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My new novelette is out, “First Galactic Table Tennis Championships”! It comes in both print and kindle formats. It’s about 10,000 words, about 40 pages double spaced. It takes place about 100 years from now – and the title pretty much tells you what it’s about! Here’s the back cover...

Butterfly Orthodox seems most common. That's what I use. -Larry Hodges

Below are links to the nine articles I wrote (in order) at the Classic Hardbat World Table Tennis Championships, held Aug. 6-7 in Missouri City, TX, just outside Houston. Read them in order or pick and choose! Open Hardbat is the last article, with (spoiler alert!) the big final between...

Here's another interview, this time with Steve Hopkins at Butterfly. It's a little shorter. https://butterflyonline.com/pongnow-larry-hodges/ -Larry Hodges

Here's my interview at Kevin Table Tennis! You may know Kevin Nguyen (from Portland, OR) for his table tennis trick shots, and he's also among the best of his age in the country, rated 2062 at age 12. Hope you enjoy some of the funny stories I tell! Take it in two sittings, perhaps, but once you...

>Yes I did purchase that book which I presume is by yourself @larrytt ?I really liked it and it was a good fun read.When is the next one out? Glad you liked it! Alas, I haven't written a sequel. >I spotted another new book at the weekend which is called "Ping" and is written by Englishman...

How about "The Spirit of Pong"? A fantasy table tennis novel! https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Pong-Larry-Hodges/dp/1512117080/"Andy 'Shoes' Blue wants to be a table tennis champion, but he’s just another wannabe American. And so he goes to China to learn the secrets of table tennis. He is trained...

Three table tennis books have come out in the last few weeks. Here they are!!! Winning Table Tennis, by Dan Seemiller and Mark Holowchak Winning Table Tennis is back! This is a reprinting of the best-selling table tennis book from 1997. Whether you're a competitive tournament player or a...

Definitely. The muscle "slingshot" effect you refer to is used in all advanced looping techniques. The lack of this is perhaps the most common reason for a lack of power among weaker players, who do the shot more mechanically. -Larry Hodges

Yes, the more "straight-line" loop (such as Boll demonstrates) is more efficient, easier to time, quicker, and more popular among top players, and so that's what I'd recommend as well. When they need extra power, they can either extend the backswing a little bit, or in some cases, against slower...

If you backswing the racket directly back to where you want to start your forward swing on the forehand, you have to bring the racket to a complete stop before starting the forward swing, and so you start your forward swing from a stopped position. By dropping the racket and going through a...

There are nine members of the USATT Board of Directors. They are selected or voted in based on Section 7 of the USATT Bylaws. These rules were basically forced on USATT about ten years ago by the US Olympic Committee. The nine are: Two At-Large Directors, voted by the membership. (I am one of...

Regarding the roughly 250,000 tables sold each year in the U.S., that is accurate. The problem is that the vast majority of them go to "basement players" who stay basement players. USATT has done deals with the table sellers at least 2-3 times. I negotiated one of them, in the 1990s with...

The USATT High Performance Committee is listed in the USATT Committee listing, toward the end. It's under the USATT heading. (I tried posting the link, but got this message: "An error has occurred larrytt! You must have 5 posts in order to post links. Your current post count is 1.") -Larry Hodges

Just saw this. Cheng Yinghua and Huang Tong "Jack" Sheng are two of my co-coaches at the Maryland Table Tennis Center (since 1992), and they, and many others, have explained China's long-time system of recruiting players to mimic their main rivals. Cheng was on the Chinese National Team from...