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We are all table tennis players and fans in this forum, so we understand and appreciate the complexity of table tennis. But I think we should be careful not to underrate the complexity of other sports which we may not understand as deeply. Other sports, including many extremely popular ones...

It feels like this conversation is getting away from the context in which I made my original point. This thread is full of people talking about how it is easier to get into pickleball than table tennis. My point was simply that that has very little to do with how popular the professional version...

We've had this conversation enough times that I'm not really interested in re-hashing it again. And I understand dealing with the leagues is part of your business, so naturally you prefer them to WTT. I don't care whether you call it WTT or rename it TTW or whatever, and replace all of the...

Compared to pickleball and even tennis, I agree that table tennis is harder to access as a player, at least in the West. But I'm skeptical that being a player and being a fan are that closely related. I can see a bunch of people playing pickleball at the park on a nice day, but how many of them...

That is pretty much what Tenergy was when it originally came out. We haven't seen anything quite so obviously transformative since then, but now it seems like Butterfly are betting on Zyre being the "Tenergy" for the plastic ball that Dignics wasn't quite. I don't think we'll reach the point...

It is basically trolling. I'm not really sure why the forum doesn't just collectively treat him like Igor and just not engage. I've used the "ignore" function but it doesn't completely work because I still see everyone else talking to him. Of course he should be free to post whatever he wants as...

It's a good question. The hardest part (in my experience) of playing weaker players is maintaining the motivation/positive emotional state to play at my best every point. When playing a tough opponent, this often comes naturally. I can feed off the energy of big shots and exciting rallies, even...

Ok, we've discussed this before but I haven't been able to get an answer that is clear to me. My question is: how can the leagues afford to provide this much money to the players? Do they have better sponsorship deals than WTT -- and if so, why? Do they have much lower expenses than WTT -- and...

This is simply the nature of single-elimination tournaments. Despite what you say about tennis, it's exactly the same. In a single-elimination format, one out of every two players lose and are gone after each match; that's indisputable mathematics. I'd argue the shorter matches in table tennis...

There was some chaos, but I thought Lind actually played a very clear and simple strategy, particularly on his serve. For a player like Lind who has so much variety, I think sometimes having such a clear focus can help raise his level. I felt like this match more than other recent losses...

The short, direct answer to your question is that the spin decreases slightly over time as the ball travels through the air, due to friction. So the spin will be slightly weaker if you hit the ball later rather than earlier. But, in my opinion, this effect matters much less than other factors...

I’ve played lighter blades briefly when I was dealing with a shoulder injury (ironically the injury was originally caused by playing around with a too-light blade but I digress) so I’m confident of my preference for heavy blades. But everyone has different personal preferences and I accept that...

Rant: It’s been a while since I’ve felt any temptation to EJ, but the HAL composition is intriguing. I just wish Xiom didn’t make all of their commercial blades so light. Below 90g for this blade is just a no-go for me, but if it were available in 92+ grams I would definitely snap it up. Maybe...

The teams aspect is cool and unique to the TT leagues, but I think that could also be kept and incorporated in a consolidated tour. You could have something like “Pro Teams” events where players got drafted into teams, and at the same time players could get rankings points for individual...

Every separate league has to have its own events. At the same time, there are too many events. How is it possible to fix this problem? Tennis was in exactly this situation in the 70s and 80s. They weren’t called “leagues” but instead “circuits” or “tours” but it was basically the same thing...

Well we could call it that the leagues buy the WTT if that sounds better. Or a bunch of top players could get together with some businessmen and start their own organization which buys out the WTT and the leagues. At the end of the day it's just a corporate merger. How the governance would work...

The idea is that the WTT would buy the clubs/leagues, either outright or in part. The club, or really its owners, would get a load of cash up front, and the WTT would own at least some share of the revenue going forward, and its ownership would allow it to organize/limit events. The economics...

I'm actually interested in the economics here. First of all, how do the clubs generate revenue when the WTT doesn't/can't? The problem is that playing WTT events alone isn't enough to sustain a singles career outside of the top 50ish players, and playing for clubs to pay the bills takes a lot of...

IMO this is not some big mystery; it's pretty clear if you study the table tennis matches from 10-15 years ago versus today. The top CNT men used to have a much bigger edge over the competition in sheer physicality. Many of their top opponents were guys like Samsonov, Maze, Mizutani, Oh Sang...

I’d take FZD against anyone else in the world right now in a head-to-head match, so I agree he’s the “best” in that sense. He’s well-rested and in great form based on his super league performance. Where I disagree is with anyone saying that makes him the “real number one.” He wasn’t even ranked...