban his racket, and since then he's been saying things to belittle me. It's not just me who says his equipment is illegal, but since I'm a beginner, he only says these things to me.
The other one has He has an absurdly high ego; he genuinely believes that if it weren't for his bad knee, he would be one of the best players in Brazil (he's far from being the best in this small club and has been playing for many years). The problem is, he has a very poor understanding of equipment, yet he insists on giving advice about gear (I was very lucky not to listen at first). He believes that all blades are the same and that what matters most is the rubber. And for some reason, he has something against Xiom. In the last match between Hugo and Gauzy, he literally said that Hugo lost because his equipment was worse and that "Xiom" (the brand, not the specific rubber) didn't forgive wrong movements, and that Gauzy's rubber was much better. I was incredulous at how he thinks he understands more about equipment than Hugo Calderano himself or his coach, and I said something along those lines. Since then, he's been saying things like how he's the best table tennis player in the region and that I don't know anything (I really don't).
So these two They're bullying me, one of them (the guy from Cured Pimple) literally said: "I'm a high-achieving athlete. And you'll never get where I am, you can be sure of that." The other said: "Let's do this, eat some more beans, after about 20 years of TM, after taking a coaching course and everything, then we'll talk, okay? Until then, learn how to play."
Anyway, I think I can get better than these two in one more year, so I'll use this as motivation to destroy them in the future
